CRM - STRATEGY MANAGEMENT OF THE ORGANISATION
CRM is as much about your internal organisation as it is about your customers. Implementing
CRM will affect everyone from your staff, your shareholders, your partners and your suppliers. It will affect:
People: Do not underestimate the cultural aspects of a CRM strategy. Some people may
feel uncomfortable with new methods of working. Understand these issues and take steps before a groundswell can build. Communicate with your people at every stage.
Business process: While your current business processes can define the way you interact with customers and to some degree represent a differentiator between you and your competition, they must be re-assessed in the light of changes to Customer Strategy.
Channels: You may need to consider alternatives to how your customers interact with you. Is it appropriate to send a salesperson out or have a physical office for the customer to visit? How much business can you do over the Web or via a call center?
Data: Implementing CRM is about empowering staff to satisfy customers better. To do this they need access to consolidated and clean data. Do you have it? Is it easily accessible? Is it valuable? Don't collect data for the sake of it. Data soon goes out of date. Make appropriate data available back to staff and customers i.e. give them back some value.
Technical Infrastructure: Hand in hand with deploying new software are considerations of new hardware, database platforms and operating systems.
Measures such as the identification of your most and least profitable customer segments, average lifetime values by segment, potential value in each segment are all valuable in getting at the underlying return on investment but do not take into account the soft benefits.
CRM is as much about your internal organisation as it is about your customers. Implementing
CRM will affect everyone from your staff, your shareholders, your partners and your suppliers. It will affect:
People: Do not underestimate the cultural aspects of a CRM strategy. Some people may
feel uncomfortable with new methods of working. Understand these issues and take steps before a groundswell can build. Communicate with your people at every stage.
Business process: While your current business processes can define the way you interact with customers and to some degree represent a differentiator between you and your competition, they must be re-assessed in the light of changes to Customer Strategy.
Channels: You may need to consider alternatives to how your customers interact with you. Is it appropriate to send a salesperson out or have a physical office for the customer to visit? How much business can you do over the Web or via a call center?
Data: Implementing CRM is about empowering staff to satisfy customers better. To do this they need access to consolidated and clean data. Do you have it? Is it easily accessible? Is it valuable? Don't collect data for the sake of it. Data soon goes out of date. Make appropriate data available back to staff and customers i.e. give them back some value.
Technical Infrastructure: Hand in hand with deploying new software are considerations of new hardware, database platforms and operating systems.
Measures such as the identification of your most and least profitable customer segments, average lifetime values by segment, potential value in each segment are all valuable in getting at the underlying return on investment but do not take into account the soft benefits.