CRM in E-Business

CRM is a term that is often referred to in marketing. However, there is no complete agreement upon a single definition. This is because CRM can be considered from a number of perspectives. In summary, the three perspectives are:

Information Technology (IT) perspective
The Customer Life Cycle (CLC) perspective
Business Strategy perspective

CRM Different Definitions

1. CRM is the application of a well developed customer strategy, based on a high level of customer awareness, to a properly matched set of CRM technologies and services.

2. CRM is the business buzzword on the Internet these days. Customer Relationship Management promises faster customer service at lower costs, higher customer satisfaction and from this, better customer retention and ultimately customer loyalty.

3. CRM is a strategic approach that is concerned with creating improved shareholder value through the development of appropriate relationships with key customers and customer segments. CRM unites the potential of relationship marketing strategies and IT to create profitable, long-term relationships with customers and other key stakeholders. CRM provides enhanced opportunities to use data and information to both understand customers and create value. (Payne and Frow - 2005)




CRM Systems with E-Business

1. Business-to-Business (B2B) CRM

The Business-to-Business (B2B) CRM enables organizations to manage the whole customer/partner lifecycle and rapidly establish a selling channel, whether merely conventional or online through web-based applications (E-Sales).

1.1 Marketing Automation

Marketing automation creates a beneficial bind between service and sales organizations. The CRM software solution should be able to deliver on a range of goals in multiple environments (such as business-to-business and business-to-consumer).

1.2 Sales Force Automation (SFA)

Sales Force Automation (SFA) is the automation of the sales cycle by linking your outside sales, inside sales, technical support, management, and service and customer care. The goal is to increase communication and hence efficiency between sales and support teams.

1.3 Customer Service and Support

Customer Service and Support helps better understand one's customers and anticipate their interest in an enterprise's products and/or services through processes occurring throughout the marketing, sales, and service stages.

1.4 Partner Management

Partner management supports, usually through a web portal dedicated to partners, basic functionality for partner management, such as partner information management (create, search, update, and delete), opportunity and lead source tracking and automatic notification, opportunity and lead assignment and automatic notification, all of these based on user-definable rules and workflow.
1.5 Contract Management and Creation

The Contract Management and Creation section enables organizations to manage, whether electronically or in a more conventional manner, contract lifecycle from contract creation and modification, to contract expiration and renewal, while supporting for multiple currencies; all of these based on user-definable rules and workflow.

1.6 Project and Team Management

Project and Team Management enables organizations to manage project lifecycle and project team, from project kickoff and role definition to personnel assignment, project execution and completion; all of these based on user-definable rules and workflow.

2. Business-to-Consumer (B2C) CRM

Business-to-Consumer (B2C) CRM enables organizations to manage the whole consumer lifecycle, interact properly and successfully with their customers, and rapidly establish a selling channel.

2.1 Internet Sales

Internet sales enables visitors to look for and select products of their interest, and complete their purchase online. To do so, the CRM software solution should provide an on-line product catalog with real-time price and availability information, shopping basket management with secure payment transaction processing, and profile information management (registration, subscription, shipping and billing addresses, purchase history).

2.2 Email Response Management

Email Response Management ensures management of incoming emails from customers with automatic guided-through questionnaires and outbound emails combined with customer's data. It includes rule-based routing with reporting capabilities.

2.3 B2C Analytics and Business Intelligence

B2C Analytics and Business Intelligence (BI) are analytical applications using complex rules-based techniques, neural networks, pattern recognition and other profile settings within peer groups to identify certain transactions and set thresholds for what is considered "normal" shopping behavior.

3. Other CRM-Related Application Areas

Throughout the customer lifecycle (suspect, prospect, visitor, user, lead, client), the latest CRM software solutions allow you to gather, compute, analyze, report, and extract all kinds of information related to your customers and their behavior.

3.1 Email Marketing Email marketing is the electronic form of direct marketing. mailing list management (recipients), mailing campaign management (messages sent), mailing content management (message content), mailing bounce management (messages received), mailing tracking and report management (campaign efficiency).

3.2 Relationship capital management (RCM) empowers sales organizations to drastically accelerate their sales cycle by rapidly inventorying and charting their social and personal relationships, whether internal (local relationship) or external (global relationship).

3.3 Survey software are business intelligence tools aiming at increasing product acceptance, and customer loyalty by ensuring that customer needs are better understood and addressed.



CRM In Pakistan

Currently there are two sectors in Pakistan which are highly influenced by the latest advancements in ICT to stay abreast in the competition i.e. banking and telecom sectors. In the recent years major foreign investments have been made in Pakistan, particularly in these two sectors.

NADRA CNIC CRM

This system was developed to keep track of CNIC application forms during various stages using Barcodes to track 200,000 forms per day at 105 districts of Pakistan, 8 Regional Headquarters and Central Headquarter of NADRA. Stages include; District Registrar Office (DRO), Scanning, Data Entry, Local data warehouse, Central Headquarter, Printing of CNIC, RHQ, delivery of CNIC, etc. To track 200,000 forms per day at 20 stages, a massive 2 million transactions per day are created and stored at the central CRM Server. Using dynamic web reports to display this data for NADRA management was also developed.

Olpers
Customer Relationship Management in Engro Food` According to Engro foods view, CRM consists of:

Helping olpers to enable its marketing departments to identify and target their best customers, manage marketing campaigns and generate quality leads for the sales team. Assisting olpers to improve account and sales management by optimizing information shared by multiple employees, and streamlining existing processes. Allowing the formation of individualized relationships with customers, with the aim of improving customer satisfaction and maximizing profits; identifying the most profitable customers and providing them the highest level of service.

Providing olpers employees with the information and processes necessary to know their customers, understand and identify customer needs and effectively build relationships between the company, its customer base, and distribution partners.

Barclays Bank PLC

Barclays Bank PLC has signed an agreement with Microsoft whereby Microsoft will provide Barclays Bank with Dynamics CRM a fully integrated, adaptable business management solution. Barclays Bank Pakistan chose Microsoft CRM solution as it is an affordable technology solution that helps automate and streamline the three basic steps of customer management: Identifying, attracting, and retaining the customer. It provides a 360 degree view of the customer with access to members across an organization with up-to-date information of the customer. This commitment, along with our inherent business values aim to provide efficient and innovative banking solutions throughout the Barclays branch and sales centre network across Pakistan.