CRM Resourcing – Insourced Agency vs Employee Recruitment?

Martech reports that CRM is the fastest-growing software in digital marketing, offering numerous benefits for SMEs and global brands. But when should you use an insourced agency to deliver your CRM operations or should you hire internally, to align with your overall business objectives? It’s a debate that many businesses will have at various financial planning points during the year, which may be triggered by business process issues or a focus on efficiency, prompting companies to invest in a new CRM or optimise their current strategy. 

Do you face the challenge of hiring internally or are you looking for an agency to deliver this for you? Have you considered hiring an insourced agency like us, that can take the task, complete it, and act as an extension of your business?

WeDoCRM specialise in our “insourced agency” approach, by fully integrating into your existing CRM team, bolstering operations and “people-power”. We learn your business inside out, allowing us to work semi-autonomously in the same way as the rest of your team

Here are our top considerations when deciding on an insourced model approach:

• The duration of your project?
• The workload requirements -both during the project and post-completion?
• What does the workload requirement look like in 6,12,24 months?
• How does CRM align with the wider business direction/strategy?

Answering the above questions will allow you to make an informed decision and implement the best approach and course of action to add resources. 

How to manage recruitment costs and long-term goals?

A common misconception is that every role in your organisation has to be filled by a permanent employee,  when factoring in recruitment costs alongside long-term plans, this route can be significantly more costly to a business. By hiring an insourced agency, you can get additional benefits, including a team of experts with multiple skill sets to present a unique solution for your business. An insourced agency acts like a normal employee, except you retain the control you would lose with outsourcing.

If close management of your project is required for a longer period and more than just a singular purpose, it may be better to look at sourcing a full-time employee.  If there is uncertainty about the level of resourcing required in the long term, then an insourced agency is an alternative solution because it comes with the flexibility to scale, adapting to peaks, as your business grows.

Campaign management, reporting and optimising

Many of the latest CRM systems have easy-to-use dashboards, that can be accessed by users with the correct permissions or configuration (with some platforms even allowing an automatic copy to be sent regularly via email to avoid those lengthy delays spent pulling data into spreadsheets and graphs for slide presentations). By working with an insourced agency, your reporting, optimising and campaign support can be automated or regularly reviewed, allowing your internal teams to focus on their main job functions.

Managing workloads after the initial project or implementation

Having an insourced agency alongside you, (most likely on a retainer basis), to pick up ad-hoc, daily or campaign management tasks and deliver them within an agreed SLA can be a cost-effective solution for your business. Consider how much ongoing support you will need and if a retainer with itemised monthly outcomes is more manageable and trackable. 

Expertise from an insourced agency

The expertise that comes with an agency with different specialisms, such as product knowledge or process expertise (such as automation) can be a highly valued asset to your business. Using an agency that specialises in services, and keeps up to date with the latest features, training and credentials, can get you access to hidden insights/opportunities such as further ways to streamline, optimise and increase efficiencies that you may not identify as an employee.

Many agencies also have a close partnership with providers, giving them access to additional platform knowledge and early access to new features via private beta which can be shared to get ahead of the curve and start seeing even more efficiencies with your platform usage.

Why WeDoCRM?

WeDoCRM has an uncanny ability to quickly integrate ourselves within a team, just as an employee would. We learn everything about your business, to provide you with the specialist and technical expertise you require. We offer uncapped support, and a multi-channel focus, ensuring optimal campaigns, journeys and communications. We’re a certified agency partner of some of the biggest CRM and ESP platforms such as HubSpot, Salesforce, Customer IO and Iterable.