Millenium Business Solution

Archive for the ‘CRM program’ Category

CRM The term comes from the acronym Customer Relationship Management, Customer Relationship Management-Service. According to Lucio Tere (2005) CRM is an approach that allows the organization to focus on the client to interact more effectively with it, identify its importance in the organization and keep him from going to competitors. On the other hand as Ariel CRM Valero (2006) is a business philosophy that arises in understanding and anticipating the requirements of consumers, both existing and potential, so it can be understood as a business strategy focused on the client and their needs.

Having the knowledge of the needs and desires of clients represents a competitive advantage in the market, so companies can maintain a high level in customer loyalty and retention as well as easy to attract new consumers. This can be easily translated into sales. According to studies Kankanhalli, Tan, Kwok-Kee (2005), strategic management of organizational knowledge is a key factor to help the organization maintain a competitive advantage in volatile environments. Technology, specifically Information Technology (IT) can improve CRM processes. As mentioned by Boyle (2004), properly administered, the raw data of customers, may be driven by CRM software and become a cohesive intelligence that can be analyzed to predict trends and returns, find growth opportunities, make key decisions for administration, justify expenditures and other marketing resources.

Implementation of CRM

Lopez and Shaw (2002) suggest that effective implementation of CRM can improve customer relationships, to know them better and reduce the costs and increase the loyalty of existing ones, which in both cases, meaning more sales and more profitability for business. Bradshaw and Brash (2001) argue that CRM applications should not only be functionally integrated in the customer service but also in the functions of the organization such as manufacturing and advertising.

Brown (2001) proposes five elements required for successful implementation of CRM:
a) Strategy. There are 6 types of strategies that affect CRM program: the channel of segmentation, pricing, marketing, the branding and advertising. The first three are the most impact. The strategy of channel determines the medium used to convey the offer to the customer. The segmentation strategy will determine the structure of clients and, consequently, the marketing organization. The pricing strategy is the most important differentiation in a market of generic products and determine more than half the value of the offer.

b) Segmentation. Refers to the classification of customers according to their needs for the determination of marketing activities to ensure the efficient use of segmentation companies must develop the right set of formulas for modeling customer behavior.

c) Technology. CRM functionality depends on the data and information sharing. That’s why creating a single integrated database-oriented logic operations is the key technical considerations.

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