CRM & SharePoint Tools in Management - Research Paper Example

 CRM & SharePoint Tools in Management In doing business as an organization or a small company today there is the need for technology resources. The need to integrate all aspects for the functions and operations of said company is also a overlaying factor. The decision the company makes to employ sources of technology is a focus on the cost effectiveness and the efficiency that the company can acquire during acquirement. Maintaining these factors derives the assumption that customer relationship management (CRM) and SharePoint tools produce company needs, but not without a grueling process of justification, integration, and adaptation. Therefore all processes interacting with CRM and SharePoint directly link to organizational management processes. Discussion In the light of using a combination of or relying solely on the work of management and Information Technology (IT) there is much to be offered about the operations of both. For the most part IT is being established as a necessity of management, but also non-functional without the contributions of management. In connection with the outcome expectancy of either management processes or IT is can be established that the operators of IT would be considered the IT itself and that whatever innovations of IT are made are contributions of the IT personnel. That being said, Rockart establishes the relationship to be “in an effective relationship, IT professionals and line managers work together to understand business opportunities, determine needed functionality, choose among technology options, and decide when urgent business needs demand sacrificing technical excellence for immediate, albeit incomplete, solutions….These relationships demand that both IT and line managers accept accountability for systems projects, which is achievable only when both parties share their unique expertise” (p. 47). CRM is an implementation that allows the organization to synchronize and mechanize all business processes. It utilizes customer support, sales techniques and marketing processes to integrate the companies entire disparate system of operations. It is defined by William, Daniel, and McDonald as “processes and technologies that support the planning, execution, and monitoring of coordinated customer, distributor and influencer interactions through all channels” (p. 5). The following is a chart illustrating the ultimate structure implemented by a CRM (CRM, p. 1) In order to justify the orientation of CRM previous factors on success measures must be available. Clarifying the need of the specific technology widens the range of CRM scope and possibilities. For the purposes of this analysis a direct citing of views is provided by William, Daniel, and McDonald below of their views on CRM successful strategy implementations (p. 8): 1. Determine intent: As with other IT applications, top management sponsorship and the presence of a champion to drive the intervention are widely recognized as important. The potentially far-reaching effects of e-commerce lead Dutta (2000) to take the tough position that the Internet should be “a top strategic priority for your CEO”. If the project’s aim is to add to customer value, this needs to be complemented by a customer or market orientation, or at least by the perception of the need for it (Wilson and McDonald 1996), in which case the project’s scope should aim to increase it. 2. Assess context: The IT context of a project includes the existing set of systems. Leverick et al (1998) emphasize the need for “compatibility and integration with other marketing IT projects”. Ryals et al (2000) go beyond this to the need for a plan for customer-facing systems to converge so as to give a single view of the customer or competitors. The wider organization also needs to be aligned around the customer, either through the organizational structure (McDonald 1996) or through cross-functional teams (Ryals 2000; Wilson and McDonald 1996). A further element of the context which has implications for the project scope is any adverse aspects of organisational culture, Wilson and McDonald (1996) for example identifying the need for systems to be “perceived as empowering not controlling”. 3. Describe content: Successful system design depends on user involvement, which in this domain may need to be cross-functional (Leverick et al 1998). There is nevertheless an important role for the IT function in ensuring that the IT infrastructure is managed appropriately to ensure synergies between projects and provide a platform for the future (Grindley 1995). As the customer interface is perhaps more susceptible than some internal applications to the need to respond rapidly to external changes, the need to design for flexibility is important. Leverick et al (1998) also suggest seeing the proposed application in use elsewhere. 4. Construct intervention process: Dutta (2000) emphasises the need to experiment in the marketplace with a “rapid strategy/action loop” in order to “compete in Internet time”. This goes beyond the need to conduct pilot tests (Leverick et al 1998). 5. Manage intervention process: Leverick et al (1998) emphasise that project management needs to be flexible in order to respond to unexpected events during implementation and still deliver the desired outcome. Where integration begins the company must initialize a phase that accepts all justifiable reasoning. For the most part the process is easily understood, but is flawed by the perception that integrating all IT systems into the CRM method is a persistent challenge. Cited from “The Eight Building Blocks of CRM” by Radcliffe the following are the focuses and recommendations of the CRM process: The Eight Building Blocks of CRM (p. 17): 1. CRM Vision: Leadership, Market Position, Value Proposition 2. CRM Strategy: Objectives, Segments, Effective Interaction 3. Valued Customer Experience: Understand Requirements, Monitor Expectations, Satisfaction vs. Competition, Collaboration and Feedback. 4.Organizational Collaboration: Culture and Structure, Customer Understanding, People: Skills, Competencies, Incentives and Compensation, Employee Communications, Partners and Suppliers. 5. CRM Processes: Customer Life Cycle, Knowledge Management. 6. CRM Information: Data, Analysis, One View Across Channels. 7. CRM Technology: Applications, Architecture, Infrastructure. 8.CRM Metrics: Value, Retention, Satisfaction, Loyalty, Cost to Serve. Recommendations: 1. Vision: Define CRM, get a leader, answer ”why?”, set the core value proposition. 2. Strategy: Develop the customer base as an asset, Answer “how?”, set objectives. 3. Customer Experience: Design, then constantly refine based on customer feedback. 4. Organizational Collaboration: Change organizational structures, incentives, skills and the enterprise culture to deliver the customer experience. 5. Processes: Re-engineer to meet customers' expectations, provide competitive differentiation and contribute to the customer experience. 6. Information: Treat customer information as an asset and a "blood supply," focus on tighter integration between operational and analytical systems. 7. Technology: Outline your CRM architecture first, consider CRM as one big integration exercise, assess the best style of CRM application for your enterprise. 8. Metrics: Set CRM metrics at multiple levels. Consider this the most difficult block: Without performance management, a CRM strategy will fail. Based on other objectives set forth by Bates and Smith the utilization of SharePoint is to “provide business users with the tools they need to effectively manage and share information, automate business process, collaborate, and interact with others” (p. 1). The SharePoint tools being enforced in the server environment rely on SharePoint Foundation, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Live Communications Server, and SQL Server enterprising to meet the goal of the business. The following is an exact citation of what the business goals for the applications and servers (Bates and Smith, p. 1): 1. Provide Business Users with faster, comprehensive access to actionable information. The goal is to not only provide access to more information but to make it possible to locate the most relevant information allowing people to rapidly respond to business needs. 2. Enable individuals to find the most relevant people to work with and allow them to work together effectively. Teams can easily share information regardless of location and across company boundaries. 3. Improve individual and team productivity by making it easy to create and manage information and allowing this information to be available as part of related business processes. 4. Reduce the cost of providing enterprise-wide business solutions by providing a set of applications and servers that work together and can be combined into business solutions. Lee suggests that the utilization of SharePoint server as a development platform demonstrates two motivations of the organization. The discern of motivation in this case is the justifiable process that enables the need for SharePoint. The following is a direct citing of those motivations (Lee, p. 4-5): 1. The need to provision more than one website based on a logical grouping - such as department, region, or country - rather than have one website that serves all users. 2. The need to manage unstructured content (i.e. documents, web casts, etc.) along with the structured data stored in a SQL database. The motivations of optimizing the use of SharePoint within business objectives not necessarily directly connected to business management can be processed. Though management is a forerunner in obligating business systems with SharePoint its involvement within the business itself will have to be recognized. With recognition, management processes will have to be centered on its operations. An image of market growth for the SharePoint Platform is shown below (Greten, p. 1): The phase of integrating the platform itself relies on instance that the platform is directing the content management services provided by SharePoint. When allying with management services the scheme for implementation of the service is more defined. The platform is illustrated by Lee in the following displays of SharePoint technology stacks, site hierarchy, and site provisioning (p. 5-7): SharePoint Technology Stack: Site Hierarchy: Site Provisioning Comprehending what has previously been written, the objective becomes not understanding how the managerial process will coincide with CRM or SharePoint Tools, but at what stage to implement the tools. According to “The Five Stages of Small Business Growth” stages V introduce a possible integration period for maximizing the managerial process and interlinking with IT tools. It is at the maturity stage of business that integration of management and IT tools will engage in process to maximize company efforts. The Following is a direct citing of stages V (Churchill and Lewis, p. 6): Stage V: Resource Maturity The greatest concerns of a company entering this stage are, first, to consolidate and control the financial gains brought on by rapid growth and, second, to retain the advantages of small size, including flexibility of response and the entrepreneurial spirit. The corporation must expand the management force fast enough to eliminate the inefficiencies that growth can produce and professionalize the company by use of such tools as budgets, strategic planning, management by objectives, and standard cost systems—and do this without stifling its entrepreneurial qualities. A company in Stage V has the staff and financial resources to engage in detailed operational and strategic planning. The management is decentralized, adequately staffed, and experienced. And systems are extensive and well developed. The owner and the business are quite separate, both financially and operationally. The concept of the entire five stage process is setup to appear in this format (Churchill and Lewis, p. 3): Conclusion In closing the main ideal of CRM and SharePoint in business has plenty to do with management adapting to IT services. Management of business does not stop at the introduction of new IT platforms. The association amongst the latter is never-ceasing. Hence, management holds strong ties to the tools utilized by IT. References Churchill, N.C. and Lewis, V.L. (28 Oct. 2007). The five stages of small business growth. Harvard business review. 61,3. pp. 30-49. CRM: The key to marketing strategy (2011). Picture retrieved from MarketingHackz.com at http://marketinghackz.com/crm-the-key-to-marketing-strategy/. (2011, April, 09) Greten, Dave (2010). SharePoint administration: sharepoint migration. Picture retrieved from Axeler.com at http://info.axceler.com/Blog/?Tag=sharepoint%20jobs. (2011, April, 09) Bates, Seth and Smith, Tony (2010). Introduction to sharepoint technologies. p. 1. Lee, Vishwas (Jan. 30 2007). Microsoft office sharepoint server (MOSS) 2007 as an application development platform. pp. 5-7. Radcliffe, John (2002). The eight building blocks of CRM: a framework for success. pp. 15-17. Rockart, J.F., Earl, M.J. and Ross, J.W. (Fall 1996) Eight imperatives for the new IT organization. Sloan Management Review. pp. 43-55. Wilson, Hugh; Daniel, Elizabeth and McDonald, Malcolm (2002). Factors for success in customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Journal of Marketing Management, 18(1), pp. 193–219. Read More