SYNOPSIS FOR PROJECT WORK

IMPLEMENTING A CRM SYSTEM IN IT COMPANY

Submitted by Sourabh Malhotra Enrollment Number:07716688512 MBA WEEKEND 2012 Under guidance of Dr Ashish Kumar

INDEX s.no 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Particualars

Overview,the significance Introduction Benefits of implementing a crm Challenges Prerequisites of implementing a crm Why a company needs to adopt a CRM solution? Advantages of CRM What should a company know before adopting a CRM solution? How should a company adopt a CRM system?

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Scenario CAS CRM Bibliography

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Overview

There is no doubt that in order to stay competitive companies have to invest in technology based solutions. When a small company has a limited number of buyers and suppliers, and the business is managed by one or two people, it is capable of delivering quality services. It is also able to keep its various business processes efficient enough. But for a company with several clearly identifiable departments, it is necessary to put extra efforts to keep productivity high. Naturally, in their pursuit of better performance companies at one point start to look at various technological solutions. Apart from accounting, which is by this time already fairly computerized, the question arise what is the next priority? Is it a Customer Relationship Management Solution?

INTRODUCTION Customer relationship management (CRM) is a widely implemented model for managing a companys interactions with customers, clients, and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processesprincipally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients to return, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service. Customer relationship management describes a company-wide business strategy including customer-interface departments as well as other departments. Measuring and valuing customer relationships is critical to implementing this strategy.

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. CRM is about better understanding of customers behavior and needs, and developing and implementing business strategies and supporting technologies that close the gaps between an enterprises current and potential performance in customer acquisition, growth, and retention. Its center of attention is managing and optimizing customer life cycle and building proper relationship among company departments, sales forces, and customers which in turn helps increasing company productivity.

Customer Relationship Management has increasingly started to become an important business approach. Its goal is to return to one-toone personal marketing. The idea is to create a customer centric marketing and sales approach based on cumulative vital information about a customer such as her previous purchasing trend, preference and needs.

Benefits of implementing a CRM

By implementing a CRM solution a company may expect to Quality and efficiency Decrease in overall costs Increase Profitability

 Increase the companys ability to retain and acquire customers Maximize customer life cycle Personalize and improve customer service without increasing cost of service

In order to receive these benefits from a CRM system a company has to clearly understand its need. CRM is not a technological miracle that will bring dramatic change in company productivity. CRM is about sweeping change of mindset across the company and make it a customer-oriented enterprise. Thats why before installing a CRM system the company should understand what it wants to achieve. Does the company want to make selling process more efficient? Is it trying to target and acquire the right customer segment? or the goal is to improve customer service?

CHALLENGES
Successful development, implementation, use and support of customer relationship management systems can provide a significant advantage to the user, but often there are obstacles that obstruct the user from using the system to its full potential. Instances of a CRM attempting to contain a large, complex group of data can become cumbersome and difficult to understand for ill-trained users.The lack of senior management sponsorship can also hinder the success of a new CRM system.
complexity fragmentation challenges Challenges Business reputation Security Concerns Poor usability

Complexity: Tools and workflows can be complex, especially for large businesses. Previously these tools were generally limited to simple CRM solutions which focused on monitoring and recording interactions and communications. Software solutions then expanded to embrace deal tracking, territories, opportunities, and the sales pipeline itself. Poor usability: One of the largest challenges that customer relationship management systems face is poor usability. With a difficult interface for a user to navigate, implementation can be fragmented or not entirely complete. Fragmentation: Often, poor usability can lead to implementations that are fragmented isolated initiatives by individual departments to address their own needs. Systems that start disunited usually stay that way,CRM and decision processes frequently lead to separate and incompatible systems, and dysfunctional processes.

Business reputation: Building and maintaining a strong business reputation has become now increasingly challenging. The outcome of internal fragmentation that is observed and commented upon by customers is now visible to the rest of the world in the era of the social customer; in the past, only employees or partners were aware of it. Addressing the fragmentation requires a shift in philosophy and mindset in an organization so that everyone considers the impact to the customer of policy, decisions and actions. Security, privacy and data security concerns: One function of CRM is to collect information about clients. It is important to consider the customers' need for privacy and data security. Close attention should be paid to relevant laws and regulations. Vendors may need to reassure clients that their data not be shared with third parties without prior consent, and that illegal access can be prevented.

CRM includes following customer related applications: Sales Force Automation

Contact Management: Helps maintaining, tracking and managing customer information and contact histories for present customers. Activity Management: A combination of calendar, task and scheduling management solution for sales people. Communication Management: Uses for eMails and messaging management Sales forecasting: Helps analyzing and projecting future sales goals and targets Lead Management: Helps managing leads and potential business opportunity Document Management: Helps creating, storing and managing documents Pipeline Management: Uses for managing and analyzing sales pipeline

 Product eCatalog: Necessary for accurate product specification and prices Customer Service Call Center Management: Provides automated, end-to-end call routing and tracking Captures customer feedback information for performance measurement, quality control, and product development Field Service Management: Allocates, schedules, and dispatches people, parts and time Tracks materials, expenses, and time associated with service orders Help Desk Management: Solves a problem by searching the existing knowledge base Keeps logs of problem reports

Why a company needs to adopt a CRM solution? A CRM solution is capable of providing real-time access to the stored data about a customer and related matters. Sales force by analyzing the data can create sales forecast, manage interaction with the customer more effectively,

develop and manage sales pipeline. Support team thanks to the information available at their fingertips manages to give personalized customer care. According to Pareto principle 20 percent of customers are responsible for 80 percent of company profit. It is absolutely necessary to do everything possible to retain loyalty of these customers. Why retaining an existing customer is so important? It takes in average 7 to 8 calls in order to close a deal with a new customer and only two to three in the case of an existing customer. According to Boston Consulting Group cost of selling to an existing web customer is around 6 US$ and cost of acquiring a new web customer is around 34 US$

A five percent increase in expenses in keeping existing customers translates into 25 percent or more increase in profitability. Advantages of crm Provide improved customer service Increase revenues per customer Manage sales efficiently

 Sell products more effectively Help sales staff close deals faster Make call centers more efficient Streamline marketing and sales processes

What should a company know before adopting a CRM solution?

As mentioned earlier CRM is not a panacea to company productivity improvement. In order to get maximum result, the company must clearly understand its requirement and then only adopt a CRM system. No matter how good the CRM solution the company chooses if the solution does not correspondent to the staff mindset i.e. if they dont receive required training and dont clearly understand the changes in business processes, the risk of good technology going bad is pretty high!

Often, senior management due to natural fear towards new technology does not get involved in the process of CRM implementation. This is a big mistake! If management does not take advantage of the CRM, its very likely that common staff will not take the system seriously too.

The present customer related information that is going to be integrated with the CRM system also should be carefully analyzed, consolidated, structured and cleaned up prior to adoption. Bad data are capable of creating a mess even in the best CRM solution.

How should a company adopt a CRM system? The best option is to adopt a CRM system phase by phase. The company needs to identify the areas where the return on investment would be highest and adopt CRM technology there. Another good approach is to automate one of the key departments with inexpensive CRM solution and if the project becomes successful adopt a cross-company CRM solution

Scenario: A successful CRM application The key to success for IT companies is being able to market complex IT products and services so that they are understandable and attractive to the customer and to help the customer every step of the way from the initial installation to the final release. The CAS IT Services industry solution has been developed to meet the requirements that IT companies expect from a CRM solution. IT service providers and software producers in all departments benefit from the solution which supports their processes from acquisition, customer

consulting, to project management, support and to sales of the product. The solution was developed on the basis of CAS genesisWorld, the multiaward winning CRM solution for small and medium-sized enterprises. Reliable: all risks, milestones, budgets at a glance. Proven: successfully used by numerous IT companies. The results speak for themselves. Impressive functionality: Helpdesk, customer dossiers and many smart features for efficient processes. Service oriented: employee C can look after customer A while employee B is on holiday. Quick response times and excellent service. Relieving the load: knowledge available online thanks to the FAQ database. Reducing the number of calls to the hotline. Sources: Wikipedia,Rusbiz.com,Cascrm.com