Customer Relations Management - Essay Example

RELATIONS MANAGEMENT Selection of CRM System The proposed relations management system for the company is the sales force automation. Before delving into the major components and structure of this customer relations management system, it will be emphasized that this is selected as it makes room for as much involvement of technology based software and team work as possible (Chen and So, 2002). Generally, sales force automation, otherwise known as SFA employs the use of software to track and streamline all sales processes that take place within the company (Silk, 1998). As the focus of the company is mainly on sales of products as against the rendering of services, it would be said that he sales force automation will make a lot of sense in meeting the characteristic needs of the company by ensuring that the company is put in a position to rightly track all sale activities that take place within the company and especially about individual customers. This is said as sales force automation has a core internal system that ensures that there is contact management for identifying and recording each stage of the sales process for every other customer, right from the first contact that the customer makes with the company to the very last disposition that takes place (Humphrey, 2001). What this means is that sales force automation is going to make room for any of several customer relations management metrics to be used in measuring the outcome of the sales and its impact on the company. This may be done either by the traditional means or by use a modern marketing metrics. Marketing Plan Objectives The key objective to the marketing plan is to ensure that the company is put in a position to track the inputs of its customers by way of sales at an individualized level. Commonly, companies treat all customers as the same and so prepare a similar strategy towards their sales. Meanwhile, marketing research has showed that purchasing behavior of no two customers could be exactly the same and so it is always important that clients be looked at from an individualized perspective (Chen and So, 2002). It is also the objective of the marketing plan to find major areas of weaknesses and strengths for the company in terms of sales so that the right kind of inventory can be made to meet the exact needs of customers. In areas where there are weaknesses with sales, strategies would either have to be changed or modified. Target markets The target markets are intended to be new markets where the products of the company have not reached as at yet. This is because by making these target markets and eventually having them as part of the existing market of the company, the market size of the company will be much enlarged (Silk, 1998). As this is done, there will also be an attempt to give specialized attention to specific market settings where overall sales have generally been identified to be highly favorable. Some of these points are student campuses. Because of the history of the success that the company has attained from these markets, it will be necessary to reach more of the untapped population within those markets with the products of the company. Finally, business to business target strategy is suggested to ensure that the company begins to deal with other wholesale companies who would not just purchase products on retail or direct basis but make purchases on large scale basis to enhance the rate of sales for the company. Budget For each of the three forms of target markets identified, it is expected that there will be an entirely different budgetary allocation of funds. At this point of the budget, much of the focus will be expenditure as against income as the company needs this in the market plan to know how much it would spend in all in establishing these target markets. Among the three target markets therefore, the new location markets are expected to take the largest portion of the overall allocated budget. In percentage terms, this is expected to receive 60% allocation while the business to business market will be given the next portion of 25% allocation of available funding and student campuses receiving 15%. The idea is that the new location markets and the business to business markets are entirely new and will therefore demand that things are done from the scratch and thus the need for more fund allocation. Campaign management The campaign management shall be undertaken by use of a campaign management team to be headed by the chief marketing officer. As part of the duties and responsibility of the team, they will be entrusted with ensuring that the contents and major aspects of the company’s customer relations plan is made known to potential clients. This is a very important aspect of the marketing plan because it is only when the targeted customer base knows what they are going to get out of their business involvement with the company that there can be any guarantee that they would be willing to do business with the company. Therefore, in a wake where corporate social responsibility has become a major factor in determining customer behavior, it is necessary that customers have a fairer idea of what the company has in stock for them (Humphrey, 2001). Evaluation Evaluation of the marketing plan shall be undertaken on an external basis whereby the company shall set up a third party quality assurance team to embark on a monitoring and evaluation process for the company. The reason behind using an external third party is to ensure that there is neutrality in the evaluation process. Since the marketing goals and objectives are set by members within the company, using personnel within the company may possibly compromise the assessment that they will give to the performance and success level of the plan. This is the very reason why an external quality assurance team will be more than a necessity in monitoring and evaluating the marketing plan. But even before these professional begin their duties, an internal auditing team shall also be used for a similar evaluation so that the major task of the external team shall be to authenticate the findings of the internal audit team. Recommended Software Sale force automation has been recommended for its technology friendliness. Among the most successful vendors, salesforce.com shall be selected for its software named the sales cloud. The Sales Cloud This software functions by use of combined real-time sales tools that has been specially designed to give recordings on sales, customer profile, account history, management of marketing campaign, opportunity-related data tracking, decision making, customer communication, and other comprehensive individualized information. All of these exists in a single package known as Chatter, which also renders automated email reminder services and other scheduled services. All these functionalities take place with only a demand of a personal computer and server or modem for internet service as the hardware requirements. REFERENCE LIST Chen, C. C and So, R. W. (2002). “Exchange rate variability and the riskiness of US multinational firms: evidence form the Asian financial turmoil”, Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Vol. 12, pp. 411-428. Humphrey, W. S. (2001).Managing the Country Process. New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company Inc., Silk, S. (1998). “Automating the balanced scorecard”, Management Accounting, Vol. 79 No. 11,pp. 38-42. Read More