Customer Satisfaction:

E-Business

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Management of Customer Communication Over a Relationship Continuum

"Retaining customers is more profitable than acquiring new ones. An effective CRM program results in improved customer satisfaction, greater revenue growth, and increased competitive advantage and ROI."

Modern Customer-based Relationship Approach

In today's customer-driven economy, corporations must move from product-based campaign marketing to a customer-based relationship approach. Customer relationship management is the management of customer communication over a relationship continuum. It includes relationship strategy and multi-channel relationship programs that produce both business value and customer experiences on a scale not seen in traditional marketing.¹... More

Customers for Life

By: Brian Tracy

The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer. If a business successfully creates and keeps customers in a cost-effective way, it will make a profit while continuing to survive and thrive. If, for any reason, a business fails to attract or sustain a sufficient number of customers, it will experience losses. Too many losses will lead to the demise of the enterprise.

According to Dun and Bradstreet, the single, most important reason for the failure of businesses in America is lack of sales. And, of course, this refers to resales as well as initial sales. So your company’s job is to create and keep a customer, and your job is exactly the same.

Remember, no matter what your official title is, you are a salesperson for yourself and your company... More

What is CRM?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an approach that can assist organizations to serve their customers better. CRM helps to identify valuable customers, assess their needs, and provide more personalized service. It also streamlines the handling of enquiries and requests, resulting in higher operational efficiency and more rapid responses to customers.

CRM software provides highly automated tools to generate and track sales lead, the performance of individual products or sales professionals and the results of sales campaigns on a wide range of parameters.

The highest goal of CRM is making sure your organization is keeping customers happy, discovering and solving problems as they come up to produce robust revenue and profits.

Attracting the right customers with the right offer at the right time is critical to corporate survival. Now, when the number of customers online reached critical mass, the need for integrating customer data stores became an imperative.

Technology in the form of interactive software and pervasive Internet is changing the way we manage our customers.

The widespread use of information technology (IT) in the contemporary workplace is enabling organizations to draw together technical and industry knowledge, along with skills and expertise, to improve knowledge and understanding of customer needs and requirements.

According to CRMinfoline, CRM e-Business solutions give companies a well-planned and easily integrated e-Business strategy that caters to both the customer needs as well as the corporate needs. Both these need to be adequately catered to in order that company objectives be fulfilled. The net result of implementing CRM e-Business strategies is satisfied customers and overall productivity.

CRM Implementation – Not Just a Software Package Installation

Building better and deeper customer relationships requires new enterprise-wide business process management approaches, new analytics, and new integration of systems (as well as new strategies and tactics) to enable their employees to work harder and smarter to capture customer information.

Integration, Process Key to CRM

A strong business process, robust application integration capabilities and solid management buy-in are key factors in any successful CRM installation. In a small- or medium-sized business, one of the keys to succeeding with CRM is nailing down the process and ensuring process compliance.

Facilitating Teamwork

The processes within CRM create a system where everyone works in a team to harness resources for maximum effectiveness. Such teamwork contributes to efficiency and to consistency of standards and quality throughout the organization. This fosters faster, better solutions to customers' problems, and generates greater customer value. CRM also assists in improving focus on high value customer segments. Enabling CRM permits the workforce to own the means of production.

Need for Executive Sponsorship

"CRM rollouts fail because they don't have executive sponsorship," concluded I.T. managers on panels at Oracle's OpenWorld user conference. Without a business strategy for CRM, companies can rarely gain any return on a CRM investment, said users.

 Case in Point  Sealing Devices Inc.

Sealing Devices Inc., a Lancaster, N.Y.-based manufacturer, failed in two efforts to implement CRM systems before succeeding on its third try, said CIO Patrick Harris. The two failures were primarily the result of a lack of integration with other applications.

The failed CRM systems – the first homegrown and the second a package from an undisclosed vendor – required much redundant input of data, which led to mistakes. The company's current system, which is based on Oracle CRM and other Oracle applications, allows users to enter data once for all systems.

Sealing Devices expects its latest project to deliver an ROI of 153% over five years.

 

Cymruco Inventory Manager is a new, easy to use inventory control program. It is an ideal tool for any company, large or small, which doesn't wish to operate a complex, oversized, MRP system when all they really want is the ability to manage inventory, vendors, customers and associated purchase orders, sales orders and invoicing.

Bibliography:

1. Digital Cement

2. "Productivity Improvement in the Service Sector," Mah Lok Abdullah, APO Newsletter, January 2005