As 2025 approaches, many of us are in planning mode—reviewing budgets, setting goals, and imagining a better, smoother year ahead. It’s the perfect time to consider whether your business technology is helping you reach those goals—or holding you back. For many small businesses, technology evolves organically over time. You add one tool to solve a specific problem, then another for a new challenge. Before you know it, you’ve got a patchwork of systems that [...]

As I started this article, I had a feeling of déjà vu... In 2019, I wrote Help! Why is No One Using Our CRM? Revisiting it, I realised the advice still holds, but with five more years of experience, I’ve gained a broader view on how to drive true organisational value from your CRM. That first article focused on the “carrots,” making sure that your team wants (or even needs) to use the CRM. This time, [...]

Long-term readers might be familiar with how I describe different types of CRM: sales, marketing, service, and eCommerce. But what if you need more than one of these? If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by juggling multiple systems that don’t talk to each other, you’re not alone. You are jumping into one of the oldest questions in technology—should I buy an integrated “all-in-one” system? Or should I knit together specialised systems in a way that [...]

Some recent interactions with companies I am a customer of have bugged me… especially as I know I can expect them to do better by using a CRM. Are you doing any of these “top 5 hates” to your customers? Not knowing anything about your customers  Why it’s annoying: Customers expect you to know who they are, what they have bought before, and the previous questions they have asked. They hate repeating themselves. Not [...]

This week, I was asked why a small business would need a CRM. My take on it is that they might… but they might not, too! As an independent advisor, I have nothing to gain by selling someone a product they don’t need. I’d rather say that a CRM is the wrong choice for you right now than sell you a product you don’t need. Which businesses do not need a CRM system at [...]

I spend a lot of time writing about different types of CRMs and what they do. If you're using your CRM correctly, it should not only support your team's customer engagement but also automate much of it, enabling personalised outreach at scale. But that’s just the beginning. Your CRM holds a treasure trove of insights that can transform your approach to customers, sales, and business growth. The next level of value comes in using [...]

It is time for a deep dive into another type of CRM. This time, we are looking at CRM for eCommerce. This is an extremely specific need where you are selling online, generally with higher volumes and often with a bigger range of products. CRMs for eCommerce often overlap with other types of CRM and operational systems. It is extremely important to consider what you want your CRM to cover and what you will [...]

Are you drowning in a sea of manual data entry, spending hours each week copying information from one system to another?  You get an order online, and copy the details over to your shipping system? Or you get an email request from a customer and put it into your request tracker spreadsheet? I have worked with businesses where the staff are spending up to 25% of their time just moving information around, and it [...]