Customer
Relationship Management (CRM) strategies have been around since the
first bazaar, but products designed to automate CRM efforts are
among today's hottest new computer applications. Companies are
rushing to automate and better manage all the ways they deal with
customers, including people who might not consider themselves
customers yet.
In a perfect world, CRM marshals marketing materials, tracks
customers' histories and coordinates a company's multipronged
interactions with its customers.
But the vendors that are rushing to offer CRM applications
haven't quite achieved this level of integration, says Wendy Close,
an analyst at Gartner Group Inc. in San Jose.
Ongoing Process
Because CRM's tentacles reach into so many areas of a business, a
CRM system isn't something that can be implemented out of the box.
Automating CRM is an ongoing process, says Close, adding that no
single vendor is able to supply all the pieces.
"I think customers have to understand that CRM is a business
strategy, and these business strategies don't happen overnight,"
Close says.
"A lot of clients think they can go to a vendor and get CRM. . .
. Instead, they get a few components. They buy a suite of
front-office applications. But do they have all the channels and the
technology, all the functionality and the services to really enable
CRM?" she asks. "It takes multiple technologies and multiple vendors
to pull this off."
When integrating a CRM system, a company must first review the
business processes, applications and technologies it uses to deal
with customers. It should also consider its schedule, its budget and
what it hopes to gain from a CRM implementation.
It's also worth noting that CRM used to focus on the telephone as
the primary means of contact, with little attention paid to e-mail
or the Web. However, electronic messaging is overtaking voice as the
most common form of communication. Corporate call centers aren't
going out of business, but they need new people and equipment to
deal with e-mail and Internet inquiries.
The three main areas that CRM systems focus on are sales,
customer service and marketing automation.
Sales, also called sales force automation, includes the following
five areas:
Field sales.
Call center telephone sales.
Third-party brokers, distributors or agents.
Retail.
E-commerce, which is sometimes referred to as technology-enabled
selling.
Customer service and support includes the following:
Field service and dispatch technicians.
Internet-based service or self-service via a Web site.
Call centers that handle all channels of customer contact, not
just voice.
Marketing automation differs from the other two categories
because it doesn't involve customer contact. It focuses on analyzing
and automating marketing processes.
Marketing automation products include the following:
Data-cleansing tools.
Data analysis or business intelligence tools for ad hoc
querying, reporting and analyzing customer information, plus a data
warehouse or data mart to support strategic decisions.
Content-management applications that allow a company's employees
to view and access business rules for marketing to customers.
A campaign management system, which is a database management
tool used by marketers to design campaigns and track their impact on
various customer segments over time.
Depending on a company's goals, the tools it chooses would be
integrated across the main areas of sales, service and marketing.
The technology includes databases, data warehouses, servers and
other hardware, telephony systems, software for business
intelligence, workflow management and e-commerce, middleware and
system administration management tools.
Integration Is What Counts
Putting all these facets into one coherent, organized
presentation to the customer could require the services of a systems
integrator. It would most certainly require training everyone from
webmasters to call center workers to field sales technicians, Close
says.
There are CRM success stories, she says, but success in a CRM
implementation may best be measured by the restraint an organization
shows in its goals and expectations.
"They don't go out and say 'I'm going to do it all.' They pick.
They don't try to tackle all of CRM at once," Close says.
For example, a pharmaceutical company might integrate its
database marketing with its field sales automation, a traditional
problem in that industry, she says.
She notes that small and midsize companies have been able to
implement more complete CRM systems because they may not operate
globally and may be newer organizations that have fewer business
processes to contend with.
"So they may be willing to implement an application and willing
to use the package to drive the processes, as opposed to larger
companies, which try to make the application fit into their
processes," Close says.
| |
| The Elements of CRM |
Sales
force
automation |
Customer service/call
center
management |
Marketing
automation |
| Call center telephone
sales | |
Call
centers
managing aspects
of customer
contact
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Third-party
brokers,
distributors,
agents
| |
Field
services
and
dispatch
| |
Data analysis
and
business
intelligence
tools
| |
| Data warehouse and data cleansing
tools |
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