Customer Relationship Management
Content
Customer relationship management
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a widely-implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service.[1] Customer relationship management describes a company-wide business strategy including customer-interface departments as well as other departments.[2]
Contents
[hide]
• • •
1 Phases 2 Challenges 3 Types/variations
○ ○ ○
3.1 Sales force automation 3.2 Marketing 3.3 Customer service and support
○ ○
3.4 Analytics 3.5 Integrated/Collaborativ e
○ ○ ○
3.6 Small business 3.7 Social media 3.8 Non-profit and membership-based
• •
4 Strategy 5 Implementation
○ ○
5.1 Implementation issues 5.2 Adoption issues
• • • • •
6 Privacy and data security system 7 Market structures 8 Related trends 9 See also 10 Notes and references
[edit]Phases
The three phases in which CRM support the relationship between a business and its customers are to:
Acquire: CRM can help a business acquire new customers through contact management, selling, and fulfillment.[3]
Enhance: web-enabled CRM combined with customer service tools offers customers service from a team of sales and service specialists, which offers customers the convenience of one-stop shopping.[3]
Retain: CRM software and databases enable a business to identify and reward its loyal customers and further develop its targeted marketing and relationship marketing initiatives.[4]
[edit]Challenges
Tools and workflows can be complex, especially for large businesses. Previously these tools were generally limited to contact management: monitoring and recording interactions and communications. Software solutions then expanded to embrace deal tracking, territories, opportunities, and at the sales pipeline itself. Next came the advent of tools for other client-interface business functions, as described below. These tools have been, and still are, offered as on-premises software that companies purchase and run on their own IT infrastructure. Often, implementations are fragmented—isolated initiatives by individual departments to address their own needs. Systems that start disunited usually stay that way: siloed thinking and decision processes frequently lead to separate and incompatible systems, and dysfunctional processes. Business reputation has become a growing challenge. The outcome of internal fragmentation that is observed and commented upon by customers is now visible to the rest of the world in the era of the social customer, where in the past, only employees or partners were aware of it. Addressing the fragmentation requires a shift in philosophy and mindset within an organization so that everyone considers the impact to the customer of policy, decisions and actions. Human response at all levels of the organization can affect the customer experience for good or ill. Even one unhappy customer can deliver a body blow to a business.[5]
[edit]Types/variations [edit]Sales
force automation
Sales force automation (SFA) involves using software to streamline all phases of the sales process, minimizing the time that sales representatives need to spend on each phase. This allows sales representatives to pursue more clients in a shorter amount of time than would otherwise be possible. At the heart of SFA is a contact management system for tracking and recording every stage in the sales process for each prospective client, from initial contact to final disposition. Many SFA applications also include insights into opportunities, territories, sales forecasts and workflow automation, quote generation, and product knowledge. Modules for Web 2.0 ecommerce and pricing are new, emerging interests in SFA.[1]
[edit]Marketing
CRM systems for marketing help the enterprise identify and target potential clients and generate leads for the sales team. A key marketing capability is tracking and measuring multichannel campaigns, including email, search, social media, telephone and direct mail. Metrics monitored include clicks, responses, leads, deals, and revenue. This has been superseded by marketing automation and Prospect Relationship Management (PRM) solutions which track customer behaviour and nurture them from first contact to sale, often cutting out the active sales process altogether.
[edit]Customer
service and support
Recognizing that service is an important factor in attracting and retaining customers, organizations are increasingly turning to technology to help them improve their clients’ experience while aiming to increase efficiency and minimize costs.[6] Even so, a 2009 study revealed that only 39% of corporate executives believe their employees have the right tools and authority to solve client problems.“.[7] The core for these applications has been and still is comprehensive call center solutions, including such features as intelligent call routing, computer telephone integration(CTI), and escalation capabilities.
[edit]Analytics
Relevant analytics capabilities are often interwoven into applications for sales, marketing, and service. These features can be complemented and augmented with links to separate, purpose-built applications for analytics and business intelligence. Sales analytics let companies monitor and understand client actions and preferences, through sales forecasting and data quality. Marketing applications generally come with predictive analytics to improve segmentation and targeting, and features for measuring the effectiveness of online, offline, and search marketing campaign. Web analytics have evolved significantly from their starting point of merely tracking mouse clicks on Web sites. By evaluating “buy signals,” marketers can see which prospects are most likely to transact and also identify those who are bogged
down in a sales process and need assistance. Marketing and finance personnel also use analytics to assess the value of multi-faceted programs as a whole. These types of analytics are increasing in popularity as companies demand greater visibility into the performance of call centers and other service and support channels,[6] in order to correct problems before they affect satisfaction levels. Support-focused applications typically include dashboards similar to those for sales, plus capabilities to measure and analyze response times, service quality, agent performance, and the frequency of various issues.
[edit]Integrated/Collaborative
Departments within enterprises — especially large enterprises — tend to function with little collaboration.
[8]
More recently, the development and adoption of these tools and services have fostered greater fluidity and
cooperation among sales, service, and marketing. This finds expression in the concept of collaborative systems which uses technology to build bridges between departments. For example, feedback from a technical support center can enlighten marketers about specific services and product features clients are asking for. Reps, in their turn, want to be able to pursue these opportunities without the burden of re-entering records and contact data into a separate SFA system. Owing to these factors, many of the top-rated and most popular products come as integrated suites.
[edit]Small
business
For small business, basic client service can be accomplished by a contact manager system: an integrated solution that lets organizations and individuals efficiently track and record interactions, including emails, documents, jobs, faxes, scheduling, and more. These tools usually focus on accounts rather than on individual contacts. They also generally include opportunity insight for tracking sales pipelines plus added functionality for marketing and service. As with larger enterprises, small businesses are finding value in online solutions, especially for mobile and telecommuting workers.
[edit]Social
media
Social media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook are amplifying the voice of people in the marketplace and are having profound and far-reaching effects on the ways in which people buy. Customers can now research companies online and then ask for recommendations through social media channels, making their buying decision without contacting the company. People also use social media to share opinions and experiences on companies, products and services. As social media is not as widely moderated or censored as mainstream media, individuals can say anything they want about a company or brand, positive or negative. Increasingly, companies are looking to gain access to these conversations and take part in the dialogue. More than a few systems are now integrating to social networking sites. Social media promoters cite a number of
business advantages, such as using online communities as a source of high-quality leads and a vehicle for crowd sourcing solutions to client-support problems. Companies can also leverage client stated habits and preferences to personalize and even "hyper-target" their sales and marketing communications.[9] Some analysts take the view that business-to-business marketers should proceed cautiously when weaving social media into their business processes. These observers recommend careful market research to determine if and where the phenomenon can provide measurable benefits for client interactions, sales and support.[10] It is stated[by whom?] that people feel their interactions are peer-to-peer between them and their contacts, and resent company involvement, sometimes responding with negatives about that company.
[edit]Non-profit
and membership-based
Systems for non-profit and membership-based organizations help track constituents and their involvement in the organization. Capabilities typically include tracking the following: fund-raising, demographics, membership levels, membership directories, volunteering and communications with individuals. Many include tools for identifying potential donors based on previous donations and participation. In light of the growth of social networking tools, there may be some overlap between social/community driven tools and nonprofit/membership tools.
[edit]Strategy
For larger-scale enterprises, a complete and detailed plan is required to obtain the funding, resources, and company-wide support that can make the initiative of choosing and implementing a system successful. Benefits must be defined, risks assessed, and cost quantified in three general areas:
Processes: Though these systems have many technological components, business processes lie at its core. It can be seen as a more client-centric way of doing business, enabled by technology that consolidates and intelligently distributes pertinent information about clients, sales, marketing effectiveness, responsiveness, and market trends. Therefore, a company must analyze its business workflows and processes before choosing a technology platform; some will likely need re-engineering to better serve the overall goal of winning and satisfying clients. Moreover, planners need to determine the types of client information that are most relevant, and how best to employ them.[2]
People: For an initiative to be effective, an organization must convince its staff that the new technology and workflows will benefit employees as well as clients. Senior executives need to be strong and visible advocates who can clearly state and support the case for change. Collaboration, teamwork, and
two-way communication should be encouraged across hierarchical boundaries, especially with respect to process improvement.[11]
Technology: In evaluating technology, key factors include alignment with the company’s business process strategy and goals, including the ability to deliver the right data to the right employees and sufficient ease of adoption and use. Platform selection is best undertaken by a carefully chosen group of executives who understand the business processes to be automated as well as the software issues. Depending upon the size of the company and the breadth of data, choosing an application can take anywhere from a few weeks to a year or more.[2]
[edit]Implementation [edit]Implementation
issues
Increases in revenue, higher rates of client satisfaction, and significant savings in operating costs are some of the benefits to an enterprise. Proponents emphasize that technology should be implemented only in the context of careful strategic and operational planning.[12]Implementations almost invariably fall short when one or more facets of this prescription are ignored:
Poor planning: Initiatives can easily fail when efforts are limited to choosing and deploying software, without an accompanying rationale, context, and support for the workforce.[13] In other instances, enterprises simply automate flawed client-facing processes rather than redesign them according to best practices.
Poor integration: For many companies, integrations are piecemeal initiatives that address a glaring need: improving a particular client-facing process or two or automating a favored sales or client support channel.[14] Such “point solutions” offer little or no integration or alignment with a company’s overall strategy. They offer a less than complete client view and often lead to unsatisfactory user experiences.
Toward a solution: overcoming siloed thinking. Experts advise organizations to recognize the immense value of integrating their client-facing operations. In this view, internally-focused, department-centric views should be discarded in favor of reorienting processes toward information-sharing across marketing, sales, and service. For example, sales representatives need to know about current issues and relevant marketing promotions before attempting to cross-
sell to a specific client. Marketing staff should be able to leverage client information from sales and service to better target campaigns and offers. And support agents require quick and complete access to a client’s sales and service history.[14]
[edit]Adoption
issues
Historically, the landscape is littered with instances of low adoption rates. In 2003, a Gartner report estimated that more than $1 billion had been spent on software that was not being used. More recent research indicates that the problem, while perhaps less severe, is a long way from being solved. According to CSO Insights, less than 40 percent of 1,275 participating companies had end-user adoption rates above 90 percent.[15] In a 2007 survey from the U.K., four-fifths of senior executives reported that their biggest challenge is getting their staff to use the systems they had installed. Further, 43 percent of respondents said they use less than half the functionality of their existing system; 72 percent indicated they would trade functionality for ease of use; 51 percent cited data synchronization as a major issue; and 67 percent said that finding time to evaluate systems was a major problem.[16] With expenditures expected to exceed $11 billion in 2010,[16] enterprises need to address and overcome persistent adoption challenges. Specialists offer these recommendations[15] for boosting adoptions rates and coaxing users to blend these tools into their daily workflow: Choose a system that is easy to use: All solutions are not created equal. Some vendors offer more user-friendly applications than others, and simplicity should be as important a decision factor as functionality. Choose the right capabilities: Employees need to know that time invested in learning and usage will yield personal advantages. If not, they will work around or ignore the system. Provide training: Changing the way people work is no small task, and help is usually a requirement. Even with today’s more usable systems, many staffers still need assistance with learning and adoption
Lead by example: Showing employees that upper management fully supports the use of a new application by using the application themselves may increase the likelihood that employees will adopt the application.[citation needed]
[edit]Privacy
and data security system
One of the primary functions of these tools is to collect information about clients, thus a company must consider the desire for privacy and data security, as well as the legislative and cultural norms. Some clients prefer assurances that their data will not be shared with third parties without their prior consent and that safeguards are in place to prevent illegal access by third parties.
[edit]Market
structures
This market grew by 12.5 percent in 2008, from revenue of $8.13 billion in 2007 to $9.15 billion in 2008.[17] The following table lists the top vendors in 2006-2008 (figures in millions of US dollars) published in Gartner studies.
[18][19]
2008 Revenue Vendor SAP Oracle Microsoft Amdocs Others Total 2,055 1,475 581 451 3,620 9,147
2008 Share (%) 22.5 (-2.8) 16.1 10.6 6.4 4.9 39.6 100
2007 Revenue
2007 Share (%)
2006 Revenue
2006 Share (%)
2,050.8 1,319.8 676.5 332.1 421.0 3,289.1 8,089.3
25.3 16.3 8.3 4.1 5.2 40.6 100
1,681.7 1,016.8 451.7 176.1 365.9 2,881.6 6,573.8
26.6 15.5 6.9 2.7 5.6 43.7 100
Salesforce.com 965
[edit]Related
trends
Many CRM vendors offer Web-based tools (cloud computing) and software as a service (SaaS), which are accessed via a secure Internet connection and displayed in a Web browser. These applications are sold as subscriptions, with customers not needing to invest in purchasing and maintaining IT hardware, and subscription fees are a fraction of the cost of purchasing software outright. The era of the "social customer"[20] refers to the use of social media (Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Yelp, customer reviews in Amazon etc) by customers in ways that allow other potential customers to glimpse real world experience of current customers with the seller's products and services. This shift increases the power of customers to make purchase decisions that are informed by other parties sometimes outside of the control of the seller or seller's network. In response, CRM philosophy and strategy has shifted to encompass social networks and user communities, podcasting, and personalization in addition to internally generated marketing, advertising and webpage design. With the spread of self-initiated customer reviews, the user experience of a product or service requires increased attention to design and simplicity, as customer expectations have risen. CRM as a philosophy and strategy is growing to encompass these broader components of the customer relationship, so that businesses may anticipate and innovate to better serve customers, referred to as "Social CRM".
[edit]See
also
Data mining Database marketing
Business intelligence Business Relationship Management
Professional services a software(PSA)
Public relations
Comparison of CRM systems Consumer Relationship System Customer Experience Customer experience transformation Customer Intelligence Customer service - contains ISO standards Data management
E-crm Employee experience management (EEM) Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) Enterprise relationship management (ERM)
Sales force manageme Sales intelligence
Sales process engineer Support automation
Supplier relationship m
Help desk Mystery shopping Predictive analytics
The International Cust service standards
Institute- contains cust
[edit]Notes
and references
1. 2. 3.
^ a b Gartner, Inc. (6 June 2009) What's 'Hot' in CRM Applications in 2009 ^ a b c DestinationCRM.com (2002) What Is CRM? ^ a b James A. O'Brien & George M. Marakas (2009). "Enterprise Business Systems, p.304". Management Information Systems. McGraw-Hill/Irwin..
4.
^ James A. O'Brien & George M. Marakas (2009). "Enterprise Business Systems, p.305". Management Information Systems. McGraw-Hill/Irwin..
5.
^ Mei Lin Fung, "You can learn from Dell Hell, Dell did" http://www.customerthink.com/article/you_can_learn_dell_hell_dell_did
6.
^ a b SAP Insider (15 November 2007) Still Struggling to Reduce Call Center Costs Without Losing Customers?
7.
^ Strativity Group, Inc. (2009) Global Customer Experience Management Benchmark Study
8. 9.
^ InsideCRM (2007) Get It Together with Collaborative CRM ^ DestinationCRM.com (2009) Who Owns the Social Customer?
10. ^ Clara Shih, DestinationCRM.com (2009) Sales and Social Media: No One’s
social (Yet)
11. ^ TechTarget (2009) Strategy Checklist: Planning for CRM and Customer Service
Success
12. ^ Lior Arussy (2005). "Understanding the Fatal Mistakes". Passionate and
Profitable. John Wiley & Sons, Inc..
13. ^ "Avoid the Four Perils of CRM". Harvard Business Review.
14. ^ a b SAP white paper (2003) CRM Without Compromise 15. ^ a b Jim Dickie, CSO Insights (2006) Demystifying CRM Adoption Rates 16. ^ a b David Sims, TMC.net (2007) CRM Adoption ‘Biggest Problem’ in 83 Percent
of Cases
17. ^ DestinationCRM.com (2009) CRM Market Grows for Fifth Straight Year 18. ^ Gartner, Inc (2008-09-12). "Gartner Says Worldwide Customer Relationship
Management Market Grew 23 Percent in 2007". Press release. Retrieved 200808-15.
19. ^ Gartner, Inc (2009-06-15). "Gartner Says Worldwide CRM Market Grew 12.5
Percent in 2008". Press release. Retrieved 2009-10-27.
20. ^ Greenberg, Paul, CRM at the Speed of Light, McGraw Hill 4th Edition, page 7
Categories: Customer experience management | Customer relationship management software | Electronic commerce | Marketing | Office and administrative support occupations
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a widely-implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service.[1] Customer relationship management describes a company-wide business strategy including customer-interface departments as well as other departments.[2]
Contents
[hide]
• • •
1 Phases 2 Challenges 3 Types/variations
○ ○ ○
3.1 Sales force automation 3.2 Marketing 3.3 Customer service and support
○ ○
3.4 Analytics 3.5 Integrated/Collaborativ e
○ ○ ○
3.6 Small business 3.7 Social media 3.8 Non-profit and membership-based
• •
4 Strategy 5 Implementation
○ ○
5.1 Implementation issues 5.2 Adoption issues
• • • • •
6 Privacy and data security system 7 Market structures 8 Related trends 9 See also 10 Notes and references
[edit]Phases
The three phases in which CRM support the relationship between a business and its customers are to:
Acquire: CRM can help a business acquire new customers through contact management, selling, and fulfillment.[3]
Enhance: web-enabled CRM combined with customer service tools offers customers service from a team of sales and service specialists, which offers customers the convenience of one-stop shopping.[3]
Retain: CRM software and databases enable a business to identify and reward its loyal customers and further develop its targeted marketing and relationship marketing initiatives.[4]
[edit]Challenges
Tools and workflows can be complex, especially for large businesses. Previously these tools were generally limited to contact management: monitoring and recording interactions and communications. Software solutions then expanded to embrace deal tracking, territories, opportunities, and at the sales pipeline itself. Next came the advent of tools for other client-interface business functions, as described below. These tools have been, and still are, offered as on-premises software that companies purchase and run on their own IT infrastructure. Often, implementations are fragmented—isolated initiatives by individual departments to address their own needs. Systems that start disunited usually stay that way: siloed thinking and decision processes frequently lead to separate and incompatible systems, and dysfunctional processes. Business reputation has become a growing challenge. The outcome of internal fragmentation that is observed and commented upon by customers is now visible to the rest of the world in the era of the social customer, where in the past, only employees or partners were aware of it. Addressing the fragmentation requires a shift in philosophy and mindset within an organization so that everyone considers the impact to the customer of policy, decisions and actions. Human response at all levels of the organization can affect the customer experience for good or ill. Even one unhappy customer can deliver a body blow to a business.[5]
[edit]Types/variations [edit]Sales
force automation
Sales force automation (SFA) involves using software to streamline all phases of the sales process, minimizing the time that sales representatives need to spend on each phase. This allows sales representatives to pursue more clients in a shorter amount of time than would otherwise be possible. At the heart of SFA is a contact management system for tracking and recording every stage in the sales process for each prospective client, from initial contact to final disposition. Many SFA applications also include insights into opportunities, territories, sales forecasts and workflow automation, quote generation, and product knowledge. Modules for Web 2.0 ecommerce and pricing are new, emerging interests in SFA.[1]
[edit]Marketing
CRM systems for marketing help the enterprise identify and target potential clients and generate leads for the sales team. A key marketing capability is tracking and measuring multichannel campaigns, including email, search, social media, telephone and direct mail. Metrics monitored include clicks, responses, leads, deals, and revenue. This has been superseded by marketing automation and Prospect Relationship Management (PRM) solutions which track customer behaviour and nurture them from first contact to sale, often cutting out the active sales process altogether.
[edit]Customer
service and support
Recognizing that service is an important factor in attracting and retaining customers, organizations are increasingly turning to technology to help them improve their clients’ experience while aiming to increase efficiency and minimize costs.[6] Even so, a 2009 study revealed that only 39% of corporate executives believe their employees have the right tools and authority to solve client problems.“.[7] The core for these applications has been and still is comprehensive call center solutions, including such features as intelligent call routing, computer telephone integration(CTI), and escalation capabilities.
[edit]Analytics
Relevant analytics capabilities are often interwoven into applications for sales, marketing, and service. These features can be complemented and augmented with links to separate, purpose-built applications for analytics and business intelligence. Sales analytics let companies monitor and understand client actions and preferences, through sales forecasting and data quality. Marketing applications generally come with predictive analytics to improve segmentation and targeting, and features for measuring the effectiveness of online, offline, and search marketing campaign. Web analytics have evolved significantly from their starting point of merely tracking mouse clicks on Web sites. By evaluating “buy signals,” marketers can see which prospects are most likely to transact and also identify those who are bogged
down in a sales process and need assistance. Marketing and finance personnel also use analytics to assess the value of multi-faceted programs as a whole. These types of analytics are increasing in popularity as companies demand greater visibility into the performance of call centers and other service and support channels,[6] in order to correct problems before they affect satisfaction levels. Support-focused applications typically include dashboards similar to those for sales, plus capabilities to measure and analyze response times, service quality, agent performance, and the frequency of various issues.
[edit]Integrated/Collaborative
Departments within enterprises — especially large enterprises — tend to function with little collaboration.
[8]
More recently, the development and adoption of these tools and services have fostered greater fluidity and
cooperation among sales, service, and marketing. This finds expression in the concept of collaborative systems which uses technology to build bridges between departments. For example, feedback from a technical support center can enlighten marketers about specific services and product features clients are asking for. Reps, in their turn, want to be able to pursue these opportunities without the burden of re-entering records and contact data into a separate SFA system. Owing to these factors, many of the top-rated and most popular products come as integrated suites.
[edit]Small
business
For small business, basic client service can be accomplished by a contact manager system: an integrated solution that lets organizations and individuals efficiently track and record interactions, including emails, documents, jobs, faxes, scheduling, and more. These tools usually focus on accounts rather than on individual contacts. They also generally include opportunity insight for tracking sales pipelines plus added functionality for marketing and service. As with larger enterprises, small businesses are finding value in online solutions, especially for mobile and telecommuting workers.
[edit]Social
media
Social media sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook are amplifying the voice of people in the marketplace and are having profound and far-reaching effects on the ways in which people buy. Customers can now research companies online and then ask for recommendations through social media channels, making their buying decision without contacting the company. People also use social media to share opinions and experiences on companies, products and services. As social media is not as widely moderated or censored as mainstream media, individuals can say anything they want about a company or brand, positive or negative. Increasingly, companies are looking to gain access to these conversations and take part in the dialogue. More than a few systems are now integrating to social networking sites. Social media promoters cite a number of
business advantages, such as using online communities as a source of high-quality leads and a vehicle for crowd sourcing solutions to client-support problems. Companies can also leverage client stated habits and preferences to personalize and even "hyper-target" their sales and marketing communications.[9] Some analysts take the view that business-to-business marketers should proceed cautiously when weaving social media into their business processes. These observers recommend careful market research to determine if and where the phenomenon can provide measurable benefits for client interactions, sales and support.[10] It is stated[by whom?] that people feel their interactions are peer-to-peer between them and their contacts, and resent company involvement, sometimes responding with negatives about that company.
[edit]Non-profit
and membership-based
Systems for non-profit and membership-based organizations help track constituents and their involvement in the organization. Capabilities typically include tracking the following: fund-raising, demographics, membership levels, membership directories, volunteering and communications with individuals. Many include tools for identifying potential donors based on previous donations and participation. In light of the growth of social networking tools, there may be some overlap between social/community driven tools and nonprofit/membership tools.
[edit]Strategy
For larger-scale enterprises, a complete and detailed plan is required to obtain the funding, resources, and company-wide support that can make the initiative of choosing and implementing a system successful. Benefits must be defined, risks assessed, and cost quantified in three general areas:
Processes: Though these systems have many technological components, business processes lie at its core. It can be seen as a more client-centric way of doing business, enabled by technology that consolidates and intelligently distributes pertinent information about clients, sales, marketing effectiveness, responsiveness, and market trends. Therefore, a company must analyze its business workflows and processes before choosing a technology platform; some will likely need re-engineering to better serve the overall goal of winning and satisfying clients. Moreover, planners need to determine the types of client information that are most relevant, and how best to employ them.[2]
People: For an initiative to be effective, an organization must convince its staff that the new technology and workflows will benefit employees as well as clients. Senior executives need to be strong and visible advocates who can clearly state and support the case for change. Collaboration, teamwork, and
two-way communication should be encouraged across hierarchical boundaries, especially with respect to process improvement.[11]
Technology: In evaluating technology, key factors include alignment with the company’s business process strategy and goals, including the ability to deliver the right data to the right employees and sufficient ease of adoption and use. Platform selection is best undertaken by a carefully chosen group of executives who understand the business processes to be automated as well as the software issues. Depending upon the size of the company and the breadth of data, choosing an application can take anywhere from a few weeks to a year or more.[2]
[edit]Implementation [edit]Implementation
issues
Increases in revenue, higher rates of client satisfaction, and significant savings in operating costs are some of the benefits to an enterprise. Proponents emphasize that technology should be implemented only in the context of careful strategic and operational planning.[12]Implementations almost invariably fall short when one or more facets of this prescription are ignored:
Poor planning: Initiatives can easily fail when efforts are limited to choosing and deploying software, without an accompanying rationale, context, and support for the workforce.[13] In other instances, enterprises simply automate flawed client-facing processes rather than redesign them according to best practices.
Poor integration: For many companies, integrations are piecemeal initiatives that address a glaring need: improving a particular client-facing process or two or automating a favored sales or client support channel.[14] Such “point solutions” offer little or no integration or alignment with a company’s overall strategy. They offer a less than complete client view and often lead to unsatisfactory user experiences.
Toward a solution: overcoming siloed thinking. Experts advise organizations to recognize the immense value of integrating their client-facing operations. In this view, internally-focused, department-centric views should be discarded in favor of reorienting processes toward information-sharing across marketing, sales, and service. For example, sales representatives need to know about current issues and relevant marketing promotions before attempting to cross-
sell to a specific client. Marketing staff should be able to leverage client information from sales and service to better target campaigns and offers. And support agents require quick and complete access to a client’s sales and service history.[14]
[edit]Adoption
issues
Historically, the landscape is littered with instances of low adoption rates. In 2003, a Gartner report estimated that more than $1 billion had been spent on software that was not being used. More recent research indicates that the problem, while perhaps less severe, is a long way from being solved. According to CSO Insights, less than 40 percent of 1,275 participating companies had end-user adoption rates above 90 percent.[15] In a 2007 survey from the U.K., four-fifths of senior executives reported that their biggest challenge is getting their staff to use the systems they had installed. Further, 43 percent of respondents said they use less than half the functionality of their existing system; 72 percent indicated they would trade functionality for ease of use; 51 percent cited data synchronization as a major issue; and 67 percent said that finding time to evaluate systems was a major problem.[16] With expenditures expected to exceed $11 billion in 2010,[16] enterprises need to address and overcome persistent adoption challenges. Specialists offer these recommendations[15] for boosting adoptions rates and coaxing users to blend these tools into their daily workflow: Choose a system that is easy to use: All solutions are not created equal. Some vendors offer more user-friendly applications than others, and simplicity should be as important a decision factor as functionality. Choose the right capabilities: Employees need to know that time invested in learning and usage will yield personal advantages. If not, they will work around or ignore the system. Provide training: Changing the way people work is no small task, and help is usually a requirement. Even with today’s more usable systems, many staffers still need assistance with learning and adoption
Lead by example: Showing employees that upper management fully supports the use of a new application by using the application themselves may increase the likelihood that employees will adopt the application.[citation needed]
[edit]Privacy
and data security system
One of the primary functions of these tools is to collect information about clients, thus a company must consider the desire for privacy and data security, as well as the legislative and cultural norms. Some clients prefer assurances that their data will not be shared with third parties without their prior consent and that safeguards are in place to prevent illegal access by third parties.
[edit]Market
structures
This market grew by 12.5 percent in 2008, from revenue of $8.13 billion in 2007 to $9.15 billion in 2008.[17] The following table lists the top vendors in 2006-2008 (figures in millions of US dollars) published in Gartner studies.
[18][19]
2008 Revenue Vendor SAP Oracle Microsoft Amdocs Others Total 2,055 1,475 581 451 3,620 9,147
2008 Share (%) 22.5 (-2.8) 16.1 10.6 6.4 4.9 39.6 100
2007 Revenue
2007 Share (%)
2006 Revenue
2006 Share (%)
2,050.8 1,319.8 676.5 332.1 421.0 3,289.1 8,089.3
25.3 16.3 8.3 4.1 5.2 40.6 100
1,681.7 1,016.8 451.7 176.1 365.9 2,881.6 6,573.8
26.6 15.5 6.9 2.7 5.6 43.7 100
Salesforce.com 965
[edit]Related
trends
Many CRM vendors offer Web-based tools (cloud computing) and software as a service (SaaS), which are accessed via a secure Internet connection and displayed in a Web browser. These applications are sold as subscriptions, with customers not needing to invest in purchasing and maintaining IT hardware, and subscription fees are a fraction of the cost of purchasing software outright. The era of the "social customer"[20] refers to the use of social media (Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Yelp, customer reviews in Amazon etc) by customers in ways that allow other potential customers to glimpse real world experience of current customers with the seller's products and services. This shift increases the power of customers to make purchase decisions that are informed by other parties sometimes outside of the control of the seller or seller's network. In response, CRM philosophy and strategy has shifted to encompass social networks and user communities, podcasting, and personalization in addition to internally generated marketing, advertising and webpage design. With the spread of self-initiated customer reviews, the user experience of a product or service requires increased attention to design and simplicity, as customer expectations have risen. CRM as a philosophy and strategy is growing to encompass these broader components of the customer relationship, so that businesses may anticipate and innovate to better serve customers, referred to as "Social CRM".
[edit]See
also
Data mining Database marketing
Business intelligence Business Relationship Management
Professional services a software(PSA)
Public relations
Comparison of CRM systems Consumer Relationship System Customer Experience Customer experience transformation Customer Intelligence Customer service - contains ISO standards Data management
E-crm Employee experience management (EEM) Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) Enterprise relationship management (ERM)
Sales force manageme Sales intelligence
Sales process engineer Support automation
Supplier relationship m
Help desk Mystery shopping Predictive analytics
The International Cust service standards
Institute- contains cust
[edit]Notes
and references
1. 2. 3.
^ a b Gartner, Inc. (6 June 2009) What's 'Hot' in CRM Applications in 2009 ^ a b c DestinationCRM.com (2002) What Is CRM? ^ a b James A. O'Brien & George M. Marakas (2009). "Enterprise Business Systems, p.304". Management Information Systems. McGraw-Hill/Irwin..
4.
^ James A. O'Brien & George M. Marakas (2009). "Enterprise Business Systems, p.305". Management Information Systems. McGraw-Hill/Irwin..
5.
^ Mei Lin Fung, "You can learn from Dell Hell, Dell did" http://www.customerthink.com/article/you_can_learn_dell_hell_dell_did
6.
^ a b SAP Insider (15 November 2007) Still Struggling to Reduce Call Center Costs Without Losing Customers?
7.
^ Strativity Group, Inc. (2009) Global Customer Experience Management Benchmark Study
8. 9.
^ InsideCRM (2007) Get It Together with Collaborative CRM ^ DestinationCRM.com (2009) Who Owns the Social Customer?
10. ^ Clara Shih, DestinationCRM.com (2009) Sales and Social Media: No One’s
social (Yet)
11. ^ TechTarget (2009) Strategy Checklist: Planning for CRM and Customer Service
Success
12. ^ Lior Arussy (2005). "Understanding the Fatal Mistakes". Passionate and
Profitable. John Wiley & Sons, Inc..
13. ^ "Avoid the Four Perils of CRM". Harvard Business Review.
14. ^ a b SAP white paper (2003) CRM Without Compromise 15. ^ a b Jim Dickie, CSO Insights (2006) Demystifying CRM Adoption Rates 16. ^ a b David Sims, TMC.net (2007) CRM Adoption ‘Biggest Problem’ in 83 Percent
of Cases
17. ^ DestinationCRM.com (2009) CRM Market Grows for Fifth Straight Year 18. ^ Gartner, Inc (2008-09-12). "Gartner Says Worldwide Customer Relationship
Management Market Grew 23 Percent in 2007". Press release. Retrieved 200808-15.
19. ^ Gartner, Inc (2009-06-15). "Gartner Says Worldwide CRM Market Grew 12.5
Percent in 2008". Press release. Retrieved 2009-10-27.
20. ^ Greenberg, Paul, CRM at the Speed of Light, McGraw Hill 4th Edition, page 7
Categories: Customer experience management | Customer relationship management software | Electronic commerce | Marketing | Office and administrative support occupations
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