Summary Session 23-24

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.