How to Choose the Right CRM for Your Manufacturing Business

CRM is not only for data management. Even though it’s one of its most beneficial features. It goes much further and along the way at the same time. It’ll be your partner in many areas, from optimization to sustained customer satisfaction.

But how to pick the one? There are so many options on the market… Let us help you here.

Table of contents
Unique Challenges in Your Sector
Key CRM Features You Should Focus on
Best of the Best, eWay-CRM
Modules in eWay-CRM You’ll Appreciate
It’s Your Choice

Unique Challenges in Your Sector

The manufacturing industry has its own set of unique challenges.

How come? Because it intertwines product creation, supply chain complexities, and of course B2B interactions.

Here’s the list of the most common ones:

Complex Supply Chain Management

Having many great suppliers is a blessing. But it also means you have to keep an eye on every part of the delivery process: tracking raw materials, assessing quality, managing timelines, and ensuring seamless communication between multiple stakeholders. This can be quite challenging, so a smart system is pretty necessary.

Product Lifecycle Management

Many of you have to take care of the whole lifecycle of a product. From conception to disposal. And we know how intricate this can be.

It involves collaboration across departments, making sure the regulatory compliance is just fine, and frequent updates of processes are made according to real-time feedback. And more.

Nurturing the Customer Relationship

What’s better than a loyal customer who loves to come back and spread good word about your brand? Did I hear “nothing”?

But to have such customers, you must take good care of them. You must put them first, understand them, always be there for them, and offer what they look for and need.

Customization and Personalization

Tailor-made. That’s the trend of today. And that’s what every customer expects. And want. From newsletter to delivered product.

And you as a manufacturer must have the infrastructure to handle all these unique requests without compromising your efficiency.

Global Market Dynamics

Many of you operate on a global scale. That’s great. But it means you have to watch diverse regional standards and different tax regulations.

Also, there are unique cultural nuances in every market, which means you have to interact with your customers a bit differently each time. Learning requires focus and time.

A win here is eWay-CRM. It’ll allow you to track compliance requirements, manage varied tax obligations, and store insights on cultural interactions.

It’s primarily for small and medium-sized manufacturing businesses but those who need large-scale operations won’t be missing out at all.

Key CRM Features You Should Focus on

CRM is an investment. But to make sure it’s really like this; you should understand and know what key features it should have. Only then it’ll be really beneficial for your business.

• Customization and scalability: Given the unique workflows, a CRM for the manufacturing industry should be adaptable to specific needs.

  For example, eWay-CRM will allow you to start with basic features and scale as you grow. That’s literally the best way you can go. Start with it for free and grow with it smoothly. If you need more features in the future, just start using them. If not, don’t. The thing is, eWay-CRM will be there for you the whole time.

• Integration capabilities: For smooth operations, your CRM needs to integrate with tools you already use and have your data saved in.

  eWay-CRM works in harmony with platforms like Outlook, Word, Excel, SharePoint, or Power BI. This will minimize disruption and learning curves for you.

• Offline access: Every one of you has to travel to places where there’s no internet connection from now and then. Whether it’s a supplier’s warehouse or their factory. That’s why it’s vital for your business to use software that works offline without any issues.

• Centralized data management: From managing suppliers to customers, there's a lot of data you have to handle. CRMs like eWay-CRM offer centralized data management. Thanks to that you’ll be able to share your contacts, companies, and projects with all of your colleagues.

• Automated workflows: Automation will drastically reduce your manual input and potential errors made by people.

  How does this work? Let’s look at eWay-CRM. Its automated workflows in the sales module allow deals, leads, and reminders to be managed with less of your touch. Because the system gives you options and automates routines.

• CRM support and helpdesk: A good quality product should come in a package. Meaning, that you’re not only buying a thing, or a service and it ends there, but you should have access to help. Simply put, when there’s anything that needs to be discussed while using the product or service, the provider should be there for you.

  Pick a CRM provider that has a reliable team of people on the phone and a smart chat. Replying to every email should be standard. Anything extra, e.g. communities on social media platforms, like Reddit, is surely a benefit. Because when there’s something you need help with, you’re happy for any reached hand.

• Affordability and pricing plan flexibility: Costs always matter. Look at the prices And make sure your CRM offers leveling up. This will save you money and allow you to grow.

• Security and reliability: Customer data is sensitive. So, you have to treat them like that. Reliable software is therefore a must here.

• Technology advancements: Don’t forget about tomorrow. And pay attention to what CRM offers when it comes to technological advancements.

  AI is a huge topic nowadays. And belongs to the investments indeed. In a CRM, it’ll make you more effective and allow you to get things done faster.

Best of the Best, eWay-CRM

You’ve probably seen some CRMs. They pop up on the internet here and there. The stumbling block of many is their universality. Does that sound odd? Here’s why it’s not good to believe in universality: because it doesn’t provide the specialized features you need.

If you want to be sure that a CRM will benefit your business, you have to pick a perfect fit. And that is a specialized CRM for manufacturing. The best on the market is eWay-CRM. Here’s why:

Perfect integration with Outlook: If you’re an Outlook user, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how well eWay-CRM integrates with Outlook. It looks and works just like Outlook. It’ll organize emails for you, schedule meetings, and make note-taking a breeze. And with its AI features, you’ll be able to make your processes and decision-making fast.

Shared contact lists for the highest level of collaboration: Your contact list will most probably be quite long. You need to save a contact for every supplier, client, or logistics partner. In eWay-CRM, you’ll not only have great options for saving your contacts, but the list will also be synchronized and shared with all of your colleagues. All of you will therefore be on the same page. Then you’ll be able to enjoy collaboration at the highest level possible.

Professional project management: Projects all over the table? Not with eWay-CRM. Make your project map well-arranged. And see what professional project management looks like. And what it feels like. From task assignments to timesheets and individual tasks.

Sales module for your business boost: The Sales module addresses one of your biggest challenges - effective management of deals and leads. Manage your web forms, email tracking and Power BI dashboards with ease.

Email marketing that brings new clients: Email marketing is vital for your business. Send campaigns that speak to your potential customers. Right in your CRM with beautiful templates and detailed user behavior stats and heatmaps.

User rights as advanced as they can be: Assign advanced user rights and make sure sensitive information remains in trusted hands.

Best price-performance ratio: Time is money. And eWay-CRM promises reliability for the best price on the market.

Technologically always ahead of the pack: eWay-CRM is being updated regularly. And uses the most recent technological advancements. It also offers AI-powered features. Task suggestions from emails and Contact recognition in emails are the favorite ones of manufacturers.

Thanks to this approach, you can be sure the CRM of eWay System will always be the best for you on the market.

Holistic customer relationship management: eWay-CRM’s modules encompass everything from tracking deals in sales to in-built email marketing. This holistic approach ensures that you’ll be able to tackle any challenge of customer relationship nurturing effectively.

To sum up, eWay-CRM is a tool tailored just for you. It offers a lot and promises you’ll be able to manage your business effectively in every sense.

Modules in eWay-CRM You’ll Appreciate

eWay-CRM offers specialized modules for you. How great is that?

Let’s have a closer look at them:

Projects:

• Holistic project view: For tracking deliveries efficiently and monitoring entire project lifecycles.
• Organized communication: For centralized project-related communications and perfect collaboration.
• Financial oversight: For monitoring billing, costs, and profit to ensure projects remain financially viable.
• Time tracking: Integrated timesheets for checking how good your investment in various projects and tasks was.

Sales:

• Unified lead management: Centralized deals and leads, so no opportunity is missed.
• Seamless integration
• Automated workflows: For getting rid of routine. This allows you to spend more time on tasks that require your full attention.
• Data visualization: Power BI dashboards that will show you your sales metrics and help to make good data-driven decisions.

Email Marketing:

• In-built marketing: For making sure your communication with customers is cohesive.
• Engagement tracking: For editing your strategies according to detailed stats and heatmaps.
• Lead conversion: For comfortable conversion of potential leads into deals.

Contacts & Companies:

• Team-wide data sharing: For better team communication and collaboration.
• Synchronization across devices: For keeping all information up to date on all of your devices.
• Detailed tracking: For effective follow-ups and client relationship management.
• User access control: For advanced data security.

eWay-CRM is here so you can revolutionize the way your company operates and interacts with your clients.

It’s Your Choice

The choice is up to you. But if you want to play it safe, go for the best option for you as a manufacturer, eWay-CRM.

Start your eWay-CRM journey for free today.