Why You Need More Than Just a CRM

By Cayden Wemple. 

Check-in with two technology leaders to see why you need more than your run-of-the-mill CRM. 

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CRM or “customer relationship management” is a term that gets thrown around a lot these days, and while it’s a great tool, there are other tools out there that can do more than the typical CRM. That’s part of what Eugene Zukowski of Jobba Trade Technologies and John Kenney of Cotney Consulting Group came on to discuss on a new Read, Listen, Watch with Heidi J. Ellsworth.  

CRM’s are great tools to help organize information about customers, but Eugene argues that the industry needs something more than that, and the answer is Jobba. “A CRM is a great tool. It helps you manage customers and information. But what I think we really need is a tool that kind of has it all. Something that manages your customers, your information, helps the sales process.” He continues, “So really to me, contractors need more than just a singular tool to handle that. Something that can handle customers, proposals, estimating, get my crew out there, and it's all under one platform that really helps them run their company as a whole. Not that CRMs are bad, I just think there's more that's needed in the industry.”  

You know technology is progressing when not only pens and legal pads have become obsolete, but Excel spreadsheets are headed in that direction too. John points out that it’s challenging to keep track of ratios of sales and hits without an all-in-one software. “It's very difficult to understand ratios of labor versus material and overages and all the things that you really need to know in estimating to get it done by running strictly on spreadsheets,” says John. “There's nothing better than having a great tool, which is where these softwares come in to enhance the abilities of a well-trained estimator.” 

Listen to the conversation here to learn more about how the industry is progressing with estimating software.