InternetServices

Introduction | Defining CRM | Key Principles | Applications| Screen Shots

CRM is a set of business processes that an organization performs to identify, select, acquire, develop and retain its most profitable customers so it can better serve them. CRM has complementary layers like.

• A philosophy of caring for and nurturing customers .
  
• Organization and roles that deliver fulfillment of customer needs.
  
• A strategy for growth based on predicting and fulfilling customer needs.
  
• A set of best-practices business processes that support the same strategy.
  
• And finally, a support application within the information technology infrastructure of an enterprises
  
• The enterprise-wide information and data provides you with the necessary knowledge of the habits, preferences and concerns of customers you’ve retained with great effort.
  
• Research has shown that while only an average of four percent of dissatisfied customers complain, a staggering 65-90 percent never buy from the same vendor again (source: Technical Assistance Research Institute.) That’s where CRM comes into the picture. CRM comes into the picture. CRM is all about an organization’s practical ability to improve the ways in which it communicates and interacts with its customers based on the information it has gathered about them.

Functionally, CRM represents a series of principles-from sales and marketing to service delivery and human resources, and much more. They are generally simple in concept, yet often difficult to execute. While there are available software solutions that can help consolidate data about customers and discern trends about how they behave, much more is necessary to enable various departments to share information about customers with one another. These days many companies spend lakhs of rupees on technology alone, but have failed to harness the true potential of CRM. A fully realized CRM program can not only improve customer loyalty, but also dramatically increase profitability and revenue, while opening new marketing and sales channels and slashing operational costs.

The purpose of this special supplement in Network Computing is to provide an overview of some of the key strategies and principles that can help you begin transforming your organization through CRM. These strategies can help a company maximize its investment in hardware and software as well as optimize overall bottom-line success. For any enterprise to make effective use of CRM, it must first create a strategic baseline by answering the following questions:

Where is your organization at present ?
What do you want to achieve if you use CRM tools in you organization?
Additionally, if you’re the IS manager of your company, you must consider four key questions:
Do you want to reduce the operational cost of interacting with customers?
Do you effectively need to enhance the service (e.g. content, ease and reponsiveness ) offered to your customers ?
Do you want to sell more services or products to the customers and thus increase market share ?
Do you want provide “knowledge” so customers can use it effectively and rely on you?

These four key considerations manifest themselves in many CRM projects and initiatives. By looking at each one of them carefully, we can clearly, we can clearly see the broad range of options and potential solutions that could be applied to launching a CRM initiative.