An Overview of CRM Concepts

Definition

CRM = Customer Relationship Management.

History

Use of CRM software started in the 1990's in the USA and Europe, the concept of 'Customer Relationship Management' and especially CRM software is expanding in SE Asia but the concepts of managing interactions with your customers is still a fairly new concept, especially in Thailand and the emerging nations in the SE Asian region, the reasons for this are varied but in our experience consist mostly of cultural reasons such as fear of loss of 'control', lack of knowledge/trust of on-demand concepts, technology and security and so on.

What Areas Does CRM Cover?

CRM is a multifaceted process, focusing on improvement of internal and external business processes. CRM implements a set of information technologies that focus on creating two-way exchanges with customers so that firms have an intimate knowledge of their needs, wants, and buying patterns. In this way, CRM helps companies understand, as well as anticipate, the needs of current and potential customers.

CRM encompasses several areas:

Operational CRM: Operational CRM provides support to "front office" business processes, including sales, marketing and service. Each interaction with a customer is generally added to a customer's contact history, and staff can retrieve information on customers from the database
when necessary.

Sales Force Automation (SFA): Sales Force Automation is designed to automate sales-force-related activities, such as lead tracking and sales closure. Software products combined with process improvements can help:

- Keeping lists of leads
- Assigning list segments to salespeople, often automatically based on segment or industry vertical
- Allowing list contacts to be called or e-mailed
- Tracking responses
- Generating reports

Analytical CRM: analyzes customer data for a variety of purposes:

- Design and execution of targeted marketing campaigns to optimize marketing effectiveness
- Design and execution of specific customer campaigns, including customer acquisition, cross-selling, up-selling, retention
- Analysis of customer behavior to aid product and service decision making (e.g. pricing, new product development etc.)
- Management decisions, e.g. financial forecasting and customer profitability analysis
- Prediction of the probability of customer defection

Campaign Management: Campaign management oriented towards marketing and is the element of the CRM software and concepts that combine parts of the above and allow campaigns to be run on an existing client base. Campaign Management is used when you need to create personalized email/promotions when it is too expensive to personally contact each client. Campaign management includes:

- Choosing campaign recipients from the client base according to selected criteria
- Development of a campaign offer or promotion / invitation
- Assigning specific campaign offers to selected recipients
- Automatically sending offers to the selected clients via selected channels (such as e-mail, telesales/telemarketing/mail)
- Gathering, storing, and analyzing campaign results (including tracking responses and analyzing results/implications)

Collaborative CRM: The function of the Collaborative Customer Relationship Management is to coordinate multi-channel service and support given to the customer by providing the infrastructure for responsive and effective support to customer issues, questions, complaints, etc.

Collaborative CRM aims to get various departments within a business, such as sales, support and marketing, to share useful information that they collect from interactions with customers. Feedback from a technical support center, for example, could be used to inform marketing staffers about specific services and features requested by customers.

Collaborative CRM's ultimate goal is to use information collected from all departments to improve the quality of customer service.

The BIG Picture

It's a common misconception that a CRM project should be driven by an IT department and is a highly technical affair that only they can manage. CRM is so much more than software and a CRM project is never really 'finished': it is a continuous improvement of a company's sales, marketing and support processes and is mostly focused around people, rather than technology. See our article "Why CRMs Fail" for more information.

A CRM can also be integrated with web based technologies: a company website, targeted & interactive email marketing, web based survey software etc. to help improve the lead capture process thus making your Sales processes even more efficient.

CRM Asia Solutions can implement an on demand CRM solution for your business in as little as one week for 500USD* and an entire suite of business tools in a single Zoho portal for as little as 1000 USD.

We also offer a powerful email marketing and web based survey solutions and can tailor costs to you're your needs and budget.

For more information or to request a quotation, please contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and we will get back to you.