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CRM
Customer Relationship Management Overview

What is CRM?
CRM is the business strategy, process, culture and technology that enables organizations to optimize revenue and increase value through a more complete understanding and fulfillment of customer needs. CRM involves all of your organizations' "Customer Touch Points" and includes every part of your company that has direct or indirect interaction with your customers and prospects. CRM attempts to accumulate customer knowledge into one central place for access by management and all other relevant customer touch points with the goal of improving productivity in four ways:

Communication
By and between your various internal organizations and by and between you and your customers and prospects.

Efficiency
Improving productivity while not in front of the customer (automatic letter generation, literature fulfillment, and report generation).

Effectiveness
Improving productivity while in front of the customer. (real time access to price and availability, automatic order generation, and visual presentation support).

Decision-making
Better accumulation of information aids in corporate decision-making. Management will be able to get a more accurate and global view of customer and market focus, as well as respond more quickly to market movement. Decisions will be based more on facts rather than "gut feel." Most typically, in the mid-sized Business-to-Business market CRM involves one or several among four main software elements:

I. Marketing Automation
Allows the company to capture and analyze specific information related to accurately targeting prospects. The company may then create automated marketing campaigns that:
  • Automatically assign leads to specific sales reps
  • Automatically schedule all desired follow-up activity
  • Automatically start a lead nurturing campaign
Once conducted, campaign responses may be captured so that the lead can be followed all the way through the sales process for accurate calculation of ROI.

II. Sales Automation
Sales automation allows sales reps to capture all information necessary to sell the deal.
  • Capture and assign multiple contacts to one account.
  • Manage multiple opportunities within one account.
  • Manage daily life with a sophisticated contact and calendar management system.
  • Simplify reports by automating the reporting process.
  • Capture competitive information in the field while it is still relevant
  • Generate quotes and proposals from within the system.
  • Configure complex sales.
  • Generate accurate forecasts automatically.
III. Support Automation
Support automation gives your service and support teams access to all relevant customer data for purposes of tracking and responding to:
  • All incidents, defects, returns and inquiries.
  • Quickly access standard problems and the associated resolution
  • Product Procedures
  • Support automation also, gives the rep the ability to quickly search the cumulated company support knowledgebase.
  • Support Automation will allow your company to have a virtual service center open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days per year by providing internet access to published knowledgebase of information as well as On-line Ticket, or incident generation.
IV. Internet Access
The Internet has brought a whole new realm of possibilities to the CRM market space. Within CRM, the Internet provides 24 hours access and functionality for many different audiences (with appropriate access).
  • Customers - Place orders, capture leads, access knowledge, Generate incidents (Tickets)
  • Channel Partners - Distribute leads, update leads, forecast volume
  • Sales Reps - Virtual access from almost anywhere
V. Lead Generation and ROI
All companies must have customers to generate revenue. CRM attempts to provide Customers and Prospects with a seamless and cohesive experience all the way through the entire purchasing life cycle. Most typically, there are two types of activities that result in revenue:
  • Capturing New Customers - this typically begins with your marketing effort and ends with a closed sale. When attempting to automate the process of capturing a new customer, the emphasis is on ROI for marketing and revenue per rep for the sales department. This is measured through calculation of a Cost of Sales
  • Generating Repeat Purchases - this typically starts with the first closed sale and only ends when a customer leaves you for some reason. The Sales and Support teams work in conjunction to Maximize revenue per customer, which becomes the measuring stick for performance in this area.
What CRM is NOT
  • Is not a contact manager
  • Is not effective if not easily adoptable
  • Is not just for sales
  • Is not only attainable by large corporations
CRM
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