CRM System

It’s impossible to state precisely what Customer Relationship Management (CRM) means to everyone. The term has been applied to almost every element of business that even remotely interacts with a customer. In its infancy, CRM System was a series of mainframe or server-based applications specific to sales, marketing and support business functions. The applications were lightweight by today's standards and did little more than capture and file critical data.

But as cultural boundaries within organizations weakened, individual fiefdoms of information gave way to sophisticated applications that could span business functions. By doing so, these CRM System applications created the vision of a single view of the customer. For the first time, organizations could track and analyze shifting customer needs, link marketing campaigns to sales results, and monitor sales activities for improved forecasting accuracy and manufacturing demand.

CRM System Evolution: CRM System has evolved since its earliest incarnation, originally driven by an inside-out focus, through three phases of evolution: technology, integration and process. Recently have we seen a major leap forward to a fourth phase: customer-driven CRM — an outside-in approach that has intriguing financial promise.

CRM System Technology: In its earliest incarnation, CRM System meant applying automation to existing sales, marketing, support and channel processes as organizations attempted to improve communications, planning, opportunity and campaign management, forecasting, problem solving, and to share best practices. To some degree, it worked. However, automating poorly performing activities or processes rarely improves the quality of the outcome. So, for the most part, the quality of the return on investment (ROI) was meager — if measurable at all. The promise of the technology was there, but few organizations were realizing the pinnacle of performance. The metric of success was increased efficiency in sales, marketing, support and channel processes.

CRM System Integration: By developing cross-functional integration, supported by data warehousing and shared roles and responsibilities, organizations began to create a customized view of the customer. Support issues, Web hits, sales calls and marketing inquiries started building a deeper understanding of each customer and allowed aggressive organizations to adapt their tactics to fit individual needs. CRM System Integration focused around two primary components:

Make it easier to do business with the seller: Instead of operational silos that inhibited superior CRM System, the organization as a whole took ownership and responsibility for customer satisfaction. With a single view of the customer, it was much easier for anyone to respond to sales opportunities or impending support issues and take appropriate steps. Expected benefits are to improve retention and lower support costs.

Predictive modeling: Data mining of an aggregate of corporate knowledge and the customer contact experience was used to improve operational and sales performance. By applying complex algorithms to a history of purchasing or inquiry characteristics, it became practical to predict the demands of individual customers. Up-selling, cross-selling, even the ability to preempt potential problems, was now possible for all customer-facing representatives. Expected benefits are to have better cross-selling/up-selling and improved product offerings or delivery.