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1.4 Introduction
Customer Relationship Management - CRM
The generally accepted purpose of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is
to enable organizations to better serve its customers through the introduction of
reliable processes and procedures for interacting with those customers.
In today's competitive business environment, a successful CRM strategy cannot be
implemented by only installing and integrating a software package designed to
support CRM processes. A holistic approach to CRM is vital for an effective and
efficient CRM policy. This approach includes training of employees, a modification of
business processes based on customers' needs and an adoption of relevant IT-systems
(including soft- and maybe hardware) and/or usage of IT-Services that enable the
organization or company to follow its CRM strategy. CRM-Services can even
redundantize the acquisition of additional hardware or CRM software-licences.
The term CRM is used to describe either the software or the whole business strategy
oriented on customer needs. The second one is the description which is correct. The
main misconception of CRM is that it is only software, instead of whole business
strategy.
cooperational - ensures the contact with customers (phone, email, fax, web...)
Operational part of CRM typically involves three general areas of business. They are
(according to Gartner Group) a Enterprise marketing automation (EMA), Sales force
automation (SFA) and a Customer service and support (CSS). The marketing
information part provides information about the business environment, including
competitors, industry trends, and macroenviromental variables. The sales force
management part automates some of the company's sales and sales force management
functions. It keeps track of customer preferences, buying habits, and demographics,
and also sales staff performance. The customer service part automates some service
requests, complaints, product returns, and information requests.
Integrated CRM software is often also known as "front office solutions." This is
because they deal directly with the customer.
Many call centers use CRM software to store all of their customer's details. When a
customer calls, the system can be used to retrieve and store information relevant to the
customer. By serving the customer quickly and efficiently, and also keeping all
information on a customer in one place, a company aims to make cost savings, and
also encourage new customers.
CRM solutions can also be used to allow customers to perform their own service via a
variety of communication channels. For example, you might be able to check your
bank balance via your WAP phone without ever having to talk to a person, saving
money for the company, and saving you time.
(complaints that are not registered with the company cannot be resolved, and are a
major source of customer dissatisfaction)
Provide a fast mechanism for handling problems and complaints (complaints that
Provide a fast mechanism for correcting service deficiencies (correct the problem
Identify how each individual customer defines quality, and then design a service
strategy for each customer based on these individual requirements and expectations
use internet cookies to track customer interests and personalize product offerings
accordingly
customization
Provide a fast mechanism for managing and scheduling followup sales calls to
Provide a fast mechanism for managing and scheduling maintenance, repair, and
Provide a mechanism to track all points of contact between a customer and the
company, and do it in an integrated way so that all sources and types of contact are
included, and all users of the system see the same view of the customer (reduces
confusion)
The CRM can be integrated into other cross-functional systems and thereby
CRM technology can track customer interests, needs, and buying habits as they
progress through their life cycles, and tailor the marketing effort accordingly. This
way customers get exactly what they want as they change.
The technology can track customer product use as the product progresses through
its life cycle, and tailor the service strategy accordingly. This way customers get what
they need as the product ages.
centre and help coordinate the conflicting and changing purchase criteria of its
members
Technical functionality
A CRM solution is characterised by the following functionality:
multiple communication channels - the ability to interface with users via many
workflow - the ability to automatically route work through the system to different
database - the centralised storage (in a data warehouse) of all information relevant
to customer interaction
Improved marketing
Reduced costs
If your CRM goals fall into more than two of these categories, you'll likely want to
prioritize one over the other and plan a phased deployment. It's also a good idea to
know at this point what your likely budget is, how flexible it is, and what your
procurement officer or CFO will be looking for in terms of business justification. If
you know walking into the project that you'll need to show a six-month payback
period, for example, you can plan accordingly.
Your CRM goals. The vendors whose functionality meets your needs will
depend on whether you're looking for improved sales, improved reporting and
forecasting, improved support, improved marketing, or a combination of different
customer-related technology.
order systems, or contact lists that will need to be integrated or migrated into your
CRM solution? Do you expect to do your own development or use consultants or
systems integrators? Are you comfortable outsourcing your sales and marketing data
in its entirety - or in part? Answering these questions will help you determine whether
a large-scale CRM infrastructure, a hosted solution, a point solution, or a broad
solution is likely to deliver maximized ROI.
Your user dynamics. Are the employees you expect to use the solution
technology savvy and open to change, or are they the ones still using pencils and
paper to track leads? The greater the magnitude of the change you expect them to
make, the greater the risk that adoption will slow the ROI of your project.
Your budget. CRM solutions such as Siebel and SAP can cost millions of
dollars to deploy and require a team for ongoing support and maintenance. On the
other end of the spectrum, Microsoft CRM and FrontRange (for example) can cost
considerably less. You can expect a hosted solution to have a minimal upfront
investment and from $500 to $1,500 per user per year.
Clearly defining your requirements and characteristics in each of these key areas will
prepare you for the next step - evaluating each individual solution's ability to deliver
returns based on the costs and benefits associated with a deployment.
Check Resumes
Once you've identified the likely vendors to deliver the best solution for you, you'll
want to check their references - and this doesn't mean just reading case studies on
their Web sites. Look to independently developed case studies and your own
You should spend less on software and consulting than 70 percent of expected
You should be able to deploy and achieve some returns in fewer than six
For a hosted solution, you should see benefits in fewer than 60 days.
Consulting costs should not be more than twice your initial software
investment.
On the benefits side, you'll want to consider both direct and indirect benefits.
Prioritize your expected benefits from most direct to most indirect, and then work on
your estimates, using internal surveys, case study data, and reliable benchmarking
information as a starting point for quantifying expected benefits for your company.
User Adoption
In evaluating the type of CRM solution that will be best for your organization in terms
of user adoption, you'll want to consider two key factors:
much about politics and culture as it is about technology. Successful adoption will
also depend on how much users will have to change their normal way of doing work
to use the solution.
The technology ability of potential users. Many CRM solutions are complex
and difficult to use; others have a more intuitive look and feel. Choose a solution that
fits the abilities of your users.
Once you've determined where your organization fits, you'll want to consider both the
complexity of the solution and ease (or difficulty) involved in adding and evolving
functionality over time as your needs change and your users become more
comfortable with the solution. Here are some red flags you should look out for in
evaluating solutions in terms of user adoption:
Cost
In CRM, "you get what you pay for" isn't always true. In fact, many companies in the
past have overspent on CRM components and features that never delivered value to
their users - if they even made it out of the box. You'll have the most success with a
measured approach that doesn't have to include a hefty initial license fee.
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Existing Environment
What other solutions and data sources do your sales or customer support
representatives use today, what solutions are they most comfortable using, and what
will need to be integrated in some way into the CRM solution you choose to deliver
value? How you integrate existing resources and applications into a CRM project
should not be an afterthought. In selecting a vendor, you'll want to explore how it can
integrate with your existing environment. Demand to see a track record with reference
customers in a similar situation.
Flexibility
In addition to the initial development, integration, and deployment, when selecting a
solution, you should consider how easy it will be to make changes over time as your
needs change. In all likelihood, the way you use CRM will change over time - and the
flexibility of the application to enable you to support those changes can have a
significant impact on the ongoing cost of the solution.
Best Practices
Once you've determined which solution is right for you and built the business case,
you'll want to make sure you have the key checkpoints in place so that the project
delivers on your ROI expectations.
Pricing and Purchasing
Before you sign on the dotted line, make sure you've done due diligence on your
contract with the vendor. Double-check the following:
Is the initial license price per user in line with industry benchmarks?
Are you paying less, more, or the average annual industry maintenance? If you
decide to stop paying maintenance in the future, does your contact support that?
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If you're purchasing multiple modules at the same time, do you have a clear
view of the cost of each item? Are you sure you should be buying them all now, or
would a phased approach be better?
What commitment has the vendor made to your deployment time line? If a
third party is involved, how are the deployment risk and responsibility being shared?
Deployment
Piloting a CRM solution can be a great way to judge both whether or not the solution
will work for you and how flexible and agile the solution (and vendor) is in
responding to specific needs. Most hosted solution vendors offer a free or nearly free
pilot option today; depending on the level of customization and integration needed, a
pilot of an internal solution before you buy may or may not be possible.
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Does the emphasis of the CRM software package match the emphasis of your
CRM objectives? Identify your specific objectives and verify your CRM software can
meet those needs.
Is your software user friendly? If you can't effectively use the software why use it?
CRM software training is usually available by contacting the vendor and asking for
recommended referrals.
How do other companies feel about the software? Call the provider company and
ask for a number of preferrals, (preferably three or four companies in similar size and
scope).
Trend Management- see the status of all pending sales and potential revenue of
entire pipeline
CRM Software Automated Processes
your site
business information
CRM forms
CRM Software Sales and Marketing Analysis
Sales & Quota Analyses - view forecasted sales, closed sales, and comparisons
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Remote Access Capabilities - access your CRM software through the internet.
Not all CRM software packages are the same. They will greatly range in price and
capabilities. CRM Advisor suggests a thorough evaluation is done comparing multiple
CRM software packages.
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More decision-makers need more access to consistent corporate data about their
customers.
Loyalty program, POS, and demographic databases exist, yet are not integrated
Current retail data analysis systems require heavy IT resources to maintain and
utilize.
According to The Marriage of Category Management & Customer Management,
written by Gary Robins and published in RIS, July 1999, .Category Management and
promotion management need to include analyses of loyal customers.
Failure to
In another example, a small regional chain with seven stores targeted 18,000 of
their best customers based on recency and overall dollar amount spent. Of the 18,000
customers mailed, 921 responded, generating a 5.1% response rate. Total revenue
brought in from this particular promotion was in excess of $227,000 generating more
than $22 for every dollar spent on the promotion. The events average transaction was
$24744 an almost $50 increase from their normal average transaction.
If your firm is not the lowest cost producer in the category and your switchers are
price sensitive, the best marketing strategy for addressing price-sensitive purchasers is
to attempt to change their preference structure by raising their awareness of, and
preference for, specific brand/product attributes, whether they are tangible or
intangible. Then try to persuade these Price Sensitive Purchasers that your offering
has the better value, all things considered. The goal is to increase sales and market
baskets of top switchers.
A leading supermarket chain recently used data from loyalty programs to edit
which products to delist in a category. .It is not just sales, it is how it is affecting loyal
customers,. was the mantra from the chain. In a test of the carbonated beverage
category, the chain did not lose customers even after eliminating 26% of the
category.s SKUs.
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Cross-sell the most profitable products and increase the average basket
size
A leading beverage company, which has been working with over 40 retailers, says
that use of loyalty data does help retailers increase basket size. According to a senior
category manager, .we did a presentation with a small chain in Houston, Texas, and
this company had a 6.5% increase in dollars per basket and a 9.8% gain in total
dollars among their best shoppers.
company. 350,000 pieces were mailed bringing the retailer an additional $124,000 of
co-op dollars. The piece featured 10 different products, received 16.4% response
rate, and the market basket of the responders was 40% greater than the nonresponders.
Financial
CustomerView enables retailers to take existing customer data and use it to drive
revenue, increase market basket size, and build market share with no additional
capital expenses and labor costs. It enables the CFO to show increased margins on
current capital and enables profitable growth.
Merchandisers
CustomerView enables merchandisers to improve the effectiveness of their staff.
Using CustomerView, merchandisers can quickly see how certain products can
increase market basket size. Using CustomerView they can see how merchandise mix
affects customer loyalty and adjust their assortment accordingly. CustomerView can
help merchandisers measure and build retention. It can show market basket value of
loyal vs. non-loyal customers. CustomerView can quickly help identify the value of a
consumer that shops in critical categories vs. the shopper that does not.
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Operators
CustomerView can help Operations Executives make changes in an intelligent way.
Using CustomerView a retailer can keep labor constant while increasing margins.
CustomerView can help increase the depth of category purchases by turning cherry
pickers into buyers, increasing a loyal customers shopping trips to a category and
increasing overall market basket size.
Consultants
Loyalty and POS databases tend to be stand-alone systems not integrated with
category management systems.
locations. This leads to many opportunities for consultants to create systems to clean
the data, aggregate the data, de-duplicate the data, household the data, etc. before the
data enters the CustomerView system.
consultants to use CustomerView to help the retailers interpret, translate, and develop
strategies based on the information and provide business practice recommendations.
Vendors
CustomerView can help CPG manufacturers build category/brand sales by using real
retail data. CustomerView can help them build their share of market by identifying
customers buying a particular category of products, but not their brands.
CustomerView can show the CPG manufacturer how to increase multi-segment sales
by identifying likely purchase behavior across divisions, departments or categories.
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Technology is enabling conversations among human beings that were not possible
As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, and more organized.
Already, companies that speak in the language of the pitch are no longer speaking
to anyone.
If they blow it, it could be their last chance. The opportunities for companies that
leverage CRM to interactively communicate with relevance and timeliness are
enormous. Yet intelligence from across the enterprise is required to understand and
predict what customers will want to know about and demand. The potential to
generate dramatic ROI on such an investment is worth five to 10 to 100 times the
investment.
Focusing on and predicting customer demand and making decisions both
proactively and scientifically is an opportunity worth hundreds of millions, if not
billions, of dollars of incremental revenue starting with segmentation and improved
forecasting, then shifting to integration and alignment of functions based on demand,
and finally reaching optimization, which is the application of advanced mathematics
to dramatically improve decisions.
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and support functions, including analytics, and they provide workflow engines that
facilitate efficient problem and inquiry escalation, tracking and resolution. They
provide customizable, dynamic scripting capabilities for the customer service
representatives as well as the capability to record customer responses in a shared
contact repository. In a call center environment, they also integrate with (or provide)
computer telephony integration (CTI) capabilities that allow automatic call routing
and automatic screen pop-ups containing customer and product information to agents'
workstations as they are answering or initiating calls.
Sales Force Automation: These are tools that automate the collection and
distribution of all types of sales information. They allow for the design of sales teams
based on defined criteria. Calendar management, activity management, sales reporting
and forecasting, lead distribution, and tracking sales contacts with customers and
prospects are some of the myriad of capabilities offered within these solutions. Many
also provide access to internal and competitive product information as well as the
automated collection and distribution over the Internet of relevant external
information such as breaking industry news and customer-specific events.
Sophisticated pricing and product configuration engines and third-party channel
management capabilities are also available.
automated marketing campaigns and track the results. Generating lists of customers to
receive mailings or telemarketing calls, scheduling automatic or manual follow-up
activities and receiving third-party lists for incorporation into the campaigns are all
typical functions. Internet personalization tools are offered here to track behavior on a
Web site and allow tailoring of the contact experience, or generation of specific crossselling opportunities, based on this behavior. Inbound and outbound e-mail
management capabilities are also becoming popular components of the marketing
automation suites.
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Campaign Management
Segmenting customers, generating targeted marketing campaigns for these segments
and tracking results are important parts of CRM analysis. Integrated MA tools provide
these capabilities and provide campaign offers and results directly to the customer
sales and support processes. Incorporating offers and solicitations into the common
contact repository and prompting contact agents to follow-up on campaigns can yield
dramatic benefits. Some of the features provided are:
Tracking fulfillments supplied to the client via each channel to avoid duplication
Internet Personalization
Personalization is the ability to track and respond to customers in an individualized
fashion based upon their past contacts and behavior. The true value of personalization
in CRM is when it extends beyond the Internet to encompass all customer contacts
across the organization. By integrating personalization into the front-office
applications, every contact with your customers can be well planned and personalized.
This is a good example of the acceleration of analytics into action. Features of
personalization tools include:
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Addressing customers who visit the site by name and remembering their
preferences.
Showing customers specific content based on who they are and past behaviors.
Offering specific products (on the Internet or over the phone) based on past
behaviors.
customer behavior.
E-Mail Management
E-mail management capabilities are used in two ways in MA - inbound and outbound.
Inbound e-mail management capabilities assist organizations in handling inbound
inquiries from customers. While on the surface this would seem to be a purely
service-oriented activity, organizations are linking these facilities to their
personalization technologies and thus tuning the resulting communications on the
basis of CRM analytics. Benefits of this can be quite high as it offers a chance to
extend personalization techniques to multiple communication types. Outbound e-mail
management capabilities provide the ability to construct and execute permissionbased marketing campaigns (where the dialog has been started with a customer via email communications) and are said to be up to 20 percent more successful than
traditional direct marketing at a fraction of the cost. Features include:
correspondence.
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Business Operations are the core operational systems (billing systems, product or
policy systems, call center and sales force automation systems, etc.) that run the dayto-day business processes in an organization. Information originates in these systems
and flows through a data acquisition process into the rest of the CIF where it is
consolidated and integrated for strategic and tactical decision making. Front-office
solutions generally reside here as they facilitate the day-to-day sales and service
processes.
Business Intelligence provides the capabilities required for the strategic decision
making in the organization. Business intelligence consists of the data warehouse, data
marts and associated analysis tools, and can provide the technology infrastructure and
information necessary to manage the complex relationships and analytics required to
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The data warehouse reflects the enterprise's view of data in terms of business rules
and strategic requirements. Because the data in the warehouse is to be used for
multiple CRM analytical purposes spanning multiple departments, it must
accommodate and reinforce the enterprise's vision of its CRM initiative.
It is optimized for flexibility. The data must not display a bias or prejudice toward
any one kind of analytical processing. For example, if the data warehouse is designed
using a data model that is prejudiced toward known data relationships or certain
business processes, then analytical activities that search for unknown relationships are
compromised or, in effect, eliminated.
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It provides detailed data for subsequent use by the data marts. Because the data
warehouse must be the source for data marts containing aggregated and summarized
data, exploration warehouses containing detailed data, data mining warehouses
containing statistical samples of data and MA components which fall somewhere in
between in terms of detail and history required, it must contain the proper level of
detailed data to satisfy these very diverse requirements. The goal is for the data
warehouse to have the "least common denominator" level of data for the data marts
and the MA components. It must serve star schemas, cubes and flat files for statistical
analyses, and subsets of data for ad hoc querying.
The Information Feedback loop, running across the top of Figure 1, is the other key
component of the CIF for integrating MA components. This is the set of processes
that transmit the intelligence gained through usage of the strategic CIF components to
appropriate data stores. This is the mechanism by which we push BI "out to the
masses." It is also the mechanism by which we allow the MA components to receive
information from the data warehouse and to feed information back into the data
warehouse or on to the operational systems or ODS.
Examples abound of storing the results of BI analyses in operational systems such as
the front-line applications. One such example is to store the results of a customer
lifetime value (LTV) analysis - that is, the actual score given to each customer based
on their calculated LTV to the enterprise. The numerical values generated from such
an analysis can be stored in the front-office system and accessed by the MA
components during the generation of campaigns or scripts for call center agents.
Behavior toward each customer is altered based on the knowledge of the customer's
LTV score. Higher valued customers may receive different campaign solicitations
than those with a lower score.
Conversely, the solicitations generated by the MA components should also be
transported via Information Feedback into the data warehouse. This allows all analytic
applications in the organization to take advantage of the valuable information
generated by MA components.
Beware of vendor sales pitches that contain phrases such as "our MA module can
drive your entire marketing process," or "MA provides a direct link between CRM
analytics and your customer contact points." While the capabilities embodied in the
MA modules do provide significant value, they do not provide sufficient sophisticated
analysis capabilities to be your sole vehicle for all CRM analytics. Instead, bypass the
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calculated with that in mind. There is no universal equation in which to plug numbers
or general projection figures that can be applied across the board. Fact is, CRM
initiatives are company-wide endeavors and become more elastic and abstract because
of this. Consequently, assessing costs is not as simple as checking the price tags on
CRM software. Predicting costs must be done through a unique look at every case.
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In the true spirit of thinking outside of the box, experts at the Gartner Group believe
the most successful organizations will be those who, through innovation and focus
on business effectiveness rather than merely efficiency, manage to break the mold of
traditional business thinking. Being effective is paramount. The end goal of better
serving customers and enabling a high percentage of customer retention cannot be met
with out creative thinking and effective planning and actions. The task of perfecting
the relationship between business and customer is always on going and requires
special dedication and innovation as the commerce markets continually change and
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Sales Force Automation Systems: provide tools for your sales people to
maintain their contacts, track sales prospects, provide sales forecasts, enter and track
orders, and provide customized quotes for clients. Examples of these systems include,
and on-line sales forecasting and order-tracking.
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Call Center Customer Service Systems: provide support for staff that answer
client questions or respond to requests for dispatch services. Examples of these
systems include web-based customer service, customer service call tracking,
improved customer service representative (CSR) access to client information, and
automated dispatch and tracking.
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A departmental system (which supports 50 300 users and has a more increased
range of functionality and increased ability and need for customization) usually costs
around $1500/user.
An enterprise system (which supports over 500 users and has a higher range of
Implementation and customization costs will add from 25% (limited system) to
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CRM analytics provides the key to those vaults and enables insight into customer
behavior.
Armed with that insight, your organization can now discover the right balance of
promotional effort, cost, and support that will result in improved revenue and
customer loyalty. CRM Analytics is an area that provides significant and rapid return
on investment. Where do you start? At the foundation of CRM analytics are customercentric data and approaches. Data must be organized and managed at the customer
level with historical detail covering purchasing and returns behavior, contacts with
customer service, payment behavior, and marketing response behavior. Beyond data,
it is important to think in a customer-centric manner. While it is important to ask,
Who is likely to buy this new product if we offer a 10% discount?, you also need to
be asking, Who are our most profitable customers and how has their behavior
changed over the last three months? The goal is to maximize the value of your
customers over the entire relationship with the customer, not for a single marketing
campaign.
Whenever the need for customer-centric data is established, organizations typically
react by calling for an enterprise data warehouse with data collected from every
possible data source in the organization. Unfortunately, the single enterprise-wide data
warehouse takes too long and costs too much to build before any benefit can be
gained. A more effective approach is to develop an information architecture that
enables you to build smaller, more agile application-centered data marts. Such a
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10.7 Asking the Right Questions to Get the Answers That Matter
AS
E-BUSINESS
IS
EVOLVING
TO
WHERE
ANALYTICS
IS
REQUIREMENT
Not only does e-business present enterprises with growing volumes of data, it
demands increasingly greater analysis. This presents a major challenge: integrating
these new and frequently disparate data sources into coherent analytical formats.
During the Webs early days (of just a few years ago!) most marketing activities were
relatively static, involving publishing data sheets, product manuals, and other
generalized marketing materials. This model is quickly evolving to include more
dynamic applications. We are moving toward innovative personalization technologies
that combine rule-based processing, telephony, intelligent content distribution, and
other techniques to give Web companys powerful new abilities to create highly
targeted, customized commerce experiences for their customers and partners. For
these techniques to succeed, however, businesses will demand greater sophistication
in analytical tools. Put another way, these companies will require on-demand detail on
who their customers are; what they want; how they want it; and where and when they
want it. Such knowledge can only come from business intelligence.
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disparate backend data sources. Integrating and analyzing customer transactions and
data from across the enterprise creates a customercentric view for businesses. In
todays business environment, customers send real-time clues to their needs and
purchasing behavior via their interactions with e-business systems. Understanding and
optimizing the entire customer lifecycle from prospect to lead to customer
requires integrating data from front and back office systems and across all customer
touch points, both traditional and online.
Sales
The best way to improve a sales forces effectiveness is to empower them with
pertinent information on their target market. On-demand analysis of customer data
fuel the ROI for a sales organization by creating a comprehensive view of the
customer base, across all customer touch points. The quantifiable benefits of a sales
analytic application come from improving the sales reps effectiveness, reducing the
risk exposure during the sales cycle, and enabling the rep to sell more product. These
key drivers of ROI all lead to increased revenue.
Marketing
The ability to track responses to marketing campaigns and profile target customers
yields significantly greater returns on marketing dollars. ROI is traced through
improved
response
rates
or
click-through
for
marketing
campaigns
and
Customer Service
The customer support functions in an organization have significant influence over a
companys recurring revenue stream. By enabling support organizations to track
service levels for top customers, products requiring the most service resources, and
bottlenecks to problem resolution, a company can optimize service levels, focus
support efforts on the most costly problems, and increase customer retention and
satisfaction. CRM Analytics allows us to ensure longer customer relationships,
reduced customer turnover and lower overall support costs.
Conclusion
Benefits
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For instance, "To provide our sales and marketing team with fast and efficient
reporting on our sales activity, we've integrated Crystal Reports with our Maximizer
database," said Murray Munro, senior vice president of national sales, marketing, and
government relations at Growth Works Capital Ltd. "Having access to this kind of
information in a user-friendly presentation enables our sales staff to interact with their
contacts at a deeper level and allows our marketing staff to analyze trends and make
plans for the future armed with key information."
Taking your customer relationships to the next level requires commitment from
everyone within the organization. For companies that are considering a reporting,
analytics, and workflow automation strategy, perhaps the best advice is a thorough
evaluation of your strategic sales, marketing, and customer service and support
processes. Then measure how the implementation of reporting, analytics, and
workflow automation can positively impact your company's results. By conducting
this analysis customers will be in a better position to leverage their existing CRM
investment. When a CRM system is used to its highest potential, organizations will
have a much better opportunity to drive more intimate, profitable customer
relationships.
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13| Get support from the top brass. If management doesn't believe in the new system,
why should the employees? Many times the difference between a successful CRM
strategy and a huge waste of money is a leader who motivates the rest. Once they're
hot on the idea, you need to keep them committed, so communicate with them
regularly.
14| Go with a CCO. Yes, another acronym to add to your mile-long scroll of industry
terms, but this one's got potential, we promise. If you're lacking accountability across
all departments, the chief customer officer is the person to bring it to your
organization. Still not sure what a CCO really does? It's her job to keep an eye on
everything we put on this list.
15| Get a champion of change. Don't have a CCO handy? Choose a manager who's
behind the implementation, understands the problems, realizes the benefits, and
understands the importance of the implementation from the company's side, says
Lorie Goudie, director of customer support for Tarantella. After all, there's nothing
more motivating than somebody who always has that can-do attitude. Want proof?
Just watch a Richard Simmons video.
16| Deputize wisely. A strong second-in-command, the person "who makes all your
glossy words actually happen," is critical, says Sadie Baron, marketing project
manager at Eversheds.
17| Set goals. Setting predefined and mutually agreed upon goals with your CRM
team prior to selecting the CRM vendor will give an organization an idea of how well
the CRM solution performs once it is installed. How can a company succeed if
success cannot be measured?
18| Set attainable goals. Simply because one salesperson has an 80 percent close rate
does not mean all salespeople can come anywhere near that. "Not all customers write
business cases. Not all business cases have metrics. Not all metrics are reasonable,"
says Barton Goldenberg, president of ISM. Determine a department's average
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other hand, you will also see published results that show double-digit percentage
growth in revenue, improved productivity, and increased customer satisfaction from
new CRM projects. What drives companies to have such different results from the
same initiatives? Before we look at reasons, lets define the scope of CRM. CRM has
been one of the most confusing terms established in eBusiness. In many cases, it has
been defined, as what the user of the term is promoting. In the context of this article,
we want to look at CRM as the following.
CRM is a strategic approach that combines the business processes, technology,
employees, and information across an enterprise to attract and retain profitable
customers. CRM projects are launched to realize the plans and achieve the objectives
defined in the CRM strategic plan. Lets look at why many CRM projects fail and
many others achieve great success. Here is CGIs top-ten list of reasons CRM projects
fail.
1. CRM initiatives launched without a strategy.
Simply stating Were going to do CRM this year is not a strategy. A CRM strategy
needs to clearly define how you will be viewed by and manage all touch points with
your customers. It should also define how you plan achieve this result.
2. The CRM strategy is not integral to the business strategy.
CRM cannot be viewed as a project or solution separate from your overall business
plan. How you develop and grow customer relationships is the lifeblood of your
company. Customers must be a core part of your overall business strategy.
3. The CRM toolset is based on someone elses success.
There are many CRM tool offerings in the market place. Typically, these started
around a particular process and product offering that was very effective. This offering
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Solution:
Peak Returns by Integration, Synchronization, and Customer Relationship
Optimization
These firms have experienced a transition to an analytical information infrastructure
that focuses on customers, resources, and abilities to drive new decisions every day.
This is the real-time approach to meeting business needs. Each of them has
implemented a form of optimization for meeting these business needs. NAB, in fact,
was one of the inventors of relationship optimization and of integrating it with
marketing and services. CRO begins with the integration of analytical CRM and
marketing communication tools to give marketers multiple views from which to
discover, plan, communicate, and optimize ever-changing relationships. This must be
formed from a data warehouse that synchronizes for quick access and leverages of all
data when and where needed. Marketers will create complex analytic workloads to
develop new intelligence from this holistic view of your customers and drive dynamic
communication across all channels for highly profitable returns.
CRO will utilize customer profiles that are automatically refreshed in real-time in the
data warehouse. This ensures that customer analyses are always fresh for more
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Next, model them to predict their migration into a spectrum of value segments. Then,
simulate and predict customer buying behavior based on the potential effectiveness of
different potential value propositions you devise.
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and its timing. Learn from the customers positive and negative responses.
relearn which channel you should use for specific messages as times and offers
change and decide how often to contact each customer.
Conclusion
When a company can continually identify those opportunities that hold the greatest
long-term value potential, finite resources can be directed at exploiting these
opportunities and maximizing profits. This means establishing an environment where
a company can continuously assess and act upon value-generating or value-retaining
opportunities as they occur. With a complete, integrated view of the customer in an
environment designed for optimized dynamic customer interactions, customer
processes across the business will consistently create and deliver messages that
customers find compelling and the positive and profitable results will follow.
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Annexure-I
Bibliography
Magazines
o Business World
o Business Today
o Business India
Newspapers
o Times Of India
o Financial Express
o Economic Times
Websites
o www.crm2day.com
o www.salesforce.com
o www.bitpipe.com
o www.customerservicemanager.com
o www.serachcrm.com
o www.darwinmag.com
o www.crmassist.com
o www.google.co.in
o www.yahoo.com
Reference Books
o CRM: Redefining Customer Relationship Management
o Why CRM Doesnt Work?
o CRM: Getting It Right
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