E-CRM

Prepared for B. Com 4th Semester,

2009
St. Xavier’s College

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 1

GE
 What is CRM?
 Customer relationship management(CRM)
means moving from ‘inside –out’ (seller-
driven enterprise) to ‘outside-in’
(customer-driven enterprise).
 In order to achieve customer satisfaction
objective, the companies try to focus on
the customers and build a long-term
relationship with them.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 2

GE
 A deep understanding of customers is the
primary component for making the goal of
CRM a reality
 To simplify it even further, CRM is all
about getting, growing, and keeping
customers.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 3

GE
 What is E-CRM?
 E-CRM uses electronic media to
integrate and simplify customer-
related business processes. It ensures
that a company’s various divisions
share a single view of customer, and
that the customers get a single view
of the company.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 4

GE
 Definition
 E-CRM may be defined as an integrated
sales, marketing and service strategy that
focuses on managing all of the ways that
an organization deals with its existing and
potential new customers. It uses
information technology to create a cross-
functional enterprise system that
integrates and automates many of the
customer-related processes in sales,
marketing and customer services.
IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 5
GE
 In other words, it is an integrated cross-
functional information system that
includes a set of tools to integrate and
automate customer-related processes in
sales, marketing and customer services to
provide fast, convenient and reliable
services to its customer.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 6

GE
 Features of E-CRM
 E-CRM is not just a set of technology. It is a
combination of business process and
technology.
 It is an integration framework and business
strategy, not a product.
 It comprises the acquisition and deployment of
knowledge about customers to enable a
company to sell more of their product or
service more efficiently.
 In-depth analysis of customer behavior creates
a customer information platform.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 7

GE
 It encompasses a network of “touch
points” by which the organization can
establish, cultivate and maintain a long-
lasting and mutually beneficial interactions
with customer.
 It requires a set of integrated software
applications to deal with all aspects of
customer interactions and also access
channels (primarily internet).

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 8

GE
 Goals of E-CRM business
framework

1. Use of existing relationship to grow

revenue
2. Use of integrated information for
excellent service
3. Introduction of consistent, replicable
channel processes and procedures.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 9

GE
 1. Use of existing relationship to
grow revenue
 Existing relationship with the customers
can not only be nurtured by using e-CRM
as a business strategy, it can further be
strengthened by making use of
comprehensive view of the customers.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 10

GE
2. Use of integrated information for
excellent service
 E-CRM involves the integration of all kinds of
customer-related information. This kind of
integration can be utilized for customer’s
satisfaction in the best possible ways.
 Integration of information can also be used to
understand individual customer’s needs and
preferences and the products and services for
that customer can be designed accordingly.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 11

GE
 3. Introduction of consistent,
replicable channel processes and
procedures.
 Since e-CRM offers many contact channels
for customers, employees of different
departments come into contact with the
customers directly and or indirectly during
transactions. So, transaction processes are
required to be improved and procedural
consistency is required.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 12

GE
 Three phases of CRM
 Acquiring new customers
 Enhancing the profitability of existing
customers
 Retaining profitable customers for life

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 13

GE
 Acquiring new customers

 New customers are acquired by (i) making

differentiation in terms of preference-
based designing of products and services
for each customer; (ii) innovating new
products/services by understanding
customer’ need and responding to that
need; and (iii) creating convenience for
customers for getting information and
making on-line transaction.
IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 14
GE
 Retaining profitable customers for
life
 It focuses on service adaptability
delivering what customers want, not what
the market requires the customer to
accept. Keeping regular contact with the
customers, offering loyalty incentives and
designing more competitive prices for the
loyal customers are some of the efforts
towards customer retention.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 15

GE
 Types of E-CRM
 1. Operational
 2. Analytical
 3. Collaborative.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 16

GE
 1. Operational E-CRM.
 It involves the automation of horizontally
integrated business processes.
 It focuses on data collection, query, and
reporting.
 E-CRM covers the front-end customer-facing
applications and the operational components
include sales automation, call centre automation,
channel automation and proposal generation.
 Operational e-CRM can be integrated with
financial and HR functions of ERP applications;
thereby providing an end-to-end functionality (as
ERP forms the back-end).
IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 17
GE
 Analytical E-CRM
 transforms Operational CRM data into "actionable"
customer information. Analytic CRM tools provide
companies with the means to manage their customer-
facing processes and help them acquire, grow, and
retain customers.
 It makes use of data-mining models as front-end
tools and builds a data warehouse in the back-
end by using transactional and marketing
research data.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 18

GE
 Data mining is the process of sorting
through large amounts of data and picking
out relevant information. Data mining
software is one of a number of analytical
tools for analyzing data.. Technically, data
mining is the process of finding
correlations or patterns among dozens of
fields in large relational databases. For
example, data mining software can be
used to analyze buying patterns of
customers in shopping malls.
IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 19
GE
 Data warehouse is a repository of an
organization's electronically stored data.
Data warehouses are designed to facilitate
reporting and analysis. However, the
means to retrieve and analyze data, to
extract, transform and load data, and to
manage dictionary data are also
considered essential components of a data
warehousing system.
IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 20
GE
 Customer data captured within operational
components of e-CRM system are stored,
retrieved and analysed for performance
management and result measurement.
 Analytical components include decision
support tools and customer behaviour
modeling.
 On the basis of analytical capability of e-
CRM customers can be differentiated and
segmented. Market trends also can better
be understood.
IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 21
GE
 Collaborative E-CRM
 Collaborative CRM Technologies are all
about communicating and sharing
information within the company, with
business partners and suppliers, and with
customers. (See Figure 3.) These
technologies are primarily Internet-based
(e-CRM) tools which include:

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 22

GE
 Interactive response communications (email, fax, and
wireless).
 Real-time communications (conferencing, instant
messaging/chat, and voice over IP).
 Web content personalization.
 Information management and sharing using
"Enterprise Information Portals" (EIPs). EIPs allow
companies to increase collaboration among corporate
employees, business partners, suppliers, and
customers by integrating and managing dynamic
free-form content, Internet services, and enterprise
application information.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 23

GE
 As the understanding of the customer
improves, the richness of information and
services being offered to them also
improves, adapting to their particular
interests and reflecting the timeliness of
their needs.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 24

GE
 Functional Components of E-
CRM
 E_CRM is based on three major functional
modules. These are:
 1. Sales Force Automation
 2. Marketing Automation
 3. Customer Service and Support.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 25

GE
1. Sales Force Automation(SFA)

 Critical functions of SFA include lead

management, contact management,
account management, configuration of
products for price quotation, forecasting,
win/loss analysis and sales administration.
SFA systems enable sales people to find
and retrieve information more quickly than
what they could do by consulting paper
catalogue.
IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 26
GE
 Benefits of SFA may be mentioned as
follows: (i) It improves customer
management by helping to keep track of
customers. (ii) It helps to reduce the cost
of sales by reducing the time used by
sales people. (iii) It improves sales
planning, reporting and scheduling. (iv) It
facilitates rapid, accurate and inexpensive
communication among sales people and
corporate office.
IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 27
GE
2. Marketing Automation(MA)

 Marketing application module of e-CRM attempts

to increase the efficiency of the marketing
programme.. It complements SFA application
and provides certain functions unique to
marketing. These functions include: (i) campaign
planning, execution and analyses; (ii) list
generation and management; (iii) budgeting and
forecasting; (iv) lead tracking, distribution and
management.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 28

GE
 Marketing Automation involves three
major activities:
 High-end campaign management. It is
involved in B to C marketing to assist
campaign planning, management and
tracking.
 Web-driven campaign execution. It focuses
mostly on B to B market and uses the
internet as campaign execution vehicle.
 Marketing-oriented analysis. It focuses on
all major aspects of sales and marketing.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 29

GE
3. Customer Service and Support

 This addresses after-sale activities such as help

desks, call centres and field-service operations.
 It includes activities such as order tracking,
repair scheduling and dispatching, service
agreements and contract, and service request
management.
 The customer self-service feature enables the
customer to access account information, product
information, order history, account balance etc.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 30

GE
 Major benefits of CSS may be mentioned as
follows:
 Relationship with the customer is strengthened
 Call centre efficiency is increased through
automated call routing, call tracking,
entitlement processing and problem
resolution.
 Costs of service and support are decreased by
extending Web-based support directly to the
customer.
 Excellent customer service can be delivered by
centralizing all kinds of customer contact
information.
IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 31
GE
Strategies for E-CRM
solutions

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 32

GE
 Stages for development

 Stage I : Customer information

environment
 Stage II: Customer value orientation
 Stage III: Customer loyalty

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 33

GE
 Important strategies

 From segmentation to mass

customization: This strategy involves (i)
initial segmentation of the customers on
the basis of the value and then by the
needs or preferences; and (ii) customizing
products and services to suit individual
needs of all the customers.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 34

GE
 Customer profitability: It includes
different marketing programmes for
different customers. Knowing the value of
each customer helps to determine the
optimal marketing efforts required for that
customer. Data mining techniques help to
decide the current and potential level of
customer profitability, which can guide the
company in its marketing efforts.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 35

GE
 Customer loyalty: Customer loyalty
plays an important role in the growth of
business. If customer is satisfied with the
service he/she is even willing to pay a
premium, Customer loyalty also reduces
the cost of sales as efforts for awareness
are not required for the existing products.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 36

GE
 Personalisation : It helps to identify the
needs and requirements of individual
customers. It includes all aspects of
customer interaction a unique and
beneficial experience, wherever the
interaction takes place.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 37

GE
 Conclusion

 Customer relationship management is

being increasingly used to identify, attract
and retain valuable customers. The 4R’s
of marketing – retention, relationship,
referrals and recovery - are of critical
importance in the establishment of
successful marketing programme. These
are facilitated by e-CRM practices.

IT DEPT, B.COM, ST. XAVIER'S COLLE 38

GE