Customer Relationship Management (Session 23-24)
A true CRM
integrates corporate strategy, business methodology, and technology to
accomplish a myriad of goals for companies that want to operate in a
customer-driven environment. No business can survive without understanding
its customers and having a positive relationship with them. CRM
provides support for the front-end customer facing functionality (e.g.,
marketing, sales, and customer service), which are usually not available in
traditional ERP systems.
Types of
CRM
•
Operational
CRM
–
Provide
front- and back-end support for sales and marketing, administrative personnel,
or customer-service processes.
•
Analytical
CRM
–
Provide
tools for collection and analysis of data gathered during the operational
process to help create a better relationship and experience with clients or
end-users.
•
Collaborative
CRM
–
Deal
with the interaction points between the organization and the customer.
Business
Strategy Perspective of CRM
Customer
Relationship Processes
•
A
good CRM should provide support for the following functions.
–
Capture
and maintain customer needs, motivations, and behaviors over the lifetime of
the relationship.
–
Facilitate
the use of customer experiences for continuous improvement of this
relationship.
–
Integrate
marketing, sales, and customer support activities measuring and evaluating the
process of knowledge acquisition and sharing.
CRM
Delivery Processes
•
Campaign
Management
–
To
generate “leads” or potential clients for the organization.
•
Sales
Management
–
To
convert the lead generated by campaign management into a potential customer.
•
Service
Management
–
Provide
ongoing support for the client and to assist in the operation of the product or
service purchase.
–
Complaint
Management
–
To
improve customer satisfaction by directly addressing the complaint of the
customer and supporting a continuous improvement process.
CRM
Support Process
•
Market
Research
–
Focuses
on systematic design, collection, analysis, and reporting of data, and on
findings relevant to specific sales activity in an organization.
–
Involves
integration of external and internal data from a wide variety of sources.
•
Loyalty
Management
–
Provides
the processes to optimize the duration and intensity of relationships with
customers.
CRM
Analysis Processes
•
Lead
Management
–
Focus
is on organizing and prioritizing contacts with the prospective customers.
•
Customer
Profiling
–
Focus
is to develop a marketing profile of every customer by observing his or her
buying patterns, demographics, buying and communication preferences, and other
information that allows categorization of the customer.
•
Feedback
Management
–
Consolidates,
analyzes, and shares the customer information collected by CRM delivery and
support processes with the analysis process and vice versa.
CRM Life
Cycle
•
A
CRM system life cycle involves focus on people, procedures, company philosophy,
and culture, rather than just information technology.
•
Adequately
outline the corporate CRM goals and the practical process changes that have to
occur before focusing on possible technology solutions.
•
Functional
requirements must be considered before making a decision on the architecture.
•
There
are many CRM products from which to choose, depending upon the complexity of
the information needed and the resources to manage the program.
Implications
for Management
•
CRM
is a strategic business solution and not a technical solution.
•
CRM
should not be implemented as a single system or at one time.
•
CRM
systems come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but there is no real
off-the-shelf solution.
•
Even
though CRM provides a great solution for one-on-one individualized marketing,
it also provides good mechanisms for privacy and ethical violations.
