Advantages of CRM solutions:
- All information about the customer is kept stored in databases.
- Businesses can analyse the stored data, look into customer preferences and understand their behaviour.
- The system enables easy access to the data across departments that may be geographically widely dispersed.
- It also enables easy access for customers in the form of online transactions.
- It makes speedy personalised communications possible that enables the customer to feel valued and special even though in reality the customer may be one amongst many.
How CRM helps Business Development:
- Long Term Value: Business development aims at creation of long term value. It is about creating opportunities for that value to persist over the long-term, to keep the floodgates open so that value can flow indefinitely. Since CRM uses various tools and technology to widen the customer base and retain the existing ones it seeks to add long term value to a business.
- Customers: Customers are the people who pay for products and services distributed by a business and without them there would be no business to develop. CRM aims at analysing database of customers to look into customer preferences and understand their behaviour in order to deepen and enrich relationships with them.
- Markets: Markets are defined by geography, demography, lifestyles and buying mindset. Identifying opportunities to reach new customers by entering into new markets is one important gateway to business development. CRM by aiming to store and retrieve customer data by geographical locations, demography, customer preferences and behaviour is a valuable marketing tool for business development.
- Relationships: Any successful business development effort relies on an underlying foundation of strong relationships. A long term flow of value is dependent on building, managing, and leveraging relationships. As the name suggests, relationship management is the key customer-oriented feature of CRM which relies on customer input and communications with customers to solve all customer issues. Looking from this angle CRM is an effective strategy for building and nurturing relationships.
Customer Relationship Marketing and Business Development: It has already been discussed above how Customer Relationship Management plays a profound role on Business Development. Likewise, Customer Relationship Marketing also relates in the same way to the four defining features of Business Development viz. Long-term Value, Customers, Markets and Relationships. Hence, it can easily be concluded that the Customer relationship marketing has an equally important effect in development of business.
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