The Features of Customer Relationship Management - Essay Example

Running Head: Relationship Management Relationship Management [Institute’s Relationship Management Abstract In the today’s era of technological, scientific, and industrial boom, organizations are now surging ahead and transmitting its data about their customers, sales activities, marketing techniques, and other practices from manual to automated systems that integrate and interlink the inter-departmental processes with each other on a single platform. The CRM is fully featured software with an architecture that encompasses the features of “Customer Service, Sales Management, and Marketing Automation” (Tomkinson, pp. 10-12, 2007). The CRM solution has many advantages and limitations with it. The software diminishes and decrease the cost of ownership but the difficult user interface becomes a challenge associated to it. Since the CRM solution provides a wide range of benefits to the organizations and efficient output come under generation, therefore, organizations tend to implement CRM as it provides one platform to maintain the database and integrate the business processes. Numerous organizations from the world have implemented the CRM software and are getting benefit from it. Table of Contents Abstract 2 Introduction to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) 4 CRM Architecture 6 CRM and Contact Management 8 Benefits of CRM 8 Limitations of CRM 9 Why does an organization require CRM? 10 Consequences of CRM in adopting CRM technology 10 Conclusion & Recommendations 11 References 13 Introduction to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) The world today is shrinking with the emergence of the concept of globalization and the businesses and customers are in correlation to each other on a global platform. Therefore, it has become essential and indispensable for any organization to maintain their customer related information, sales records, statistics and forecast, and their marketing techniques on a distinct and single platform or database where all the information come under integration to each other. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is one of the approach or program that comes into practice by an organization on a broad perspective in order to administer, operate, and handle the communication and dealings of the enterprise with its consumers and prospects (Buttle, pp. 3-4, 2008). Some people also view CRM as a company strategy whose focal point is its customers and their contentment and complacency is of top priority for the organization along with the prime goals and objectives of augmenting the earnings, productivity, prosperity, and success. The history of CRM reveals the information that it is not an old concept; rather it has emerged in the middle of the last century and acquired acceptance, awareness and popularity with the development and advancements in technological marketing software. The twenty first century gave boost to the Customer Relationship Management software and IT dealers made the wide utilization of this software and launched their customized systems as CRM (Vogt, pp. 2-4, 2009). The application of CRM comes under exercise and practice with the use of technology to systematize, standardize, automate, synchronize, integrate and amalgamate the business processes and functions that embrace the customer support and services, sales exercise and marketing of products. In a broad-spectrum, the CRM has been designed with a perspective and vision to search for new prospects, influence or catch their attention through the marketing techniques and convert the prospects into customers, along with fostering, persuading and providing support to the existing clients of the organization in order to sustain them as well (Ed., pp. 6-7, 2008). CRM focuses on evaluating, assessing, signification, and prioritizing the association its customers while putting this course of action into practice. CRM program come under design in such a way that it has all the tools and techniques available that maintains the customer information in detail since the initial contact with the prospect until the time the prospect became a customer without difficulty. Customer Relationship Management is software that possesses unique and exceptional characteristics and can come under usage by organizations as they can get the software installed on a standalone system. In addition, enterprises can also use it as an online system if they want to have access from anywhere in the world, as they have the facility of getting it installed as a web based software. CRM also allows and facilitate the management and other employees to view the complete details of the customers, sales leads, call records, sale forecasts, history and reports and other activities and processes if they are entitled with the permissions. The web-based CRM software has the additional feature of having more than one user access to the customer accounts as it depends upon the number of licenses that the organizations purchase (Anderson & Kerr, pp. 4-7, 2002). CRM Architecture The key features of any CRM software are sales management, marketing automation, and customer services. The customer service architecture includes the elements and attributes that encompass case management where the sales person has the facility to generate, allocate, and administer customer service application and can enter it from the central location. When the sales person enters the complete information of the customer, he is in a preferred position to identify with the precise and particular requirements of the customer as he can view the detail information of the customer. The architecture of CRM customer service also includes the programmed routing and queuing where the sales person can automatically route the service application by making use of tailored or personalized workflow management. With an auto-response email system, the sales person can produce several templates and can recurrently use them to send the auto-response emails against the customer applications (Brown & Gravely, pp. 50-58, 2003). Customer service management provides email managements as well where the complete correspondence and conversations with the customer come under retention in detail and the sales person can track the record of this correspondence as well (Goldenberg, pp. 131-134, 2008). Service Scheduling is another component of customer service that administers, handle, and maintain schedules of customer services (Mathena, Yetter, & Hostetlerpp. 35, 2008). The database is open for all and a sales person can look for or hunt any data, customer support information, or articles of a customer into the knowledge database. After the prospect commutes into the customer, the sales person with the service contract feature generates and upholds the customer contract and agreements, and keep posted the contract data if necessary (Anderson, pp. 304, 2006). (Dyché, pp. 77-87, 2002) With the Customer Service feature, CRM also includes Sales Management that comprise of salient attributes of opportunity management that transfers the leads into prospects, sales process management that trails the opportunities through the custom-made workflows. In addition, the quotations provided to customers come under recordings, which can later come under transfer to invoices of the bills for the customers. Furthermore, the sales person’s accomplishments and achievements come under evaluation and the sales person has the facility to send direct emails of the company’s special sales offers to the clients through the saved templates (Dyché, pp. 77-87, 2002). The Marketing Automation is another feature of the CRM architecture model. The marketing promotions take account of the marketing plans and strategies of the promotion that has the foundation on various components like marketing financial plans and budgets, expenditures, target products and many more. Several lists come under generation such as the potential campaigns lists, customer information lists for various queries, accounts record and several others. Implementation of campaigns or promotions leads to maintaining the activities from the first step to the last and multiple reports of successful campaigns can come under view as well (Reynolds, pp. 105-110, 2002). CRM and Contact Management There have been several debates and arguments amongst Customer Relationship Management and Contact Management. The salient and leading features of CRM strategy that distinguish it from contact management are that CRM is customer facing, process-focused and team-oriented. Customer facing embraces the sales and marketing activities that is the focus of any organization along with wining customer and their retention to enhance their list of customers. The process-focused attribute defines that through CRM, the business workflow designed remains unvarying and consistent for the entire company and its business processes. The team-oriented characteristic drives the attention and persuades the employees to work in partnership within and outside the enterprise. Benefits of CRM Customer Relationship Management has a number of benefits associated with it. Corporations implement CRM as it shrink and cut down the cost comprehensively and predominantly with the increase in quality and effectiveness and competency of the workforce. Another advantage that CRM provides to the organization is that it makes possible for the marketing division to search and target for their finest and superlative customers and generates quality-marketing promotions for the sales people. Moreover, CRM also benefits in a way that it provides with options to have the reports of the profitable customers so that maximum and premium level of service come under offering to them (Bock, pp. 3-5, 2010). With CRM organization’s output and efficiency raises, as the information gets on a single centralized platform that develops and progress the liabilities and special treatments and care can come under provision to the customers. CRM is a solution that minimizes the cost of ownership, as the training cost is not much expensive and the value of maintenance of the software is economical. With the low cost, it also benefits as it can assimilate with other products such as MS Outlook, other financial and accountings systems and few more (Goldenberg, pp. 60-66, 2002). Limitations of CRM Couple to the packet of benefits, are the adversities that the organisation and its employees do not welcome. When an organization implements a CRM solution, with the passage of time, the databank gets bigger, multifaceted, complicated, bulky, and burdensome to handle and maintain and the database user needs to have a comprehensive training in order to maintain the complex data. Furthermore, the efficiency of CRM faces obstruction and encumbrance as the user feels complexity in the navigation of the CRM interface, thus leading to many screens unused making the system not completely purposeful (Shanmugasundaram, pp. 259, 2008). The big corporation might face difficulty and multifarious in the workflows and the techniques related to sales and marketing as their organizations involve greater amount of processes and methods that deeply subdivides for reaching up to the customers. The users find the usability of CRM solution to be complicated and users’ countenance problems when navigating, consequently becoming one of the major challenges that the enterprises are facing these days. The deprived usability often results in disintegration in the CRM execution (Shanmugasundaram, pp. 259, 2008). The organizations’ prime objective is to generate revenues and increase profitability but at the same time, companies are also concerned about their status in the global market. The disintegration of CRM solution creates a negative impact on the customer as they closely monitor and examine the corporations that lead to the awareness to the entire business community (Shanmugasundaram, pp. 259, 2008). Why does an organization require CRM? The organizations look for CRM solution because it streamlines the business processes and techniques that provide better and enhanced services to the customers, clients, and prospects. In addition, with the development and enrichment in the customer service, it also reduces the cost for the enterprise, thus leading to more profits and revenues for them. Furthermore, the grievance and criticism also reduce with time due to integration and organizing of the business processes. It is a complete package that the organization can have in web-based, which provides the employees and the management to have any sort of report and queries from anywhere in the world regardless of the time constraints in few minutes. Additionally, it enables the organization to have the sales forecasts that will help them view their current and future positions of the company in the market. It also provides the employees and organization to give productive outputs (Peel, pp. 17-25, 2002). Consequences of CRM in adopting CRM technology Implementation and adoption of CRM solution has foremost and principal effect on the enterprise and its employees. Launching CRM in an organization and putting into practice is a time utilizing, extended procedure with expertise required for its implementation. CRM module transfer and relocate the concentration of the business towards their customer and their product becomes the supplementary aspect. The implementation of CRM makes the business process organize, systematize, effective and efficient, and can specifically meet the needs and requirements of the customers. In addition, the organizational culture also comes under the consequence and there is a modification felt in the culture of the enterprise (Thomas & Southern Illinois University Carbondale, pp. 121-130, 2007). Conclusion & Recommendations Conclusively, CRM is a solution that has gained the popularity in the whole world and numerous organizations have implemented the CRM software all around the globe amongst which Bedfordshire County Council and IBM are two well-known examples that will be very effective in concluding this report. IBM is one of the leading, old, and giant enterprises that are technology-based organization. Due to being such a huge corporate, one of the concerns of IBM was that it was managing and administering numerous subdivisions that were not on a single platform or a centralized database. The departments did not come under integration with each other and the software running for some became outdated and obsolete, while some departments implemented the advanced systems. IBM was a customer of CRM solution previously for some of its processes that included the technical support for its call centers, therefore they thought for implementation of CRM solution for their marketing and sales as well. This way they were able to assimilate their business processes under one platform and CRM is now providing IBM with a single database related to their marketing and customers in diverse languages and multiple currencies (Mukerjee, pp. 139-140, 2007). With the growing demand of the technology in all fields of life, the government and public agencies are also getting their operations technology based and with the popularity of CRM, these agencies are looking for the implementation of CRM application, as they comprehended the possible benefits of CRM that it provides to these agencies. Amongst them is the UK’s Bedfordshire County Council, which found the need of CRM implementation due to its noteworthy and considerable expansion and development, and dramatic increase in shifting economic value. Bedfordshire Council implemented the CRM solution in order to improve and increase its internal relations, dealings and interactions as well as with other organizations and the general community people (Tomkinson, pp. 43, 2007). To sum up, the report included discussion on various aspects of Customer Relationship Management. In particular, it is an observation that organizations usually put efforts in a blinded direction that results in unproductive outcomes; however, it is a recommendation that executives should play a significant role in considering every aspect of the abovementioned discussion that will enable the organization in building a strong and long-term relationship with the customers. References Anderson, George. 2006. Sams Teach Yourself Sap In 24 Hours, 2/E. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd. Bock, Michael. 2010. The Advantages and Disadvantages of Relationship Management: How Can a Company Integrate Recent Research Findings in Order to Make Its CRM System More Efficient? GRIN Verlag. Brown, Laura, and Gravely, John. 2003. Special edition using Microsoft CRM. Que Publishing. Buttle, Francis. 2008. Customer Relationship Management. Butterworth-Heinemann. Dyché, Jill. 2002. The CRM handbook: a business guide to customer relationship management. Addison-Wesley Professional. Goldenberg, Barton J. 2008. CRM in Real Time: Empowering Customer Relationships. Information Today, Inc. Goldenberg, Barton J. 2002. CRM automation. Prentice Hall Professional. Mathena, Justin, Yetter, Aaron, Hostetler, Hoss. 2008. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: implementing Customer Relationship Management. Apress. Mukerjee, Kaushik. 2007. Customers Relationship Management: A Strategic Approach to Marketing. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd. Kristin, Anderson, Carol, Kerr. 2002. Customer relationship management. McGraw-Hill Professional. Peel, Jeffrey. 2002. CRM: redefining customer relationship management. Digital Press. Reynolds, Janice. 2002. A practical guide to CRM: building more profitable customer relationships. Focal Press. Shanmugasundaram, S. 2008. Customer Relationship Management: Modern Trends and Perspectives. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd. Thomas, Michael L., Southern Illinois University Carbondale. 2007. Cause-related marketing partnerships: an application of associative learning theory principles for both short and long-term success for the brand. Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Tomkinson, Ray. 2007. Shared services in local government: improving service delivery. Gower Publishing, Ltd. Vogt, Henrik. 2009. Open Source Customer Relationship Management Solutions. Diplomica Verlag. Read More