Why CRM Should Be a Core Business Function

A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system isn’t just another software, an IT job, or a sales pipeline… it’s your fully functioning growth engine.

Yet when many of us hear ‘CRM’, it’s almost treated the same way the handful of Bounty’s at the bottom of a Celebrations tub are – discarded, handed over to someone else, or otherwise forgotten about until things get desperate.

These misconceptions can be costly, too.

A well-oiled CRM can boost sales by 29%, productivity by 34%, and forecast accuracy by 42%... so can you really afford not to treat your CRM as a core business function?

Let’s take a look at why CRM misconceptions might be holding you back and how you can shift from simply buying a CRM to using it for maximum growth impact.

What are the common misconceptions about CRMs?

There’s no shortage of misconceptions holding businesses back from the growth their CRM could offer, so let’s dive into the most common ones (and why they aren’t strictly true):

CRM is a core business function

Once you shift to viewing CRM as a central function, the collaboration between different teams within your organisation, streamlining of key touchpoints, and growth will follow.

It’s no different from how a business treats HR, finance, or operations – CRM is a central function of your business and how it operates, and it’s your customer intelligence hub for integration across your key business departments.

Here’s why businesses should consider CRM a central function, and how they benefit from embedding CRM into their business culture:

Processes evolve around the customer

A customer-first approach is your key to unlocking personalised interactions and, as it says on the tin, putting the customer at the heart of your organisation across sales, marketing, and customer service.

In short, when each team within a business is firing on all cylinders when all information is easily accessible in one location, your CRM is enhancing the overall customer experience.

Businesses are seeing the benefits of this approach, too – 62% of UK SMEs say CRM improves customer experience, retention, and strengthens relationships.

At a time when businesses are feeling the pressure of rising operational costs, inflation, and a projected 1.7% GDP growth in 2025, customer spending and retention strategies are key areas of concern.

It goes without saying that considering CRM as a core function is a relief to this pressure!

Better collaboration between teams

In many businesses, the sales, marketing, and customer service teams are all operating on an individual basis towards different goals and objectives.

Unsurprisingly, this creates an issue with departmental silos and missed opportunities in the pipeline, with 58% of UK sales leaders reporting missing revenue opportunities due to ineffective CRM use. When your CRM technology, data and insights are all stored in one place, however, teams across departments can easily and efficiently access all customer information and collaborate without barriers, making the process much smoother.

From a marketing executive to a sales rep, every customer-facing employee can access the information they need when they need it and collaborate along the way.
 

Revenue growth becomes predictable, scalable, and sustainable

The holy trinity of growth from effective CRM use, right?

Poor-quality CRM use and data can result in an estimated loss of over 10% in annual revenue.

Comparatively, the UK CRM market growth is anticipated to rise from $3.7bn (2023) to $8.6bn in 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 12.8%, which aligns with a global trend of growth for the CRM market, in part, due to the increasing recognition of the revenue generation potential of CRMs. (In plain English: the CRM market is growing considerably because so many businesses are recognising their revenue growth potential.)

If that wasn’t enough, the average increase of 25% in marketing return on investment following the adoption of CRM solutions ought to be a catalyst for approaching your CRM with best practices in mind.

How CRM unlocks predictable growth

We’ve already touched on some of the growth benefits of a fully integrated CRM strategy and approach, but what are the other ways in which CRM can make growth more predictable?

• You’ll have smarter, data-driven decisions, and with research indicating that companies using data-driven decision-making report up to a 10% increase in profits and 10% reduction in overall costs, this streamlining has a multitude of benefits!
• Benefits across all departments, not just sales and marketing teams, as easier access to all data in one centralised location can integrate with other departmental software for real-time use, make support systems more proactive, and automate routine tasks for greater efficiency.
• Reduces overall costs of sales through improved efficiency, with a study indicating that 91% of businesses reported a reduction in customer acquisition costs after implementing CRM software, with savings between 11 and 20%.
• Enhances upselling, cross-selling, and customer retention, due to increased personalisation opportunities, a 360-degree understanding of a customer based on their data, and more opportunities based on segmentation.
• Aligns sales and marketing operations, which is essential for revenue operations, and means greater consistency and communication.
• Contributes to achieving business goals by making processes across departments more streamlined and collaborative, and the overall business more profitable and scalable.

Tips to start embedding CRM as a core function in your business

Purchasing the right CRM for your business needs is only the first step – to have a fully integrated, efficient CRM, you need to view it not as a purchase but as a contributor to a business outcome that the CRM is a catalyst for.

Here’s how you can get started:

• Align your strategy and your CRM: for your CRM to be integrated as a core function, you need to view it as your single source of truth. Analysing the data from your CRM is the way that you’ll invest in the areas with positive results and refine the areas that are underperforming, helping you to shape and adapt your wider strategy accordingly.
• Encourage cross-team ownership: we’ve already mentioned how CRM is your cross-departmental holy grail (in more words), but it’s important to unite all of your business needs by involving all departments, top-to-bottom, in the process as a fully embedded CRM will meet their needs and make their jobs and communication more streamlined.
• Establish ongoing CRM processes: it’s not a one-and-done process if it’s done right. This means having clear processes and maintenance, whether it’s data management and automation, regular analytics reviews, or customer insight meetings to keep your strategy on track and your CRM use as efficient as possible.
• Regularly measure CRM effectiveness against business growth: if you’re not measuring it, it doesn’t exist – you need to be tracking key metrics to ensure your CRM is contributing to your business goals. We can’t list every single one here, of course, but CRM effectiveness can be measured across sales performance (e.g., conversion rates and average order value), customer acquisition and retention, engagement, and even lead response time. These metrics should be reviewed regularly.
• Train and educate teams consistently to embed CRM best practices: having a solid onboarding process and roadmap for users will make the embedding process far easier, particularly if there are also workshops, hands-on practice and role-specific training. It’s also essential to implement continuous learning for new features and necessary refreshes.
   

CRM isn’t just a software, it’s your essential growth-driving function

If you’re looking for predictable, sustainable business growth, then your CRM is the foundation to build towards that goal. Though the transition from treating CRM as a software or marketing tool towards an embedded business function can seem like a time-consuming process, it’s the difference between simply having a tool to track and store data versus one that contributes to growth across your business in every sense.

If you’re struggling to assess your current CRM strategy, we’d love to help – you can book a CRM function health check consultation here, and we can get you on the road to driving sustainable, scalable growth!