Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions and CRM
products are a particular breed of
business software application that allows a company to measure
and control all of its
contacts with customers.
What do Customer Relationship Management (CRM) products
do?
CRM solutions can be used to measure and manage customer
contacts made by phone, fax, mail, email, IM or face to face.
The data that is collected can then be used for research and
analysis of the
customer relationship.
The aim of
CRM software is to
maximise the returns from each
individual customer and to determine trends in customer
behaviour, in order to manage things like product development and
enhancement, customer service and capacity planning.
What are the key benefits of CRM?
CRM systems can help
companies of all sizes to sell the right products at the
right time to the right customers.
By creating and mining a customer database, CRM software can
help businesses to work out who the high value customers are, and
their buying habits.
By doing this, the business can target their key accounts for
special promotions or treatment.
Firms can also find out whether or not their key customers are
as
profitable as they imagined, or not.
How can CRM help the sales team?
CRM software can help your customer facing staff, particularly
the salespeople, to talk to customers and prospective clients with
more confidence.
The CRM system can, in theory, give them a purchasing history,
with any relevant trends and issues related to an individual
customer, so the sales agent can anticipate their needs.
The main ways in which a CRM system can assist the sales team
are in cross and up-selling opportunities, recognising customer
drift, measuring sales performance, and determining customer
trends, customer margins and customer segmentation.
How about customer services?
CRM can be used to set up an automated customer feedback system,
designed to improve customer satisfaction and
reduce waste in the service cycle.
By allowing the customers to take part in the process, they can
help a business to serve them better, and CRM software can
facilitate the process.
What’s the return on investment from CRM?
CRM is one of the more straightforward IT systems to prove its
worth, as sales teams are able to quickly measure the improvements
in their sales processes, and the number of deals they close.
The improvements in customer service can also be measured over a
longer period through the use of customer satisfaction
surveys.
CRM also allows you to measure things like the number of returned
products or the response to email campaigns, or even the number of
complaints.
Resources: CRM systems
- Amdocs
Amdocs sells what it terms
Customer Experience Systems, with Customer Management being
part of its platform offering. Customer Management includes a Smart
Agent Desktop, an automated end-to-end ordering system, and
customer-centric service and support.
- Microsoft
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a popular CRM system, boasting a fast
deployment, and flexible platform, with an affordable price tag.
The CRM tool is part of the sprawling Dynamics line of business
products, which include ERP and supply chain management
tools.
- Open CRM
OpenCRM has a hosted CRM system developed and supported in the UK.
The user licenses are free for an unlimited number of users.
OpenCRM itself is an easy-to-use and fully featured CRM
application.
-
Oracle Peoplesoft
Oracle’s
PeopleSoft Enterprise Customer Relationship Management system
is part of the Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise product suite.
PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM has several components including CRM
Analytics, Marketing Partner Relationship Management, Sales and
Service.
- Oracle Siebel
CRM
Oracle’s Siebel CRM is a feature-rich platform with over 20
industry specific versions, and options to use it as a hosted
‘on demand’ system, or as an
installed ‘on premise’ deployment. The platform caters for small
businesses up to large global corporations.
- Salesforce
Salesforce CRM is a hosted, pay-as-you-go application which is
customisable and available through the web from any location. As
such, there are no software installation requirements or
upgrades.
-
SAP CRM
SAP has an established CRM offering which is being used in over 25
industries according to the vendor. SAP CRM is designed to help
marketing and sales teams; and boost customer retention and
loyalty.