CRM is a term that is often referred to in marketing. However, there is no complete agreement upon a single definition. This is because CRM can be considered from a number of perspectives. In summary, the three perspectives are:
- Information Technology (IT) perspective
- The Customer Life Cycle (CLC) perspective
- Business Strategy perspective
- CRM is the application of a well-developed customer strategy, based on a high level of customer awareness, to a properly matched set of CRM technologies and services.
- CRM is the business buzzword on the Internet these days. Customer Relationship Management promises faster customer service at lower costs, higher customer satisfaction and from this, better customer retention and ultimately customer loyalty.
- CRM is a strategic approach that is concerned with creating improved shareholder value through the development of appropriate relationships with key customers and customer segments. CRM unites the potential of relationship marketing strategies and IT to create profitable, long-term relationships with customers and other key stakeholders. CRM provides enhanced opportunities to use data and information to both understand customers and create value.
CRM Systems with E-Business
Business-to-Business (B2B) CRM
The Business-to-Business (B2B) CRM enables organizations to manage the whole customer/partner lifecycle and rapidly establish a selling channel, whether merely conventional or online through web-based applications (E-Sales).
- Marketing Automation
Marketing automation creates a beneficial bind between service and sales organizations. The CRM software solution should be able to deliver on a range of goals in multiple environments (such as business-to-business and business-to-consumer).
- Sales Force Automation (SFA)
Sales Force Automation (SFA) is the automation of the sales cycle by linking your outside sales, inside sales, technical support, management, and service and customer care. The goal is to increase communication and hence efficiency between sales and support teams.
- Customer Service and Support
Customer Service and Support helps better understand one’s customers and anticipate their interest in an enterprise’s products and/or services through processes occurring throughout the marketing, sales, and service stages.
- Partner Management
Partner management supports, usually through a web portal dedicated to partners, basic functionality for partner management, such as partner information management (create, search, update, and delete), opportunity and lead source tracking and automatic notification, opportunity and lead assignment and automatic notification, all of these based on user-definable rules and workflow.
- Contract Management and Creation
The Contract Management and Creation section enables organizations to manage, whether electronically or in a more conventional manner, contract lifecycle from contract creation and modification, to contract expiration and renewal, while supporting for multiple currencies; all of these based on user-definable rules and workflow.
- Project and Team Management
Project and Team Management enables organizations to manage project lifecycle and project team, from project kickoff and role definition to personnel assignment, project execution and completion; all of these based on user-definable rules and workflow.
Business-to-Consumer (B2C) CRM
Business-to-Consumer (B2C) CRM enables organizations to manage the whole consumer lifecycle, interact properly and successfully with their customers, and rapidly establish a selling channel.
- Internet Sales
Internet sales enables visitors to look for and select products of their interest, and complete their purchase online. To do so, the CRM software solution should provide an on-line product catalog with real-time price and availability information, shopping basket management with secure payment transaction processing, and profile information management (registration, subscription, shipping and billing addresses, purchase history).
- Email Response Management
Email Response Management ensures management of incoming emails from customers with automatic guided-through questionnaires and outbound emails combined with customer’s data. It includes rule-based routing with reporting capabilities.
- B2C Analytics and Business Intelligence
B2C Analytics and Business Intelligence (BI) are analytical applications using complex rules-based techniques, neural networks, pattern recognition and other profile settings within peer groups to identify certain transactions and set thresholds for what is considered “normal” shopping behavior.
Other CRM-Related Application Areas
Throughout the customer lifecycle (suspect, prospect, visitor, user, lead, client), the latest CRM software solutions allow you to gather, compute, analyze, report, and extract all kinds of information related to your customers and their behavior.
- Email Marketing Email marketing is the electronic form of direct marketing. mailing list management (recipients), mailing campaign management (messages sent), mailing content management (message content), mailing bounce management (messages received), mailing tracking and report management (campaign efficiency).
- Relationship capital management (RCM) empowers sales organizations to drastically accelerate their sales cycle by rapidly inventorying and charting their social and personal relationships, whether internal (local relationship) or external (global relationship).
- Survey software are business intelligence tools aiming at increasing product acceptance, and customer loyalty by ensuring that customer needs are better understood and addressed.
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