Firm leaders are always looking for ways to make their organizations more efficient, reduce costs, improve business development effectiveness and enhance profitability. To help firms achieve all of these important goals, outsourcing marketing functions can be an excellent option – especially in areas that involve technologies to support marketing and business development.

In over a decade of helping hundreds of firms improve marketing and business development technology processes and efficiency, we have found that outsourcing key functions to trained and experienced professionals can solve a number of problems while also providing important benefits. Here are a few examples:

Problem: After making a large initial investment in a CRM system, the firm realizes that more staff time and resources are needed to implement the system. Without the resources, system implementation will be delayed and costs will increase. Unfortunately the firm doesn’t have the necessary expertise in-house or the ability to add CRM staff.

• Solution: Outsourced CRM project managers have the experience necessary to make key decisions, schedule necessary meetings, liaise with the implementation team, prioritize tasks and keep the project on track so the deployment goes smoothly and the firm can realize benefits from the new system sooner rather than later.

Problem: The firm is dealing with staff turnover or vacations and it’s next to impossible to find people to fill vacancies.

• Solution: Outsourcing e-Marketing staff support can provide the expertise needed to ensure deliverability of email campaigns is maximized and CRM and e-Marketing system integrations work effectively. Additionally, they can help with tracking and analytics as well as compliance with data privacy regulations.

Problem: Contact data quality in the CRM system is dated and degraded, containing duplicate records and incorrect and incomplete information. Consequently, Marketing can’t effectively execute campaigns and users lose confidence and refuse to adopt the system.

• Solution: Outsourcing data management and cleansing will allow the firm to benefit from the experience of trained data quality professionals and will save time and headaches. Additionally, the firm can staff data projects appropriately without having to hire, train and supervise additional staff.

Problem: The firm lacks the internal staff or expertise required to effectively execute email campaigns and manage the e-Marketing function.

• Solution: Outsourcing e-Marketing staff support can provide the expertise needed to ensure deliverability of email campaigns is maximized and CRM and e-Marketing system integrations work effectively. Additionally, it can help with tracking and analytics as well as compliance with data privacy regulations.

More Benefits of Outsourcing CRM, Data Quality and e-Marketing

By outsourcing these types of functions to qualified CRM, data management and e-Marketing specialists, the firm can also derive a number of additional benefits including:

• These professionals not only have technical expertise, they are also typically trained on a variety of CRM and e-Marketing systems. They can ‘hit the ground running’ and reduce project delays.
• They can often provide unique perspective, experience and know-how that your team may lack, which can help avoid some commonly made mistakes.
• They can help to provide CRM strategies and project planning expertise, which may be lacking in some firms.
• Options to outsource on a short-term, long-term or permanent basis can provide flexibility depending on the firm’s situation and timelines.
• Outsourcing allows for predictability of costs and can often provide substantial cost savings on the overhead, pay and benefits associated with in-house CRM, data management and e-Marketing staff.
• Outsourcing can also help with staff retention by relieving valued team members of some routine or inherently problematic responsibilities and allowing them to focus on more complex projects or strategic functions.

In our next post, “Top Benefits of Outsourcing Marketing Technology Support – Part 2,” we offer guidelines to help you determine if outsourcing is right for your firm, and we’ll show you how to get started.