Best CRM Software for Reporting

Many users have unique reporting requirements that they want to meet while looking for CRM software. They are interested in learning how their sales force is doing, which products or services are doing well, and which leads have the potential to convert. As a result, while choosing CRM software, it's crucial to take its reporting capabilities into account.

What Makes the Best CRM Software for Reporting

We have assessed CRM software using a variety of reporting metrics, including email tracking, sales insights, A/B testing, custom reports, lead scoring, sales forecasting, and predictive forecasting, to assist users in making an informed choice. The features provided by each platform, how they function in actual situations, and the overall user experience have all been considered in our research.

To find out which CRM software offers the best reporting capabilities, we used the following structure for weighting:

Email Tracking

Email tracking monitors how recipients open and interact with your emails. This can be used by businesses to measure the success of their email outreach and marketing campaigns to determine the best ways to reach out to clients.

Additionally, companies can utilize email monitoring to get important data regarding the effectiveness of their communications and, if necessary, modify their email marketing strategy. With the use of effective email monitoring solutions, it is simpler to pinpoint the aspects of an email that are causing low or high open rates and make modifications to improve outcomes.

Contact Scorings

Contact scoring is used to evaluate the likelihood that a particular contact will engage with you or make a purchase. It involves assigning a numerical score to a contact based on various factors such as demographic data, behavior on the website, and engagement with your company's marketing activities.

For example, your company might assign a higher score to a contact who has visited your website multiple times, downloaded a whitepaper, and opened and clicked through several marketing emails. On the other hand, a contact who has only visited the website once and has not engaged with any marketing activities might receive a lower score. The score can then be used to prioritize leads and tailor marketing and sales efforts to the most promising contacts.

This process can be automated to a large extent, so that a contact gets certain points added or subtracted for respective actions (for example, in case of incativity).

A/B Testing

When trying to improve your marketing efforts, it can be difficult to know what changes will have the most impact. That's where A/B testing comes in. It allows you to test different variations of your marketing content (such as email subject lines, landing pages, or calls-to-action) on a small segment of your audience, and then compare the results to see which version performs better.

By testing different variations, you can identify which elements are most effective at engaging your audience and driving conversions. This information can then be used to optimize your marketing campaigns and increase your overall success.

Data Import & Export

Data import and export in CRM software refers to the process of transferring data into or out of your CRM system. This data can include information about your customers, leads, and other key business contacts.

Importing data into your CRM allows you to easily add new contacts or update existing ones, as well as keep your data up to date with changes in your business. This can be especially important if you have a large number of contacts or if you're adding data from external sources, such as marketing lists or social media platforms.

Exporting data from your CRM can be just as important, as it allows you to analyze your data, generate reports, or transfer data to other systems. For example, you might export your contact data to use in a separate email marketing tool or to generate custom reports for your team.

The ability to import and export data is essential for any business using CRM software, as it allows you to efficiently manage your customer data and use it to drive your marketing and sales efforts. Without this capability, you may find yourself manually inputting data or struggling to integrate your CRM with other key tools and systems.

Sales Insights

Sales insights in CRM software reporting refer to the data-driven metrics and analysis that help you understand the performance of your sales team and identify areas for improvement.

As a business owner, manager, or sales professional, you need to have a clear understanding of your sales team's performance to make data-driven decisions and optimize your sales process. Sales insights provide you with valuable information about your sales pipeline, including metrics like conversion rates, sales velocity, and deal size.

By analyzing this data, you can identify which stages of your sales process are working well, which ones need improvement, and where you're losing potential customers. This information can then be used to make data-driven decisions that help you optimize your sales process, drive revenue growth, and achieve your business goals.

For example, you might identify that your team is spending too much time on certain stages of the sales process, such as lead qualification, without enough focus on closing deals. Or you might identify that a particular salesperson is struggling with certain types of leads and needs additional training.

With sales insights in your CRM reporting, you can make data-driven decisions that help you improve your sales process, optimize your team's performance, and ultimately drive more revenue for your business.

Custom Reports

Generating custom reports is a powerful way to analyze your CRM data. They allow you to create dashboards and reports tailored to what you want to see. This can include a comprehensive analysis of your sales data, customer interactions, and sales success to empower you to make better business decisions.

You can further use it to filter data, select specific metrics, and build custom calculations. It gives you all the freedom to display important metrics in the way you it’s most helpful for your business.

Sales Forecasting

Sales forecasting allows businesses to anticipate future sales success based on historical data and present tendencies. Forecasting can assist your business in making sound decisions about resource allocation, sales targets, and other aspects of your sales strategy.

Using it as part of your reporting can help better understand your sales pipeline and identify expansion opportunities. It also makes progress tracking easier and can be used to create goals you can follow.

Predictive Forecasting

Predictive forecasting is more advanced and uses machine learning algorithms to identify patterns and make more accurate predictions about future sales, leads growth, etc.

While traditional sales forecasting can be useful, it often relies on human intuition and may not be as accurate as predictive machine learning forecasting. Predictive forecasting can analyze large amounts of data and identify complex patterns that humans might not be able to recognize, resulting in more accurate and reliable predictions.

10 Best CRM Software for Reporting

How to Choose a Great CRM Software for Reporting

There’s a lot to consider when choosing the best CRM software for reporting, much of which hinges on how you envision yourself realistically using your CRM software and data.

You can use our list at the top and check out which tools also meet other priorities besides reporting.

For an overview of all the priorities we recommend considering, check out our overall Best Picks. When you start to narrow things down, be sure to take advantage of the Comparison Tool to compare different software in greater detail or use our Finder Tool to see our recommended options based on your specific requirements.