Customer Relationship Management

Its about People, Process and Technology! Customer Relationship Management is not a strategy unto itself. In order to begin managing customers effectively, there must be an understanding of real objectives within a larger business strategy. There is a true need for organizational understanding and this must be a combination of strategic focus and strategic management. "It's about aligning internal processes to meet customer needs." - Dr. David P. Norton

What is CRM? What CRM is not. The CRM link is recommended reading from InsightExec - a comprehensive knowledge center on CRM

What is Customer Relationship Management?

 

There are many different definitions of CRM - this is just one of them from CRMGuru.Com!

"Customer Relationship Management is a business strategy to select and manage the most valuable customer relationships. CRM requires a customer-centric business philosophy and culture to support effective marketing, sales, and service processes. CRM applications can enable the effective managing of relationships with customers, provided that an enterprise has the right leadership, strategy, and culture."

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) could be substituted for Customer Engagement (CE) as it all relates to the way you do business with your customers - the way you engage your customers both internally and externally. More often than not these days this involves technology of some shape or form but it is not an essential requirement, after all, relationships and engagement processes with customers existed long before technology!

For a technology enabled Customer Centric Strategy, and hence a CRM system, to be a success four principle components are required to be bound by Strategy:

 

• Technology fit for purpose, that suits the current needs of the organisation and is flexible enough to change to suit future requirements.
  
  

• People who have the vision, drive and ambition to maximise the use of technology to facilitate Customer Centric Strategies.
  
  

• Business Processes that are Customer Centric, merging the technology and people in synergy to meet or exceed organisational objectives.
  
  

• A Culture that embraces "the customer-centric ideas, customs and ways of doing things in the organisation".

If technology is not part of the equation above but all the other aspects are done well, the result will be probably mean a less effective, less efficient means of managing your customer relationships but does not mean you do not have customer relationship management. By the same token if you have the technology but none of the other aspects you will still be less effective and less efficient.  Its the combination of all aspects that provides real value!

What CRM is not.

"CRM isn't about technology any more than hospitality is about throwing a welcome mat on your front porch!!"(David Sims)

CRM is not just about the technology. Projects that focus on technology first, rather than business objectives, are destined for failure, according to both extensive best practices research and anecdotal stories. Implementing CRM means understanding what it is to be customer centric, having clear objectives for CRM implementation, streamlining business processes, addressing organisation culture and structure, and improving the skills, attitudes and behaviours of your people and the way in which different parts of your organisation work together. It is important to recognise that CRM is more about cultural change than the technology that enables it.