April 2002 Newsletter

Introduction

Welcome to SRD Group's first eZine! The aim of this communication is to bring you informative articles, tips and news on how to successfully merge teams and technology and maximise your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. We will also be updating you on what SRD Group have been doing with clients and what we have planned in terms of seminars, breakfast workshops and other useful activities.

We have a great deal of experience in the CRM arena but do not profess to know all there is. However what we do not know, and what you would like to know, we will research and try to provide relevant information for your benefit. Please email us your questions and comments at . We're keen to hear from you.

We will attempt to follow the format below each month, so that you may become familiar with the contents of the eZine.

This months topic: CRM and Marketing

Unfortunately, the majority of organisations do not complete the loop of information management and maximise the potential use of the CRM from an integrated approach by sales and marketing.

Many marketers talk the talk about the potential of a CRM but not too many walk the talk and, unfortunately, they still use traditional marketing models (which they should but with a tweak). Their KPIs/MBOs and reporting mechanisms also often exclude any meaningful reference to CRM. This in turn leads to disgruntled sales reps, or tainted adoption, as the gatherers of the information see only a fraction of what they record being used and yet they are still continuously driven to maintain inputs. Not a healthy basis for a good Return On Investment (ROI)!

We will be looking at articles and web sites that try and deal with this issue over the coming months to enhance our methodologies that address this problem and will be sure to pass useful information on.

This month there are two interesting articles. The first - The Missing Link: CRM and the Brand by James Hipkin - explores the relationship between the brand and CRM. Sometimes these days, we get railroaded into thinking that branding is "all about mass". This article reminds us that 'brand' is still a crucial marketing concept - perhaps even more so in the new customer-centric organisation.

The second was a very interesting survey done by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) recently titled New Zealand CRM Benchmarking Survey (PDF) 2001.

We understand from our own experience (and some of our partners across the ditch) that the results mimic those found in Australia, so for our Australian clients it is still worth a read.

One of the main findings was that organisations needed assistance to help bring about the cultural change required to ensure they best equip and organise themselves to gain the greatest value from their CRM strategy.

"The key is how to get cultural change to take advantage of the technology opportunities in CRM" - Marketing Manager.

Our Comment

Absolutely, and part of that cultural change involves marketing taking responsibility for developing their strategies taking into account what advantages and benefits they can get out of the CRM and driving the CRM usage through completing the information loop.

As marketers, we cannot get the benefit of everything we believe CRM can deliver without making the necessary effort to get involved and fully understand and utilise the technology!

The full potential of any CRM system will not be realised without our involvement.

Customer/Employee Surveys and Data Validation - AnswerView

Do you find doing customer satisfaction surveys timely, expensive and the results often collated long after the horse has bolted?

We are utilising new, innovative software with which we run a bureau service on survey development, administration, analysis and reporting. All using the power of email.

It's fast, it looks good and is very cost effective!

The results can also be downloaded into your CRM through a CSV file, this means that not only can you record information on what your clients think, but you can validate information such as address, telephone numbers and other pertinent details. This makes the data in you CRM system more accurate, thus saving time and money as well as making your sales and marketing efforts more effective!

If you are interested in understanding more about this service please email us on the contact email below.

Our News

In March we co-sponsored and participated in the DMA of New Zealand Golf Day. It was a very well attended event with many exciting moments, including Neil, our MD, flukishly ending up an inch away from winning a new Volkswagen Beetle! Unfortunately all he has is a story to tell.

We continue to look at ways of measuring ROI and driving more effective CRM through implementing Balanced Scorecard type performance management. We will be providing you more information on this in the coming months but so far it is working well and shows enormous promise!

Upcoming Events

Our clients often have similar stories to tell and face similar issues. Many have ideas for dealing with these issues and could help other customer centric organisations solve the same problems. Sometimes the solution is not clear to everyone but if there was an opportunity to discuss the topic and come up with some actions to deal with the issue then this could be beneficial to all.

As such we have been asked if we would facilitate workshops for CRM focused organisations who wish to reach solutions for particular, non-technical issues, surrounding CRM.

We anticipate doing this in some breakfast workshops beginning in May. The topic to be workshopped will be decided upon based on a survey that will go out in the near future.

In the meantime if there are any particular topics that you would like to have raised, please email us on the contact email below.

Tips/Thoughts

You can never over-communicate your strategy or pending change to your staff. Regular direct communication with all stakeholders, ensuring a two-way dialogue will go a long way to creating buy-in, awareness, involvement and acceptance of new ways.

That's all for this month!

Regards,

The Team at SRD Group.