Advantage Crm 5y1u1

Advances in the 1990’s In the 1990’s companies began to improve on Customer Relationship Management by making it more of a two-way street. Instead of simply gathering data for their own use, they began giving back to their customers not only in of the obvious goal of improved customer service, but in incentives, gifts and other perks for customer loyalty. This was the beginning of the now familiar frequent flyer programs, bonus points on credit cards and a host of other resources that are based on CRM tracking of customer activity and spending patterns. CRM was now being used as a way to increase sales ively as well as through active improvement of customer service.

1.4 Introduction Customer Relationship Management - CRM The generally accepted purpose of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is to enable organizations to better serve its customers through the introduction of reliable processes and procedures for interacting with those customers. In today's competitive business environment, a successful CRM strategy cannot be implemented by only installing and integrating a software package designed to CRM processes. A holistic approach to CRM is vital for an effective and efficient CRM policy. This approach includes training of employees, a modification of business processes based on customers' needs and an adoption of relevant IT-systems (including soft- and maybe hardware) and/or usage of ITServices that enable the organization or company to follow its CRM strategy. CRM-Services can even redundantize the acquisition of additional hardware or CRM software-licences. The term CRM is used to describe either the software or the whole business strategy oriented on customer needs. The second one is the description which is correct. The main misconception of CRM is that it is only software, instead of whole business strategy.

Major areas of CRM focus on service automated processes, personal information gathering and processing, and self-service. It attempts to integrate and automate the various customer serving processes within a company. There are three parts of application architecture of CRM: •

operational - automation to the basic business processes (marketing, sales, service)

•

analytical - to analyse customer behaviour, implements business intelligence alike

technology •

cooperational - ensures the with customers (phone, email, fax, web...)

Operational part of CRM typically involves three general areas of business. They are (according to Gartner Group) a Enterprise marketing automation (EMA), Sales force automation (SFA) and a Customer service and (CSS). The marketing information part provides information about the business environment, including competitors, industry trends, and macroenviromental variables. The sales force management part automates some of the company's sales and sales force management functions. It keeps track of customer preferences, buying habits, and demographics, and also sales staff performance. The customer service part automates some service requests, complaints, product returns, and information requests.