How to Find the Best Account Management Software for Your Business

Your tech stack is crucial to your company’s workflow and success. One of the most important aspects for your sales and marketing teams is your account management software. Designed to manage account data, this software enables your employees to nurture customer relationships, from overseeing financial transactions to facilitating business operations.

The best account management features simplify key aspects of your workflow, from customer service to billing and success tracking. Companies of all sizes, across multiple industries, can benefit from investing in account management software as part of their tech stack. This software facilitates and streamlines collaboration between your sales leaders and account management team, giving them visibility on a customer’s status to maximize efficiency.

At FuseBase, we’re here to help you close more deals and create outstanding client experiences with one of the best account management software tools. Our client portals make collaboration easy across your entire business to boost customer retention with a knowledge base and project management tools that deliver outstanding client experiences. 

Read on to find out more about account management software or book a demo to see how you can customize FuseBase to your businesses’ needs.

What is an Account Management Software?

Most companies consider account management to be part of their satisfaction strategy, but this software is not necessarily the same. Not every CRM software includes account management capabilities or the ability to monitor account activity. 

While some software may offer specific functionality, an account management software can:

• Manage customer and contract renewals, including billing and payment
• Track customers in the sales funnel, including high-value accounts
• Assign accounts of current customers to relevant sales managers
• Monitor KPIs and forecast customer analytics, including customer satisfaction
• Visualize the deal management cycle
• Consolidate customer information
• Create a single client portal for instant communication
• Automate tasks, including follow-ups and invoicing

Every key account management software has its specific purpose, and your company might incorporate multiple software into your tech stack. It’s important to understand the needs of your sales team, whether it’s data or easier collaboration with clients. While your CRM may give you the basic tools, investing in customer account management software enables you to curate your tech stack to you’re your workflow.

Key account management software (KAM) can support on-site and remote working, structuring your client relationship management and providing more in-depth analytics. The right software will support collaboration between your employees and customers with actionable insights.

Most software can be used as a stand-alone account management tool, while others are offered as integrated solutions to incorporate into your tech stack to enhance your CRM or assist with billing and project management.

Why Your Business Should Invest in Customer Account Management Software

Most companies invest in customer account management software during their growth and scaling stages. If you’re a small team, this software can feel like having an extra pair of hands. Within larger teams, the right software can promote better efficiency and collaboration between departments.

Here are three reasons to consider investing in a KAM:

Track your clients and customer base

Imagine if you could have visibility of every customer in real-time. For most companies, your customer data is spread across multiple platforms and apps, making it difficult to get an overview of where your customer is. As your company grows, your sales team will find themselves responsible for even more accounts. Instead of relying on outdated tools like Excel spreadsheets, a KAM allows your sales team to consolidate customer data to nurture relationships and better understand the sales cycle.

Improve customer relationships for higher retention

Successful businesses do not focus solely on acquisition and new customers. Retaining your existing customer base is crucial for supporting sustainable business and cash flow without the high costs associated with new customer acquisition. The best account management software will improve client relationships by offering collaborative tools like a client portal for a consistent and cohesive experience. A KAM can support almost every aspect of client relations, from account billing to automating invoicing and tracking customer engagement.

Utilizing AI for real-time data and insights

Most of the best-selling account management software on the market utilize AI to provide sales and marketing teams with real-time insights. This information can help visualize the sales cycle to improve your acquisition and retention strategies.

An AI assistant can support project management and collaboration, from creating a knowledge base to simplifying feedback loops. AI tools help your employees maximize their time and automate tasks, allowing them to focus on nurturing relationships for higher customer retention or upselling.

The Benefits of Account Management Software

On a basic level, account management software operates to gather, accumulate, and analyze information about your clients. Designed to facilitate better relationship nurturing, this software enables your team to process and share information about each customer. Consolidating this data makes it easier to track customers, create more accurate forecasting, and understand customer behavior.

Investing in a KAM helps your sales team to become more proactive, streamlining collaboration in-house and with clients. Companies with a strong tech stack experience lower customer turnover as they better track customer relationships and provide better value. This deeper understanding of your customers gives your marketing team the insights they need to engage with current and potential clients.

Here are 5 key benefits of account management software:

1. Identifying Upsell Opportunities

KAM makes it easy for companies to maximize the revenue potential from core customers. The 80-20 rule, known as the Pareto Principle, states that 80% of your revenue is likely generated by just 20% of your customers. This software enables your sales team to identify key potential accounts and potential upselling opportunities.

2. Shorter Deal Cycles

B2B sales cycles are time-consuming, taking an average of over 80 days. The benefits of a KAM, from sales automation to AI insights help shorten the deal cycle with faster conversions. Your software can scale with your business and adapt to your changing needs and challenges. This information can also support faster decision-making with more accurate forecasting and data insights to unlock growth potential.

3. Increased Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Delivering personalized customer interactions and marketing that aligns with your customer’s needs improves their lifetime value and lowers the potential churn rate. Customer retention should be a priority for your business at every stage of its growth cycle. A KAM is crucial for strategic relationship management, providing real-time visibility on your customer’s journey and ensuring faster issue resolution with timely communication.

4. Better Productivity

KAM software can give your sales time control of their workflow, from streamlining repetitive data tasks to enhancing your workflow to increase productivity. Offloading manual tasks to your KAM software can lower your administrative burden and minimize potential human error.

5. Enhanced Collaboration

While your customers will deal with different parts of your business, they should have a consistent experience with all departments. KAM improves collaboration between your teams to provide better customer support by enabling information sharing with real-time billing insight and financial analytics.

What to Look for In Account Management Software

No account management software is a one-size-fits-all solution. Every company has its specific needs and existing tech stack. A B2B business will need different insights and customer relationship tools than a B2C business, while companies with a larger customer base will need better insights into key customers.

Like any software, it’s important to consider scalability and the future needs of your company. What is your current growth strategy? Does the KAM have the facilities to provide customer support and resources for managing a wider client base? Booking a demo or free trial gives your company a chance to test and evaluate the potential of KAM software.

While the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) are crucial for determining how easily your employees can navigate the software, integration is just as important. Where would this account management software fit into your tech stack? Ideally, your software should integrate your CRM and payment systems to ensure real-time data insights. This integration is crucial for managing workflow and automation, from assigning tasks within a client portal to sending follow-ups.

Although you’ll want to consider the needs of your team members, don’t overlook important issues like security and compliance. Ensure the KAM offers secure data storage and encryption, while also being GDPR compliant. The reporting and analytics your team can gain from a KAM can positively impact every aspect of your business operations, so it’s important to consider forecasting and data output.

What Should the Best Account Management Software Offer?

The best account management software will enable your sales and marketing teams to implement their retention strategies with real-time data insights and customer information to support growth and upselling. While every KAM is different, there are key functionalities you’ll want to incorporate into your tech stack using one or more software.

1. Account Management

The purpose of KAM is to give your employees the tools and insights to deliver a better customer experience with full visibility of their interactions and information. The best software provides a 360-degree view of every customer account, making it easy for sales and marketing teams to identify potential upsell opportunities.

2. Deal Management

Account management software enables your sales and marketing teams to assign tasks to specific employees, whether they’re success managers or provide customer support. Building a client portal enables you to curate and empower your deal team with better task management and collaborative tools to close more deals faster. Having a visualization of the sales cycle makes your sales strategy more efficient, ensuring you never miss an opportunity to make another sale.

3. Client Communication

One of the most overlooked features of a KAM is client communication, opening new and preferred pathways for your teams and customers to interact. These tools offer two-way communication with live chat functionality and automated marketing, including SMS and emails.

4. Automation

Your sales and marketing team don’t have the time to do every administrative task. No matter how big your team is, automation can enhance your productivity and efficiency, unlocking new growth opportunities.

KAM software enables account-based marketing strategies, including 1:1 messages and personalized messages based on customer demographics and where they are in the sales cycle. Automating labor-intensive tasks like data entry and meeting notes can create a more efficient workflow and improve customer experiences.

5. Integration

Your customer account management software can’t act alone. Integration is vital to enable task automation and utilize business intelligence tools to facilitate forecasting and better collaboration. At a minimum, your chosen software should integrate with your CRM to support your different departments.

6. Improved CPQ

Configure, price, and quote (CPQ) can close deals faster by enabling your sales team to create quotes for customizable products with accurate pricing. This streamlined approval process can drastically reduce wait times and negotiations with pre-approved conditions to get your customers to sign the dotted line faster.

5 of the Best Account Management Software

Account management software is just one part of your tech stack, sitting alongside your CRM, marketing tools, and everyday apps like Google Drive and Adobe. Every KAM software is different and offers its own functionality, supporting different sales and marketing initiatives. Most software will display real-time metrics to track accounts and facilitate communication with your sales and marketing teams.

You can integrate your chosen software with your CRM and other tools to enhance your data insights and store account data. We’re comparing five of the most popular account manager software options for customer relationship management.

1. FuseBase

At FuseBase, we empower your teams to master B2B and SaaS sales by consolidating all the tools you need onto one platform, while seamlessly integrating your existing tech stack. Your chosen sales rep or team can create personalized deal rooms to deliver more impactful sales strategies.

Our knowledge base offers AI assistance for rich content editing and real-time customer support, enabling customer communication via live chats and comments. Additional functionality like seamless payment integration makes it easy to automate invoicing, CPQ strategies, and deal management.

At FuseBase, our extensive white label personalization helps you close more deals and impress clients streamlining client engagement with deal rooms and client portals that create a knowledge base for every client. Our data collection starts at onboarding with custom code integration making it easy to expand your client portal for increased functionality.

2. Zoho CRM

Zoho is a CRM designed to automate repetitive tasks and track your sales and marketing metrics in real-time. Curated to facilitate remote and hybrid working, this software enhances customer communication by enabling your sales team to interact with customers on one platform with an AI-powered sales assistant.

An affordable account management software, this CRM has a free version with low-cost monthly subscriptions, enabling your sales team to identify potential leads faster. Designed for SalesForce integration, this CRM enables you to customize your sales cycle with real-time data insights.

3. HubSpot

Although best known as a marketing automation platform, HubSpot provides account management and CRM capabilities. There are similar features that you can utilize in place of a separate KAM software to create a knowledge base. However, HubSpot is a more expensive solution with a higher learning curve, including additional onboarding costs.

This software offers activity logging, a centralized inbox, custom dashboards, and collaborative tools to help your sales and marketing teams create more effective campaigns. Although it can help eliminate manual data entry tasks, HubSpot lacks the additional functionalities of a client portal and CPQ.

4. FreshWorks

A cloud-based, AI-powered CRM, Freshworks facilitates account management by offering a complete view of your accounts with enhanced automation tools.

With easy navigation, it’s easy for your sales team to curate the software to meet their needs with multi-channel engagement and fast implementation. The software’s generative AI enhances productivity, while CPQ helps streamline your deal timeline.

5. Salesforce

Considered the original CRM for SaaS companies, Salesforce remains one of the most popular solutions for KAM. One of the larger industry players, Salesforce has curated multiple versions of its software to meet the needs of different company types and sizes with ‘Salesforce Essentials’ and ‘Salesforce Lightning’. A more expensive solution, Salesforce is best suited for enterprises in the product and service industries, however, it can be difficult to implement and is harder to navigate.

Key Account Management vs. CRM

It’s important to take a step back and consider the difference between key account manager software vs. CRM. While these two solutions may seem similar, they serve different purposes. Account management software is more personalized, leveraging the data collected by your CRM.

Your CRM serves to optimize the sales process, eliminating challenges and identifying outreach and upsell opportunities. The information provided by the CRM helps your sales team convert leads into sales. KAM software does not focus on sales, but rather on customer relations and supporting your existing customers to improve retention.

A KAM and CRM can’t do everything. You’ll need both in your tech stack, choosing solutions that best suit the needs of your business and your long-term growth strategy. It’s important to consider where each software will sit in your tech stack, including how it interacts with your other technology.

At FuseBase, our software integrates with your existing systems in just a few clicks to centralize your data management and improve workflow.

Account Management Best Practices: What to Consider When Choosing Your Software

Before you start shortlisting your potential software options, it’s a good idea to recap the best practices to ensure easy implementation. It’s important to speak to your sales team to understand their needs, from what tasks can be automated to any gaps being left by your current CRM. Ask them what they need from your software and encourage them to test a demo or free trial.

Understanding your sales pipeline and cycle makes it easier to choose the right software that can scale with your business. Start by considering your current tech stack and narrow your search down to software that integrates with your other tools. An account management software should provide native integration to your everyday business operation, customer success, and scheduling tools.

Here are 5 best practices to follow when choosing your KAM software:

1. Ease of Use

Most of your employees will interact with your software, so it’s crucial to choose a user-friendly solution. Training can be expensive, whether you’re a start-up or a large team, and intuitive software can enable your employees to hit the ground running.

2. Overall Cost

Software is always priced differently, whether it’s as a tiered monthly subscription fee, annual cost, or structured as a license fee. Hidden fees can bring unexpected budget problems for your business. Determine the total cost of your chosen software, including any add-ons you might invest in.

3. Customization

Before you commit to any software, think about your implementation and customization options. How easily can you onboard customer information to your software and do you need a custom integration to make the software suit your company? If your business is larger or an enterprise, you’ll want to consider your timeline and how to minimize disruptions.

4. Integration

The best account management software offers a knowledge base that acts as one source of truth for all your client information. You’ll need to integrate your customer data and existing tech stack to support task automation, customer support, and communication. Integrating your information into one place and utilizing AI-powered search features can boost productivity and support your daily workflow.

5. Security

We can’t talk about data management without considering security. As a company, you’re responsible for ensuring that your customer data always remains protected and secure. Do your due diligence and check that your chosen software has the right security certification and features to ensure you abide by data protection and privacy regulations.

Streamline Your Account Management Software with FuseBase

Ready to turbo-charge your company’s growth with the best account management tools?FuseBase creates an all-in-one CRM and account management solution that’s customized to your workflow, allowing you to focus on what really matters: Winning, Wowing, and Repeating.

Book a demo to see FuseBase in action and find out how we’ve helped businesses like yours scale to the next level with our all-in-one tool for sales and marketing teams.

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