PROBLEM:

Every call is a sales call. Every contact is a sales opportunity. A few regular customers can generate more revenue than hundreds of occasional customers, so these customers deserve special attention. In many companies, however, tech-support calls from important customers can sit in a queue behind calls for free mouse pads. Marketing often doesn't know how many sales resilted from a campaign, and tech support doesn't know that a good customer missed a firmware upgrade. How do you integrate marketing, sales and support activities to differentiate your company through its customer relationships?.

Imagine a customer visiting your website for the first time. He's on the verge of buying a product or using a service when something on your site confuses him. He doesn't know how to proceed. Sure, he can get help via e-mail or a list of answers to frequently asked questions, but he wants a live person to assist him. If you don't provide this option, you'll likely lose that customer. And a toll-free telephone number often won't do the trick, because the typical customer has only one home phone line, accesses the web through it, and won't gladly log off the internet to call for help. What would you do?.

Launching an online store is easy, but setting up a successful shop is another story entirely. Offering appealing products on an attractive site in no way guarantees that your e-business will succeed. There are a large number of factors to consider when setting up shop on the Internet, factors that go beyond the act of adding a shopping cart to an online catalog. All of the services that customers have come to take for granted in brick-and-mortar shops-from processing credit cards to extended warranty service to accepting returns-need to be duplicated in your online shop. But do you have the time or means to build in all this functionality yourself?

SOLUTION:

Introduction to CRM:

CRM get the most value out of customers by tightly integrating your sales, marketing and support efforts.

Companies need a system that manages the entire customer life cycle: acquisition, service and maintenance. Commerce-enabled CRM applications allow organizations to interact with customers through all media or channels: telephone, Web, e-mail, face-to-face.  CRM products and services manage every point of contact with the customer to ensure that each customer gets the appropriate level of service and that each customer gets the appropriate level of service and that no sales opportunities are lost.

Customer Relationship Management is a customer-focused business strategy designed to optimize revenue, profitability, and customer loyalty. By implementing a CRM strategy, an organization can improve the business processes and technology solutions around selling, marketing and servicing functions across all customer touch-points (for example: Web, e-mail, phone, fax, in-person). 

A primary objective of CRM is to provide the entire organization with a complete, 360-degree view of the customer, no matter where the information resides or where the customer touch-point occurred. Today, many businesses manage different aspects of customer relationships with multiple information systems, which weaken customer service and ultimate reduce total sales potential. To realize the benefits of CRM, it is important to have an integrated solution across all customer information systems, tying together the front and back offices for a complete view of customers in order to service them better. 

Philip Kotler, the Marketing guru now replaces 4 P's of Marketing by the A, B, C, D, Es as follows:

• Anyplace. Because anytime-anywhere shopping replaces 'place'. Companies must design integrated strategies for the marketspace, the marketplace and marketface. Customers want convenience.
• B-web relations drive revenues. A brand reflects relationship capital. Think of customers as a part of your B-web, and prospects as candidates for relationships, not as markets for your products. B-web is synonym for Businees web or ERPWEB or e-business.
• Communication works, not 'promotion'. A man in communication is a man in business. One-way media like broadcasting can be part of the marketing mix, but the customer decides whether - and with whom - to engage in a one-, two-, or multi-way communication.
• Discovery of price replaces fixed 'price'. The days when firms controlled prices are nearly over. Supply Chain Management which manages suppliers & make-to-stock manufacturing will be replaced by Demand Chain Management which manages customers & make-to-order manufacturing. Every make-to-order product will have different price, so it is discovered.
• Experience replaces 'product'. Customers pay for experience, not products. Products must be bundled with enhanced, customized services. The automobile experience replaces the product, as the car becomes a platform for transportation, interactive entertainment, safety, doing business, and having fun.

CRM applications address the following business functions: 

e-commerce web store fronts website - are converging into a customer-centric solution, which allows organizations to interact with, sell to, and service customers through all channels. Consumers are major users of this business functions.

Channel Management/Partner Relationship Management – Extends CRM capabilities to the needs of extended selling channels such as distributors and value-added resellers. PRM applications enable companies to distribute leads and manage promotions outside the enterprise sales team. Business Partners are major users of this business functions.

Sales Automation – Provides sales professionals with access to critical customer information and tools that enhance their ability to effectively sell as well as manage their time. For example: contact management, calendaring functions, forecasting tools, configuration models. The sales department uses this business function.

Marketing Automation – Provides marketing departments with campaign management, lead generation, and data mining tools. Closed-loop lead management is one of the most important functions of marketing automation and relies on integration with the CRM data repository and related applications. The marketing department uses this function for cross-promotion, advertising and direct marketing.

Customer Service and Support or Internal Helpdesk or Web self service– Enables the enterprise to effectively and efficiently address customer questions, problems or issues. While customer satisfaction is the primary goal, many organizations are seeking to increase revenues while providing customer service through "cross-selling".  Supporting field service person through applications covering network management and support, call logging and resolution, and internal customer support. The customer service department uses this business function to provide quality service to customers.

Value of CRM to Business:
A Customer Relationship Management strategy is designed to increase revenue and profitability by attracting new customers, growing customer business, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty, enabling more efficient business processes, and utilizing lower cost technologies. 

The primary goal of CRM is higher revenues, not cutting costs. CRM solutions improve sales and marketing efforts and enables organizations to provide superior service to customers. New customers are gained, and existing customers are retained and buy more in greater quantity. End-customers benefit by receiving superior customer service and getting the products and services they want, when they want them. An enterprise that does not have a CRM strategy or use CRM applications is at a competitive disadvantage. 

Before engaging on a mission to implement a CRM strategy, it is critical to determine what the specific objectives are and how to measure the return on investment. There are sobering statistics that over one-half of CRM implementations "fail", primarily due to lack of consensus on agreed-upon—and more importantly, measurable—goals. While objectives can address specific points of poor performance —for example low sales performance or low customer satisfaction scores—it is important that they also address supporting the entire customer life cycle.

CRM deliverables include the following:

• Consumer Portal: A Web-based merchant solution that includes capabilities for configuration and pricing and availability checks, and allows consumers to buy products and services, trigger orders, and check order status online. It is customer-centric website with e-commerce web store fronts providing one step e-tailing, bidding and auctioning solutions. It also has Consumer Specific eRoom, Newsgroup & chat to enable cross functional sales guiding a reality.
• Business Partner Portal: A Web-based Partner  Relation Management Solution enable companies to distribute leads and manage promotions outside the enterprise sales team. This portal is aimed at Resellers, Dealers, Distributors, Agents etc. It also has Business Partner Support eRoom, Newsgroup & Chat to share information & documents in real time.
• Sales Dept. Employees Portal: A Web-based Sales Management Solution  enables companies to do Sales & Marketing Automation with Contact Management using Customer Register, Sales Forecast Management, Sales Order Management, Production & Material Planning Management, Available to Promise dates, Marketing events Management with calendaring. It also collects and manages Sales Calls & Sales Reports from field Sales Representatives. It also has Sales Support eRoom, Newsgroup & Chat to support sales function in collaborative manner.
• Customer Support Portal: A Web-based Expert System that provides answers to customized questions. To consumers it can provide operation or maintenance specific answers. To Field Service Person it can provide Technical details about repairing the product. It also has Customer Support eRoom, Newsgroup & chat to share documents & ideas.

PRODUCT:

HOW ERPWEB CRM WORKS? :

• Sales Master Data Management
• Campaign Management
• Call Center Management
• SalesProcess Management