Dears,
There is a lot of negative information about CRM right now that is flooding the news. However the success rates are equally high. CRM is definitely a strategy that can be implemented effectively and successfully. CRM caters to companies of varied sizes. It helps focus on different problems and solutions. Statistics show that there are clear cases of excellence in CRM implementations that can be found right across a whole range of different industries. Research indicates that organizations can clearly measure the return they received from the implementation. What is important to note is that cases of past CRM failures are not in a position to judge the entire CRM technology. Research shows that a CRM success story is easy to find.Some of the companies whose CRM implementation has been successful include:
Canon (Japan)
AMD
Hitachi
Nokia
Engage
Pepsi Americas
Sovereign Bank
HP
What most of these companies had was a clear idea of all their business processes. They understood their business needs before implementing CRM. They had managed to identify leaders and the best performers in the organization. They have also managed to involve key executives at the highest level and get the message to everyone in the organization about the importance of CRM.
The benefits of CRM implementation are huge. They include:
· Higher percentage of cross-selling
· Attracting new customers
· Closing deals faster
· Quicker and more efficient response to customer leads and customer information
· Simplification of marketing and sales processes
· Understanding customer needs
· Better customer service
· Improved responsiveness and understanding
· Building customer loyalty
· Build a knowledge base for customer support
· Control marketing campaigns
· Analyzing marketing campaigns
· Viewing the actual profit of each campaign
· Quickly view customer statistics and analytics
· Maintain exact info about the target market
· Store product prices and information
· View sales statistics and analytics
· Control current projects
· Achieve excellent customer service
· Being aware of customer needs/ reacting to them
· Understanding and responding to customers' needs
· Maintaining consistency
· Achieving an efficient, integrated business system
· Achieving organizational discipline
Steps to Becoming a CRM Success Story
· Companies should adopt stringent rules that ensure that the organization finds appropriate solutions for its customers.
· Objectives need to be fixed prior to starting on a CRM project. Also the existing processes need to be integrated with the solution.
· Assessing data quality issues should be undertaken compulsorily and companies need to make sure that they undertake the required measures before implementing CRM.
· A company should strive to understand the problems of the customers in order to secure CRM benefits.
· Create a single view about the customer with all the information available about him and make this information easily available to every one in the organization. Doing this is most essential.
· Outside resources need to be brought in if required. The need for outside resources has to be carefully studied and adopted if essential.
· Dynamic changes are possible only when sufficient technology is in place. IT enables this as it facilitates change within the organization and enables it to adapt. Hence the IT department needs to be incorporated in all respects.
· All information should be cleansed before entering.
· The solution should aid organizational objectives to the hilt.
· The various departments should be collaborated.
· Organizations should endeavor to clearly Establish Clear Business Objectives and a business plan as well that is in sync with the CRM goals also.
· A company needs to secure the acceptance of its employees to the CRM implementation
· Organizations also need to initially and right through the implementation involve top management as this is crucial to success.
· Consultants should be availed of. Their expertise would go a long way in getting the most out of the CRM benefits.
Bell Canada's Success
Bell Canada is easily Canada's largest communications company and a CRM success story. It boasts of almost 28 million customer connections and manages to provide some of the most comprehensive communication services. These services aside from being innovative have also been a source of stability to residential and business customers in the Canadian region. The company basically serves to provide their customers with solutions that smack of ease of integration and simplicity to their customers. They basically cater to all their customers' communication requirements like the telephone, internet, wireless, voice over IP and digital television. They try to provide information and technology for communications to top business enterprises within the Canadian region and beyond. They cater to a variety of organizations ranging from the small and mediocre enterprises to the large corporates. Small and medium industries have benefited immensely from their services. Their services include internet access, data services, voice services, wireless services, satellite television, long distance phone services etc. Since customer needs are growing Bell is currently trying to simplify the existing processes and introduce bundled services by moving towards a single, bill. It manages an extensive local access network providing local and long distance phone services to customers. It also enables the provision of a wide range of services for consumers. Bell's phone services include call display, call waiting, voice mail etc. A classic example of CRM success is that which Bell Canada found. Its successful implementation of CRM saw profound results in just6 months.
Pre - CRM Scenario
The solutions, business processes and methods being employed prior to the CRM solution clearly did not fulfill or meet any of the business needs. Bell Canada needed a full fledged customer centric strategy that was catering to the company requirements. After scrutiny they embarked on the implementation of CRM and decided that they will opt for its advantages. They basically encountered a problem that the existing disparate solutions created a lot of extra work for employees and basically increased the task load. This had resulted in a decrease in employee satisfaction and posed numerous problems. In addition to this BELL required its front and back end operations of its shared services centre to be integrated. This step could not be achieved through existing processes. Also the access to current employee case status and the reporting capabilities was required. All this led to the installation of CRM solutions.
Implementing CRM
The result was that CRM customer service & support initiatives were availed of. The CRM benefits were deployed to a total of 200+ users in 6 months. The staff was trained in the ability to use multi language systems; This helped them immensely especially when dealing with multi lingual customers and customer data. The key elements employed in the implementation were speed, data integration, and easy usage and increased efficient reporting capabilities.
The Result?
What did BELL ultimately witness? The result was increased and better customer service from employees amongst almost seven groups. Another advantage was the internal efficiency that was created within the organization. The flexibility and customization traits of CRM enabled a reduction in the total case volume.The ease of usage and its adaptability also resulted in an increase in the integration of data between the systems. The main point to note here is the fact that the entire implementation required very little time and was carried out with very little effort. Speed was a dominating factor in this implementation. The organization was able to acquire the business requirements it needed so much.
It's imminently clear that focusing on the failure rate of CRM is the wrong approach. Organizations need to focus more on the 'CRM success story'. What's needed most is being able to focus on the success rate and get the most out of the CRM implementation by employing the right practices prior, during and after the CRM implementation.
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