However, what set Merchant Cash Advance CRM apart are those functionalities that cater to MCA industry for meeting with their unique purposes. MCA CRM is designed to help Cash Advance businesses run their front-end operations and at the same time improve their customer lifecycle management for retention of the clients by providing unsurpassable services.
CRM gives businesses a 65% boost in sales quotas- Innopple Technologies Click To TweetApart from this Merchant Cash Advance CRM also enables the lenders to keep detailed client data and maintain timely customer follow up with loan pipeline management to stay in control of the business.
Comparing Merchant Cash Advances to Traditional Business Lending
MCA or Merchant Cash Advance are gradually becoming more mainstream as several small and medium businesses that are not being able to secure a bank loan are turning to alternative funding sources. This is because; a merchant cash advance can be availed by a business quickly and that too with minimal paperworks. Hence, as banks continue to be very tight with their loans; merchant cash advance is becoming extremely appealing to small business owners over time.
How MCA works?
To illustrate in layman’s terms, Merchant Cash Advance, or an MCA provides purchases a pre-defined amount of a business’s future credit card receivables in one lump sum in return for the receivables, which is paid back to the lending organization over a certain period of time, which is usually calculated as a daily percentage of the customer’s debit/credit card totals. This is the key benefit that distinguishes MCA from conventional loans.
In other words, Merchant Cash Advance is not loaning a business any money, rather it is a simple process of buying a portion of the customer’s future business revenue.
Advantages of MCA Borrowings Over Bank Loans
The primary advantage of MCA over bank loans is that Merchant Cash Advance, in general, does not require any collateral, and liens (although this is always subjected to certain conditions). Apart from this, the other ranges of benefits that small businesses receive from choosing this kind of funding are:
Therefore, the greatest advantage of MCA is that the amount, which the business pays, is based on the sum total of the credit card transactions that the borrower receives every day. As there are no set fees that must be paid every month, so small businesses taking merchant cash advance still have an access to a greater portion of their own revenues. This implies, if your sale drops for a specific month, your MCA payment will also become low to reflect that change.
Why use a Merchant Cash Advance CRM?
While all CRM may work for any business, Merchant Cash Advance CRM is specially designed for MCA businesses, as it not only helps in easy collaboration with the funders but it also helps MCA business in the following ways, which include:
Takeaway
Therefore as a small business owner, if you find that you have the opportunity of expanding your business, but you do not have the time for traditional funding to come through, it is the perfect time to consider Merchant Cash Advance to get the finance you need, especially just when you need them.
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Talking about the rise of burgeoning use of cloud-based Merchant Cash Advance software systems over the last few years in the Alternative Financing companies, there has been a steadily growing necessity to find qualified and well-trained people who are capable of taking care of this business growth technology as an MCA CRM administrator and perform the duties and responsibilities consistently for keeping the CRM out of the harm’s way.
Even though for larger organizations the job of the Administrator of a CRM is in most cases a full-time work. Now, for startups and small or medium businesses, the job of a CRM administration can be just one of the many areas of responsibility for the employee assigned to the role.
43% of businesses applied for additional financing over the past 12 months - Federal Reserve Survey (2019) Click To TweetNevertheless, for either case, the job of CRM administrator in alternative financing business can be a set of new responsibilities for many people using Merchant Cash Advance software .
Therefore, here are a few vital best practices to consider for anyone new to this role among hundreds of our MCA CRM users in the Cash Advance business.
Best Practice #1
Perform Habitual CRM Database Cleaning
CRM database can very quickly become dirty within a few months. Errors like creating duplicate records and entry of loose data both contribute to the escalation of this issue.
Therefore, juxtaposing ongoing MCA CRM training for the users of the platform and the use of (technically imposed) data entry formats and necessary protocols can aid in ensuring that proper information is placed in the right fields inside the Merchant Cash Advance software.
Like, never enter add-on notes or other information into an address or phone number field.
If you are a user of MCA CRM, you can use its native CRM database cleaning functionalities, duplicate avoidance capabilities, or even a third-party tool to periodically scan for supposed duplicates in the CRM to stay on the top of your data cleaning process.
Best Practice #2
Make the interface of the MCA CRM appropriate to each user
We from our experiences as one of the most popular vendors of MCA CRM software in the US have found that one of the many factors that help in user adoption of CRM solutions is the relevant and clean user experience of the CRM.
For each group of users (marketing, sales, operations, support, and finance) remove the fields and tabs that do not apply to the people in that functional role.
This is because a ‘less-is-more’ approach to screen layouts of the Merchant Cash Advance CRM software will keep the user’s attention riveted on the main information they require to view and maintain in this cutting-edge business growth technology and tool.
Moreover, doing this will also make information easy to find through search functionalities, in the easy to use CRM whereby reports will be more meaningful and complete, making your CRM an easy to work with software.
Best Practice #3
Take Written Consensus Before Adding New Fields
As the adage goes ‘with great power comes greater responsibilities’, therefore, it is very easy for an MCA CRM administrator to add new fields in the MCA CRM software. However, owing to this, fields can be at times added to the CRM platform, with no internal discussion or a little forethought.
Therefore, before adding any new fields in the Merchant Cash Advance software, it is most important to run the rationale for the new field and obtain buy-in from the manager whose teams will be responsible for maintaining that field in the CRM system.
Best Practice #4
Obliterate Old CRM Users and Create New Ones
Like all other businesses, when a user of your MCA CRM software leaves your alternate funding organization and a new user record is subsequently needed to be added to the Merchant Cash Advance software, the record of the previous user ‘SHOULD NOT’ be simply updated with the name of the new user and his/her email address.
This is because; doing so will make all the previous users’ past emails and activities to get associated with the new user’s profile in the CRM database.
Therefore, it is extremely important that your CRM administrator should deactivate the old users so that their licenses are freed up and their name remains associated only with erstwhile past activities.
Best Practice #5
Annotate Your MCA CRM Configurations
Whether you are creating an email template, adding a new custom field, or setting up a new workflow process in your MCA CRM, ensure that you as the CRM administrator must key in the purpose of the modification or addition that you have done in the associated notes or description field in the business growth tool.
This is because, although the reason for this addition or modification may be clear to you and obvious in the moment, however, down the road you may forget the exact reason or purpose which made you do so, and then if the reason is not apparent to you as an administrator of the CRM, it will also not be clear to the other stakeholders using the software in your organization.
Now, if your CRM does not have the required annotation field, create another parallel document in your system, that will take a note of these modifications and the reasons for performing these activities.
Best Practice #6
Never Forget to Create Backups of Your MCA CRM Data
Finally, as an MCA CRM administrator, what will you do if a user of your Merchant Cash Advance software deletes a vital company record accidentally, and along with all its related contacts, historic activities, and also the emails?
Even though most popular cloud-based Salesforce Alternative CRM vendors much like Salesforce creates backups of your data, however, if your CRM database ever needs to be restored you would lose all the changes that were made by the users of your MCA CRM since the most recent backup occurred, and so use an export service in your CRM and create consistent backups of your most important information in the CRM database, before it is getting too late.
Takeaway
The role of a CRM administrator involves a range of very important responsibilities. Hence, using this set of best practices, which if followed up on a regular basis, will for certain optimize the user experience of your MCA CRM software, which will even increase the user adoption rate of this cutting-edge business growth technology and result in more meaningful reporting of information from your preferred CRM that you use for your alternative funding businesses.
