This is a guest post by Mapsly
Location data in your CRM records is a valuable resource, which when used with the proper tool can help dramatically increase sales and operational efficiency. You can extract actionable insights and optimize productive work hours.
Read on to identify the top 5 pitfalls of working with location data and how you can tackle them.
1. Inefficient routes for field sales reps
If visiting customers takes up a large portion of your sales reps’ time, planning optimal routes is a common challenge. Inefficient routes can waste ~25% of a sales rep's potentially productive work hours compared to following an optimal route.
Solution: A good map integration for your CRM allows you to create optimal routes between your CRM leads or accounts while considering the real-time and historic traffic data as well as the planned departure times. Read locations directly from Zoho CRM records and eliminate the need to manually upload data into the route planner.
2. Laborious analysis of geodata and lack of fast actionable insights
“Where are my customers clustered that would justify new local points of sale?”
“From which areas did my leads come over the last week?”
“In which regions are my accounts with $10M+ lifetime revenue?”
If you’re asking similar questions that take more than 30 seconds to answer, you might be missing out on an opportunity to extract value from your location data and incorporate geodata into your decision-making process.
Solution: Viewing your CRM data visualized on a map reveals useful patterns. A quality integration such as Mapsly with Zoho CRM will give you the option to make map layers with custom markers based on your chosen criteria. You can also set up custom CRM modules and custom fields to make the most of your location data.
3. Slow and inaccurate geo-matching of prospects solely based on distance
Running geo-matching process off of Google Maps and CRM workflows that match the parties by zip codes alone can decrease team’s efficiency.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
A call-center of a medical insurance company connects patients with the closest clinics that provide the service they require, considering the patients' ability and mode of transport.
A network of schools that connects their graduating students with entry-level jobs in their area based on the type of transportation available to them and the amount of time they’re willing to spend on their daily commute.
A lead generation company that connects financial advisors to businesses in their area based on the type of business they specialize in and the maximum travel distance they’re comfortable with.
In any of these cases, the organization would like to assign new leads to a sales rep living closer to them based on the business metrics the sales rep is best at.
Solution: Integrating an app like Mapsly with Zoho CRM will let you set a base point (like a patient, a student, or an advisor in the examples above) and it will calculate the distance to and from all the service providers at once, thereby incorporating distance metrics into the criteria to match the provider to consumers.
It will also support viewing and updating multi-select lookup fields, allowing you to assign selected providers to their matching consumer right on the map. You can make any other necessary updates to your CRM data without leaving the map, and the integration will sync changes to the CRM in real time.
4. Inefficient sales territories (including those defined through zip codes)
Businesses that manage geographic sales or service territories usually resort to defining their territories by a list of zip codes, making zip code boundaries inevitable. Zip code boundaries are hard to maintain because you can’t visualize them to troubleshoot issues like missing or duplicate zip codes.
Solution: Having relevant contacts and accounts plotted out on a map in the right app gives you the option to hand-draw territories, automatically assign CRM records to the assigned territories and save them, allowing you to utilize them in your territory assignment rules.
5. Disjointed processes involving the map—viewing data on a map, but editing in the CRM
Using separate geo-tools can make it time-consuming to modify your CRM data, forcing you to frequently switch back to your CRM to find the records you’re interested in. Finding records without geo-filters will take longer than needed.
Solution: Update Zoho CRM records individually or in bulk from your map. Trigger CRM workflows in the Mapsly App, both on desktop and mobile. Build your process around the map and input the location data, making work more efficient.
Address the challenges gracefully with Mapsly's interactive maps seamlessly integrated with Zoho CRM. Visualise, organize, and analyze location data to make the best use of your team's time and resources.
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