CRM Application

CRM Application

Overview

There are many aspects of CRM which were mistakenly thought to be capable of being implemented in isolation from each other. From the outside of the organization, a customer experiences the business as one entity operating over extended periods of time. Thus piecemeal CRM implementation can come across to the customer as unsynchronized where employees and web sites and services are acting independently of one another, yet together represent a common entity.

CRM is the philosophy, policy and coordinating strategy connecting different players within an organization so as to coordinate their efforts in creating an overall valuable series of experiences, products and services for the customer.

The different players within the organization are in identifiable groups:

1. Customer Facing Operations - The people and the technology support of processes that affect a customer's experience at the frontline interface between the customer and the organization. This can include face to face, phone, IM, chat, email, web and combinations of all media. Self-service kiosk and web self-service are doing the job of vocals and they belong here.
2. Internal Collaborative Functional Operations - The people and technology support of processes at the policy and back office which ultimately affect the activities of the Customer Facing Operations concerning the building and maintaining of customer relationships. This can include IT, billing, invoicing, maintenance, planning, marketing, advertising, finance, services planning and manufacturing.
3. External Collaboration functions - The people and technology support of processes supporting an organization and its cultivation of customer relationships that are affected by the organization's own relationship with suppliers/vendors and retail outlets/distributors. Some would also include industry cooperative networks, e.g. lobbying groups, trade associations. This is the external network foundation which supports the internal Operations and Customer facing Operations.
4. Customer Advocates and Experience Designers - Creative designers of customer experience that meet customer relationship goals of delivering value to the customer and profit to the organization (or desired outcomes and achievement of goals for non-profit and government organizations)
5. Performance Managers and Marketing Analysts - Designers of Key Performance Indicators and collectors of metrics and data so as to execute/implement marketing campaigns, call campaigns, Web strategy and keep the customer relationship activities on track. This would be the milestones and data that allow activities to be coordinated, that determine if the CRM strategy is working in delivering ultimate outcomes of CRM activities: market share, numbers and types of customers, revenue, profitability, intellectual property concerning customers preferences.
6. Customer and Employee Surveyors and Analysts - Customer Relationships are both fact driven and impression driven - the quality of an interaction is as important as the information and outcome achieved, in determining whether the relationship is growing or shrinking in value to the participants.

CRM Application Strategy

CRM Applications Integrate Business Sales, Marketing & Customer Support Functions

CRM applications constitute a powerful suite of high-end tools that help to effectively streamline business sales, marketing and customer relationship functions. Using just one user-friendly solution you can securely store data, automate key business functions, coordinate sales and marketing, improve employee performance, cut costs, and focus on maximizing customer satisfaction.

By safely maintaining customer database, CRM software applications help you to effortlessly manage customer issues. Individual preferences can be clearly recorded to enable one-to-one services. This helps to maximize customer satisfaction and loyalty, which in turn helps to improve customer retention.

Feature-rich CRM Software Application may be On-premise or Web-hosted

On-premise CRM applications are generally meant for large businesses looking for in-house CRM solutions that run on organizations secure network. With just one-time payment you can purchase the CRM application from any leading vendor based on the facilities which you are specifically looking for. However, on-premise CRM applications require extensive deployment, separate hardware, custom software plus maintenance.

Hosted CRM software applications are generally meant for small and medium-sized businesses that cannot afford the high-costs of purchasing on-premise solutions. A hosted CRM application runs in the provider's secure server and is delivered via the Internet. Without expensive hardware, software or maintenance, for just a small monthly fee you can access and use these feature-rich solutions for your entire business CRM needs.

CRM Enterprise Applications Maximize Business Interactions and Improve Customer Relationships

CRM enterprise application comes equipped with a host of interactive tools to help you manage and control business tasks from remote locations. Its easy-to-use, user-friendly interface facilities a streamlined communication between key business function areas. Sales and marketing processes can be managed, work allocation and performance monitoring is possible, project campaigns can be drafted and meaningful feedbacks can be obtained. Using CRM applications you can easily study market trends and also identify potential market in a timely manner - all of which are vital increase business ROI.

Type of CRM processes

Operational CRM

Operational CRM provides support to "front office" business processes, including sales, marketing and service. Each interaction with a customer is generally added to a customer's contact history, and staff can retrieve information on customers from the database when necessary.

One of the main benefits of this contact history is that customers can interact with different people or different contact channels in a company over time without having to describe the history of their interaction each time.

Consequently, many call centers use some kind of CRM software to support their call center agents. Operational CRM processes customer data for a variety of purposes:

1. Managing Campaigns
2. Enterprise Marketing Automation
3. Sales Force Automation

Analytical CRM

Analytical CRM analyzes customer data for a variety of purposes:

1. Design and execution of targeted marketing campaigns to optimize marketing effectiveness
2. Design and execution of specific customer campaigns, including customer acquisition, cross-selling, up-selling, retention
3. Analysis of customer behavior to aid product and service decision making (e.g. pricing, new product development etc.)
4. Management decisions, e.g. financial forecasting and customer profitability analysis
5. Prediction of the probability of customer defection (churn analysis)
6. Analytical CRM generally makes heavy use of data mining.

Collaborative CRM

The function of the Customer Interaction System or Collaborative Customer Relationship Management is to coordinate the multi-channel service and support given to the customer by providing the infrastructure for responsive and effective support to customer issues, questions, complaints, etc.

Collaborative CRM aims to get various departments within a business, such as sales, technical support and marketing, to share the useful information that they collect from interactions with customers. Feedback from a technical support center, for example, could be used to inform marketing staffers about specific services and features requested by customers. Collaborative CRM's ultimate goal is to use information collected from all departments to improve the quality of customer service.

Geographic CRM

Geographic CRM (GCRM) is a customer relation management information system which collaborates geographic information system and traditional CRM. gCRM combines data collected from route of movement, types of residence, ambient trading areas and other customer and marketing information which are matched with relevant road conditions, building formations, and a floating population. Such data are conformed with a map and is regionally analyzed with OLAP(On-Line Analytical Processing) for visualization. This enables a company to examine potential customers and manage existing customers in the region.