A narrow perspective of customer relationship management is database

marketing emphasizing the promotional aspects of marketing linked to database

efforts. Another narrow, yet relevant, viewpoint is to consider CRM only as
customer retention in which a variety of after marketing tactics is used for
customer bonding or staying in touch after the sale is made.
The core theme of all CRM and relationship marketing perspectives is its focus on
cooperative and collaborative relationships between the firm and its customers,
and/or other marketing actors.
CRM (customer relationship management) is an information industry term for
methodologies, software, and usually Internet capabilities that help an enterprise
manage customer relationships in an organized way. For example, an enterprise
might build a database about its customers that described relationships in
sufficient detail so that management, salespeople, people providing service, and
perhaps the customer directly could access information, match customer needs
with product plans and offerings, remind customers of service requirements,
know what other products a customer had purchased, and so forth. By combining
the abilities to respond directly to customer requests and to provide the
customer with a highly 5 interactive, customized experience, companies have a
greater ability today to establish, nurture, and sustain long-term customer
relationships than ever before.
The ultimate goal is to transform these relationships into greater profitability by
increasing repeat purchase rates and reducing customer acquisition costs.
Indeed, this revolution in customer relationship management or CRM.1 as it is
called, has been referred to as the new mantra of marketing.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2013/06/18/gartner-predicts-crm-willbe-a-36b-market-by-2017/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2014/05/06/gartners-crm-marketshare-update-shows-41-of-crm-systems-are-saas-based-with-salesforcedominating-market-growth/
http://www.crmswitch.com/crm-industry/crm-industry-history/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2014/05/06/gartners-crm-marketshare-update-shows-41-of-crm-systems-are-saas-based-with-salesforcedominating-market-growth/
Traditionally, marketers have been trained to acquire customers, either new ones
who have not bought the product category before or those who are currently
competitors customers. This has required heavy doses of mass advertising and
price-oriented promotions to customers and channel members. Today, the tone
of the conversation has changed from customer acquisition to retention. This
requires a different mindset and a 3 different and new set of tools. A good

thought experiment for an executive audience is to ask them how much they
spend and/or focus on acquisition versus retention activities
CRM requires an integration of a firm's resources; people, operations and
marketing capabilities to deliver added value to the customers. CRM should
provide businesses and organizations with a single view of their customers and
across irrespective of the interactive channel or medium through which the
customer accesses the service or product. For example, a business (e.g. hotel)
customers profile and personal references should be accessible to the business
(or hotel) irrespective of channel i.e. whether the customer books online, calls in
or walks into any location should not make a difference to the service provided
based on the personal profile of the business client. It is enabled through:
Information Processes Technology Applications
Customer Relationship Management Model 15 CREATE A DATA BASE ANALYSIS
CUSTOMER SELECTION CUSTOMER TARGETING RELATIONSHIP MARKETING
PRIVACY ISSUES METRICS Customer Retention Programs CUSTOMER
RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT SATISFACTION 16 CUSTOMER SERVICE FREQUENCY/
LOYALTY PROGRAMS CUSTOMIZATION REWARDS PROGRAMS COMMUNITY
BUILDING
file:///C:/Users/HP/Desktop/28187307-Customer-Relationship-ManagementProject-Report.pdf
Architecture of CRM There are three parts of application architecture of CRM: 21
1. Operational - automation to the basic business processes (marketing, sales,
service) 2. Analytical - support to analyze customer behavior, implements
business intelligence aliketechnology 3. Collaborative - ensures the contact with
customers (phone, email, fax, web, SMS, post, in person) 1. Operational CRM
Operational CRM means supporting the "front office" business processes, which
include customer contact (sales, marketing and service). Tasks resulting from
these processes are forwarded to resources responsible for them, as well as the
information necessary for carrying out the tasks and interfaces to back-end
applications are being provided and activities with customers are being
documented for further reference. Operational CRM provides the following
benefits: Delivers personalized and efficient marketing, sales, and service
through multi-channel collaboration Enables a 360-degree view of your
customer while you are interacting with them Sales people and service
engineers can access complete history of all customer interaction with your
company, regardless of the touch point. The operational part of CRM typically
involves three general areas of business: Sales force automation (SFA) SFA
automates some of the company's critical sales and sales force management
functions, for example, lead/account management, contact management, quote
management, forecasting, sales administration, keeping track of customer
preferences, buying habits, and demographics, as well as performance
management. SFA tools are designed to improve field sales productivity. Key
infrastructure requirements of SFA are mobile synchronization and integrated
product configuration. 22 Customer service and support (CSS) CSS automates

some service requests, complaints, product returns, and information requests.

Traditional internal help desk and traditional inbound call-center support for
customer inquiries are now evolved into the "customer interaction center" (CIC),
using multiple channels (Web, phone/fax, face-to-face, kiosk, etc). Key
infrastructure requirements of CSS include computer telephony integration (CTI)
which provides high volume processing capability, and reliability. Enterprise
marketing automation (EMA) EMA provides information about the business
environment, including competitors, industry trends, and macro-environmental
variables. It is the execution side of campaign and lead management. The intent
of EMA applications is to improve marketing campaign efficiencies. Functions
include demographic analysis, variable segmentation, and predictive modeling
occurs on the analytical (Business Intelligence) side. Integrated CRM software is
often also known as "front office solutions." This is because they deal directly
with the customer. Many call centers use CRM software to store all of their
customer's details. When a customer calls, the system can be used to retrieve
and store information relevant to the customer. By serving the customer quickly
and efficiently, and also keeping all information of a customer in one place, a
company aims to make cost savings, and also encourage new customers. CRM
solutions can also be used to allow customers to perform their own service via a
variety of communication channels. For example, you might be able to check
your bank balance via your WAP phone without ever having to talk to a person,
saving money for the company, and saving your time. 2. Analytical CRM 23 In
analytical CRM, data gathered within operational CRM and/or other sources are
analyzed to segment customers or to identify potential to enhance client
relationship. Customer analysis typically can lead to targeted campaigns to
increase share of customer's wallet. Examples of Campaigns directed towards
customers are: Acquisition: Cross-sell, up-sell Retention: Retaining customers
who leave due to maturity or attrition. Information: Providing timely and
regular information to customers. Modification: Altering details of the
transactional nature of the customers' relationship. Analysis typically covers
but is not limited to: Decision support: Dashboards, reporting, metrics,
performance etc. Predictive modeling of customer attributes Strategy and
Research Analysis of Customer data may relate to one or more of the following
analyses: Contact channel optimization Contact Optimization Customer
Acquisition / Reactivation / Retention Customer Segmentation Customer
Satisfaction Measurement / Increase Sales Coverage Optimization Fraud
Detection and analysis Financial Forecasts Pricing Optimization Product
Development Program Evaluation Risk Assessment and Management Data
collection and analysis is viewed as a continuing and iterative process. Ideally,
business decisions are refined over time, based on feedback from earlier analysis
and decisions. Therefore, most successful analytical CRM projects take
advantage of a data warehouse to provide suitable data. Business Intelligence is
a related discipline offering some more functionality as separate application
software. 24 3. Collaborative CRM Collaborative CRM facilitates interactions with
customers through all channels (personal, letter, fax, phone, web, e-mail) and
supports co-ordination of employee teams and channels. It is a solution that

brings people, processes and data together so companies can better serve and
retain their customers. The data/activities can be structured, unstructured,
conversational and/or transactional in nature. Collaborative CRM provides the
following benefits: Enable efficient productive customer interactions across all
communications channels Enables web collaboration to reduce customer
service costs Integrates call centers enabling multi-channel personal customer
interaction Integrates view of the customer while interaction at the transaction
level

How CRM is Used Today

CRM solutions provides the business data to help you provide services or products that your customers want,
provide better customer service, help sales teams to cross-sell and up-sell more effectively, close deals, retain
current customers and to better understand who your customers are. Organizations frequently look for ways to
personalize online experiences (a process also referred to as mass customization) through tools such as helpdesk software, email organizers and different types of enterprise applications.

CRM Usability
CRM software has typically been considered difficult to use. As an enterprise application, stability, scalability and
security has been the primary focal points of CRM solutions. Usability, according to this Enterprise Apps Today
article, was not a key part of CRM which often resulted in failed software projects, largely attributed to undue
complexity. With increased adoption of CRM applications, however, today's CRM software vendors make
usability a central part of their products. To improve usability many vendors today focus on usability issues to
make CRM workflow as simple and intuitive as possible, to offer navigation that can be performed in three clicks
or less and to ensure CRM software is designed to suit the needs of sales teams.

The CRM Strategy

Customer relationship management is often thought of as a business strategy that enables businesses to

improve in a number of areas. The CRM strategy allows you to to following:

Understand the customer
Retain customers through better customer experience
Attract new customers
Win new clients and contracts
Increase profitably
Decrease customer management costs

The Impact of Technology on CRM

Technology and the Internet have changed the way companies approach customer relationship strategies.
Advances in technology have changed consumer buying behavior, and today there are many ways for
companies to communicate with customers and to collect data about them. With each new advance in
technology especially the proliferation of self-service channels like the Web and smartphones customer
relationships are being managed electronically.

Many aspects of customer relationship management rely heavily on technology; however, the strategies and
processes of a good CRM system will collect, manage and link information about the customer with the goal of
letting you market and sell services effectively.

The Benefits of CRM

The biggest benefit most businesses realize when moving to a CRM system comes directly from having all your
business data stored and accessed from a single location. Before CRM systems, customer data was spread out
over office productivity suite documents, email systems, mobile phone data and even paper note cards and
Rolodex entries. Storing all the data from all departments (e.g., sales, marketing, customer service and HR) in a
central location gives management and employees immediate access to the most recent data when they need it.
Departments can collaborate with ease, and CRM systems help organization to develop efficient automated
processes to improve business processes.
Other benefits include a 360-degree view of all customer information, knowledge of what customers and the
general market want, and integration with your existing applications to consolidate all business informatio

Common features of CRM software include:

Marketing automation: CRM tools withmarketing

automation capabilities can automate repetitive tasks to enhance
marketing efforts to customers at different points in the lifecycle. For

example, as sales prospects come into the system, the system might
automatically send them marketing materials, typically via email or
social media, with the goal of turning a sales lead into a full-fledged
customer.

Sales force automation: Also known as sales force

management, sales force automation is meant to prevent duplicate
efforts between a salesperson and a customer. A CRM system can help
achieve this by automatically tracking all contact and follow-ups between
both sides.

Contact center automation: Designed to reduce tedious aspects of

a contact center agent's job, contact center automation might include
pre-recorded audio that assists in customer problem-solving and
information dissemination. Various software tools that integrate with the
agent's desktop tools can handle customer requests in order to cut down
the time of calls and simplify customer service processes.

Geolocation technology, or location-based services: Some CRM

systems include technology that can create geographic marketing
campaigns based on customers' physical locations, sometimes
integrating with popular location-based GPS apps. Geolocation
technology can also be used as a networking or contact management
tool in order to find sales prospects based on location.

customer relationship management (CRM)

definition

Posted by: Margaret Rouse

WhatIs.com

Contributor(s): Tim Ehrens

This definition is part of our Essential Guide: What makes enterprise unified communications work

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Pega

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a term that refers to

practices, strategies and technologies that companies use to manage and
analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle,
with the goal of improving business relationships with customers, assisting
in customer retention and driving sales growth. CRM systems are designed
to compile information on customers across different channels -- or points
of contact between the customer and the company -- which could include
the company's website, telephone, live chat, direct mail, marketing
materials and social media. CRM systems can also give customer-facing
staff detailed information on customers' personal information, purchase
history, buying preferences and concerns.
Know Thy Customer: Sales Analytics, Forecasting and New Tools

Customer data analytics can reap significant

financial rewards for your organizations sales,
marketing and customer service departments.

With so much data to contend with, companies

often struggle with making sense of information
from customers, public records and external
databases. Luckily, we evaluate the newest
sales and marketing tools making the process
easier for IT managers and sales executives.

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CRM software
CRM software consolidates customer information and documents into a
single CRM database so business users can more easily access and
manage it. The other main functions of this software include recording
various customer interactions (over email, phone calls, social media or
other channels, depending on system capabilities), automating various
workflow processes such as tasks, calendars and alerts, and giving
managers the ability to track performance and productivity based on
information logged within the system.
Common features of CRM software include:

Marketing automation: CRM tools withmarketing

automation capabilities can automate repetitive tasks to enhance

marketing efforts to customers at different points in the lifecycle. For

example, as sales prospects come into the system, the system might
automatically send them marketing materials, typically via email or
social media, with the goal of turning a sales lead into a full-fledged
customer.

Sales force automation: Also known as sales force

management, sales force automation is meant to prevent duplicate
efforts between a salesperson and a customer. A CRM system can help
achieve this by automatically tracking all contact and follow-ups between
both sides.

Contact center automation: Designed to reduce tedious aspects of

a contact center agent's job, contact center automation might include
pre-recorded audio that assists in customer problem-solving and
information dissemination. Various software tools that integrate with the
agent's desktop tools can handle customer requests in order to cut down
the time of calls and simplify customer service processes.

Geolocation technology, or location-based services: Some CRM

systems include technology that can create geographic marketing
campaigns based on customers' physical locations, sometimes
integrating with popular location-based GPS apps. Geolocation
technology can also be used as a networking or contact management
tool in order to find sales prospects based on location.

The CRM technology market

The four main vendors of CRM systems
are Salesforce.com, Microsoft, SAP and Oracle. Other providers are
popular among small- to mid-market businesses, but these four tend to be
the choice of large corporations.
http://in.pcmag.com/software/43744/feature/what-is-crm