CRM 2011

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COMPANY PROFILE
Company Name
Sony Corporation

Founded
May 7, 1946

Headquarters 1-7-1 Konan, Minato-Ku, Tokyo 108-0075, Japan

Representative Corporate Executive Officers

Chairman , CEO and President Howard Stringer Vice Chairman Ryoji Chubachi

Major Products

Audio Home Audio, Portable Audio, etc. Video Video Cameras, digital still cameras, and DVD- Video players/recorders , and Digital-broadcasting receiving systems Televisions LCD Televisions Information and Communications PC, Printer system, broadcast and professional use audio/video/monitors and other professional-use equipment 2|Page

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Semiconductors LCD ,CCD and semiconductors

Electronic Components
Optical pickups , batteries , audio/video/data recording media, and data recording systems

Locations of Major Offices and Research Centres (in Japan)

Tokyo , kanagava , Miyagi

Headcount (Consolidated)
167,900 (as of March 31 , 2010)

Consolidated Sales and Operating revenue (2009)

7,214,000 million yen

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Corporate history

Establishment 1946 May: Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K. (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation), also known as Totsuko, established in Nihonbashi, Tokyo with start-up capital of 190,000 yen for the research and manufacture of telecommunications and measuring equipment. 1947 Feb: Company head office and factory relocated to Shinagawa, Tokyo. Oct: Successful commercialization and sales launch of Sony's power megaphone. 1949 Sep: Completion of first magnetic tape recorder prototype. 1950 Mar: Japan's first magnetite-coated, paper-based recording tape, Soni-Tape, launched. May: Japan's first magnetic tape recorder, the G-Type, order launched. 1954 May: Sendai plant established in Tagajo, near Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture. 1955 Feb: Decision made to use SONY logo on Totsuko products. Aug: Totsuko listed on the OTC (over-the-counter) market of the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE). Sep: Japan's first transistor radio, the TR-55, launched. 1958 Jan: Company name changed to Sony Corporation. Dec: Sony listed on the TSE.

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Challenge
Sony Ltd., established by Sony Corporation, Japan, has subsidiaries in twenty major cities all over China. Sony has established five large manufacturing centers in China with annual sales exceeding hundreds of millions US Dollars. As an important part of their internet strategy, Sony uses its website to inform and promote its products, provide personalized shopping experience, and drive both online and offline marketing activities. Sony is known for its technical leadership in implementing customer solutions and they like to constantly re-think and upgrade their systems and stay ahead of the curve. The re-design of their existing web site had these objectives: Capture customer insights and provide personalized shopping experience to attract and retain more customers Fully integrate with existing CRM and ERP systems to provide a comprehensive e-Commerce platform Provide visibility for executive stakeholders and centralized management tools for administrators Make the web site maintainable and easy to extend over time Sony selected GrapeCity to build this system for them because GrapeCity not only had long and deep experience in building e-Commerce web sites for major corporations using Microsoft technologies but they were also leading provider of ERP and CRM services. GrapeCity had successfully implemented end-to-end business solutions that integrated best of Microsoft development platform features with world-class ERP and CRM systems.

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Solution
After a careful study of their existing system and an in-depth understanding of Sonys requirements, GrapeCity chose to base the new solution on top of Microsoft Commerce Server and Microsoft SQL Server technologies. Microsoft Commerce Server includes crucial components for establishing and expanding online customer focused businesses. It allows for product catalog setup, and ongoing administration and personalization. Besides, it facilitates customer authentication and targeted content and product promotions based on customer behavior and pricing policies. Microsoft SQL Server, besides being a robust RDBMS, permits extensive OLAP and Data mining functionality, thereby facilitating better decision making.

Functionally, the new system had the following features: Flexible Product Catalog: The system used Microsoft Commerce Server to manage and publish the product catalogs. This reduced the effort and time to maintain and modify the web site over time and made the user experience consistent. It allowed making modifications to product features, price and other information at any time without requiring custom design effort. The system also supported out-of-the-box product catalogs and product search at multiple levels.

Targeted Marketing: The system deeply integrated with Sonys existing CRM system to accurately identify the various target markets by demographics and drive targeted online and offline marketing activities such as promotions, discounts and e-mails.

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Automated business workflow: The system used the Commerce Server Pipeline technology and programming platform to automate the backend order processing activities such as order consolidation and acknowledgement, payment processing, inventory control and order version control by integrating with Sonys SAP ERP platform. Customer Analytics: The system allows Sony to analyze their customers online behavior and gain marketing insights that their sales and marketing teams can use to improve their business. High System Security: The system is compliant with the United States National Security C2 Standard. A very high security was required because the web site not only managed customers personal and payment information, but it also integrated with Sonys confidential sales and marketing databases via CRM and ERP integrations.

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Benefits
The new solution has resulted in the following benefits:

Sony was able to attract more visitors to the web site and encourage them to shop online by providing a more personalized experience.

It provided real-time visibility into all aspects of the business to internal stakeholders resulting in efficient decision making.

It enabled centralized management and reporting by system administrators resulting in more active involvement and effective monitoring.

Because the system maximized the use of the Microsoft e-Commerce platform, it took relatively less time to go from design to deployment.

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Conclusion
From this case study I conclude that crm implementation plays a vital role for any organization. Its objectives where fulfilled with the use of customer relationship management implementation.

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