7 Must-Have Features of a CRM in Logistics and Supply Chain Management

With the lack of a specialized CRM in logistics and supply chain management, you may find it difficult to streamline your sales and operations. It will also be hard to get a comprehensive view of your customers and areas that need improvement. This can lead to missed opportunities to attract more clients and upsell.

If you’ve used a standard CRM before, you may have noticed that it doesn’t have all the features you need for supply chain and logistics. If so, you might need to customize it to fit your requirements.

To ensure you have the best logistics CRM, we’ve listed seven features you should consider. But before that, let’s understand the importance of having a CRM with specialized features.

The Importance of Having a CRM with Specialized Features

Customer relationship management is essential for logistics and supply chain businesses. A typical CRM is often made for all types of businesses, which introduces room for improvement by having specialized features.

Having a CRM with specialized features for your industry, like logistics and supply chain, offers several significant advantages over using a generic CRM, including enhanced efficiency, improved tracking and visibility, streamlined communication, and better management of complex processes.

• With a logistics CRM, you can keep up with your logistics customers’ needs. A specialized CRM allows you to capture and manage customer data specific to their logistics needs.
• Using this information, you can personalize communication, offer targeted solutions, and build stronger customer relationships.
• Because of the real-time visibility a supply chain CRM provides, you can proactively address customer concerns and provide timely updates.

Let’s take a look at the seven must-have features of a CRM in logistics and supply chain management.

7 Must-Have Features of a CRM in Logistics and Supply Chain Management

1. Centralized Communications

The first must-have feature is centralized communication. Centralized communication collects and saves all stakeholder interactions to a central hub so that everyone can access the same data. This hub should store many forms of communications with stakeholders, such as emails, calls, and in-person and virtual meetings. Having one central hub for communications allows you to quickly locate and/or share information, thus, reducing time spent digging into old conversations from various software.

Benefits of Centralized Communications

A CRM in logistics and supply chain management with a centralized communication feature can help your organization in the following ways:

• It allows all emails, calls, and in-person meetings to be logged into the CRM’s centralized database.
  • It is essential to find a CRM that can record all communications with stakeholders, not only customers, without manually logging them or turning on an option.
• It promotes transparency and ensures that everyone is always on the same page.
• It can improve internal communications among teams of multiple departments.
• It increases productivity, as less time is wasted finding relevant emails.

2. Unified Stakeholder Data

One of the essential must-have features of a CRM in logistics and supply chain is unified stakeholder data. Unified stakeholder data allows you to collect and organize all the information of your stakeholders on one platform.

Having all stakeholder data in one platform is essential. In the supply chain, it is not enough to only have customer data in your CRM to improve customer satisfaction. You need to have all stakeholder data in one platform to address your customers’ needs quickly and effectively.

Benefits of Unified Stakeholder Data

A CRM in logistics and supply chain management with a unified stakeholder data feature can help your organization in the following ways:

• Having one platform to access all stakeholder data will allow your team to be more efficient, resulting in better customer service.
• It omits the need to invest in multiple software to manage each type of stakeholder, which helps your company be more cost-efficient.

3. Consolidated Quoting

Creating one consolidated quote for all customers’ requirements is another must-have feature. Often, requirements of this industry would have a combination of warehousing and transportation services, such as inland, ocean, air, storage, and distribution. This feature lets you generate one consolidated quotation that includes multiple services and options per service to fulfill your customers’ requirements.

Benefits of Consolidated Quoting

A CRM in logistics and supply chain management with consolidated quoting can help your organization in the following ways:

• It helps increase sales conversion by consolidating all requested services into one quote.
• It helps increase sales conversion and customer retention by creating and sending quotes quicker.
• It helps reduce the time for a customer to sign quotes and improve customer satisfaction by providing multiple options per service and letting them choose what’s best for them.

Related Article: Freight Quote Software: 6 Must-Have Features to Win More Lanes

4. Carrier Management

Carrier management is a vital component, as it allows you to monitor and access carrier performance data quickly. This feature would also record all communications with carriers. Carrier management can provide the following carrier’s details:

• Equipment and services;
• Safety records;
• Historical records; and
• Insurance coverage.

Benefits of Carrier Management

A CRM in logistics and supply chain management with a carrier management feature can help your organization in the following ways:

• It improves carrier information visibility.
• It aids in finding critical data that helps select the best carrier for a particular job.
• It improves collaboration with your carriers.

Related Article: 8 LTL Software Tool Features to Win More Shipments

5. Intelligent Quoting

The intelligent quoting feature allows you to create a competitive and profitable quote by providing the necessary information at your fingertips. The information could include historical rates from past customer transactions and real-time market rates, such as real-time broker-to-carrier market rates and shipper-to-carrier contract rates.

Benefits of Intelligent Quoting

A CRM in logistics and supply chain management with an intelligent quoting feature can help your organization in the following ways:

• It helps reduce quote turnaround time by conveniently showing all the necessary data to create an effective quote.
  • By reducing quote turnaround time, you can improve customer satisfaction and win rate.
• It can help increase win rates and maximize profits by providing historical quote data that led to won and lost deals.

6. Sales Pipeline Management

The sales pipeline management feature offers a complete view of the sales funnel that each lead goes through. This feature allows you to track your leads across the various stages, which could include:

• Leads
• Qualified leads
• Prospects
• Active customers
• Dormant customers
• Lost customers

Benefits of Sales Pipeline Management

A CRM in logistics and supply chain management with a sales pipeline management feature can help your organization in the following ways:

• It enables a clear picture of sales processes to recognize the status of each lead.
• It can increase sales by knowing which leads are closest to signing a deal.
• It helps keep track of lost customers and analyze the results to improve sales strategies.

Related Article: Logistics Sales Pipeline: How to Maximize Customer Conversions

7. Sales Cycles

Sales cycles are another important feature of a CRM in logistics and supply chain management. This feature can allow you to maintain sales consistency by configuring recurrent tasks to call, email, and meet with customers.

Benefits of Sales Cycle Management

A CRM in logistics and supply chain management with sales cycles feature can help your organization in the following ways:

• It automatically assigns recurrent tasks to your sales workforce.
• It helps achieve more consistent and timely sales touchpoints.
• It increases sales conversion rate.

Related Article: Freight Sales 101: From Prospecting to Closing

How can a CRM system help communicate issues in the supply chain?

The logistics and supply chain industry faces a variety of challenges. Some of these challenges are because of the constant changes in logistics, as well as the demands of customers. Since logistics is such a complex industry, CRMs can provide a way to resolve these issues.

A CRM is a centralized platform where all stakeholders can communicate. Everything is logged for any issues, from the problems to the resolutions. Since it offers accurate time updates, everyone is informed about any issues in the stages of the process. This way, the right people can respond quickly and resolve the problem.

If you need a complete overview of your customers, you can quickly get that from a logistics CRM. You can track customer feedback and identify recurring issues. You can analyze your customers’ behavior and reveal unmet expectations using this visibility.

A logistics CRM is designed specifically for the needs of your industry. These features seamlessly integrate into your existing workflows, saving time and effort compared to generic tools and manual processes.

Conclusion

Logistics and supply chain management benefits significantly from a specialized CRM and helps them provide excellent customer service. A specialized CRM with the seven features mentioned in this article will allow your operations to work more efficiently and productively, resulting in better customer relationships.

Interested in seeing these features working to your advantage? Book a demo to learn more about our solution designed for the supply chain.

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