Career Relationship Management

1) What is CRM?
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a technology for managing all your company’s
relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers. The goal is simple: Improve
business relationships. A CRM system helps companies stay connected to customers, streamline
processes, and improve profitability.
When people talk about CRM, they are usually referring to a CRM system, a tool that helps with
contact management, sales management, productivity, and more.
A CRM solution helps you focus on your organization’s relationships with individual people —
including customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers — throughout your lifecycle with them,
including finding new customers, winning their business, and providing support and additional
services throughout the relationship.
(or)
Customer Relationship Management refers to the methodologies and tools that help businesses
manage customer relationships in an organized way.
Customer relationship management is a broadly recognized, widely-implemented strategy for
managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using
technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities,
but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support.
Purpose
The idea of CRM is that it helps businesses use technology and human resources to gain insight into
the behavior of customers and the value of those customers. With an effective CRM strategy, a
business can increase revenues by:
providing services and products that are exactly what your customers want
offering better customer service
cross selling products more effectively
helping sales staff close deals faster
retaining existing customers and discovering new ones
make call centers more efficient
simplify marketing and sales processes.
For small businesses, customer relationship management includes:
CRM processes that help identify and target their best customers, generate quality sales leads, and
plan and implement marketing campaigns with clear goals and objectives.
CRM processes that help form individualized relationships with customers (to improve customer
satisfaction) and provide the highest level of customer service to the most profitable customers.
CRM processes that provide employees with the information they need to know their customers'
wants and needs, and build relationships between the company and its customers.
Customer relationship management tools include software and browser-based applications that collect
and organize information about customers. For instance, as part of their CRM strategy, a business
might use a database of customer information to help construct a customer satisfaction survey, or
decide which new product their customers might be interested in.
Key Elements of CRM
CRM can be broken down into a number of different components which many software vendors have
developed packages for. For the most part, there are three areas which are core to successful customer
relationship management :
Customer Service
Sales Force Automation
Campaign Management .
Customer Service

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The customer service function in your company represents the front office functions that interact with
your customers. These are the business processes that allow your company to sell products and
services to your customers, communicate with your customers with regards marketing and dealing
with the after sales service requirements of your customers. Each interaction with the customer is
recorded and stored within the CRM software where it can be retrieved by other employees if needed.

Sales Force Automation

Your company’s sales department is constantly looking for sales opportunities with existing and new
customers. The sales force automation functionality of CRM software allows the sales teams to record
each contact with customers, the details of the contact and if follow up is required. This can provide a
sales force with greater efficiencies as there is little chance for duplication of effort. The ability for
employees outside of the sales team to have access to this data ensures that they have the most recent
contact information with customers. This is important when customers contact employees outside of
the sales team so that customers are given the best level of customer service.

Campaign Management
The sales team approach prospective customers in the hope of winning new business. The approach
taken by the sales team is often focused in a campaign, where a group of specific customers are
targeted based on a set of criteria. These customers will receive targeted marketing materials and
often special pricing or terms are offered as an inducement. CRM software is used to record the
campaign details, customer responses and analysis performed as part of the campaign.

In today's fast-paced, competitive business environment it's more important than ever to create and
maintain long-lasting business relationships.

Today, CRM manages business processes spanning sales, support, and marketing creating effective
customer interactions. Given the purpose of CRM, the functionality is straightforward, and the
benefits of successful deployments clearly generate value and profitability for any company. Great
CRM solutions need to encourage users to interact with the application as well as be in-tune with the
business and IT cost-saving needs.

For the up to date CRM to be world class it needs to be revolutionary in market incursion and
evolutionary in technological up gradation.

Today the major business focus is towards endowing value addition to the sales cycle, and customer
retention rather than constructing a new customer base which is costlier and also an uncertain chase
from business perspective. The basic philosophy behind CRM is that a company's relationship with
the customer would be the biggest asset in the long run.

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2) What are the components of CRM?

Components of Customer Relationship Management
SalesForce Automation
SalesForce Automation is the most essential components of customer relationship management. This
is one such component that is undertaken by the maximum business organizations. It includes
forecasting, recording sales processing as well as keeping a track of the potential interactions.

It helps to know the revenue generation opportunities better and that makes it very significant. The
component also includes analyzing the sales forecasts and the performances by the workforce. To
achieve an overall improvement in the development and growth of the industry, numerous
components work hand in hand to form SalesForce automation as a consequent unit. Some of the
major elements of the same are Lead Management, Account Management, Opportunity Management,
Forecasting, Pipeline Analysis, Contact Management, Activity Management, Email Management and
Reporting.
Human Resource Management
Human Resource Management involves the effective and correct use of human resource and skills at
the specific moment and situation. This requires to be make sure that the skills and intellectual levels
of the professionals match the tasks undertaken by them according to their job profiles. It is an
essential component not only for the large scale corporations but the medium industries as well. It
involves adopting an effective people strategy and studying the skills or the workforce and the growth
being generated thereby designing and implementing the strategies needed accordingly with the aim
of achieving development.
Lead Management
Lead Management as the name suggests, refers to keeping the track of the sales leads as well as their
distribution. The business that are benefitted by this component of CRM the most are the sales
industries, marketing firms and customer executive centres. It involves an efficient management of the
campaigns, designing customized forms, finalizing the mailing lists and several other elements. An
extensive study of the purchase patterns of the customers as well as potential sales leads helps to
capture the maximum number of sales leads to improve the sales.

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Customer Service
Customer Relationship Management emphasizes on collecting customer information and data, their
purchase informations and patterns as well as involves providing the collected information to the
necessary and concerned departments. This makes customer service an essential component of CRM.
Almost all the major departments including the sales department, marketing team and the
management personnel are required to take steps to develop their awareness and understanding of the
customer needs as well as complaints. This undoubtedly makes the business or the company to deliver
quick and perfect solutions and assistance to the customers as well as cater to their needs which
increases the dependability and trust of the customers and people on the organization.
Marketing
Marketing is one of the most significant component of Customer Relationship Management and it
refers to the promotional activities that are adopted by a company in order to promote their products.
The marketing could be targeted to a particular group of people as well as to the general crowd.
Marketing involves crafting and implementing strategies in order to sell the product. Customer
Relationship Management assists in the marketing process by enhancing and improving the
effectiveness of the strategies used for marketing and promotion.
This is done by making an observation and study of the potential customers. It is a component that
brings along various sub-elements or aspects. Some of the major elements of marketing are List
Management, Campaign Management, Activity Management, Document Management, Call
Management, Mass Emails and Reporting. The use of the aforesaid elements varies from business to
business according to its nature and requirements as well as the target crowd.
Workflow Automation
A number of processes run simultaneously when it comes to the management and this requires an
efficient cost cutting as well as the streamlining of all the processes.The phenomenon of doing so is
known as Workflow Automation. It not only reduces the excess expenditure but also prevents the
repetition of a particular task by different people by reducing the work and work force that is getting
wasted for avoidable jobs. Routing out the paperwork and form filling are some of the elements of the
process and it aims at preventing the loss of time and excess effort.
Business Reporting
CRM comes with a management of sales, customer care reports and marketing. The customer care
reports assist the executives of a company to gain an insight into their daily work management and
operations. This enables one to know the precise position of the company at any particular instance.
CRM provides the reports on the business and that makes it play a major role here. It is ensured that
the reports are accurate as well as precise. Another significant feature is the forecasting and the ability
to export the business reports on other systems. In order to make comparisons, one can save historical
data as well.
Analytics
Analytics is the process of studying and representing the data in order to observe the trends in the
market. Creating graphical representations of the data in the form of histograms, charts, figures and
diagrams utilizing the current data as well as the one generated in the past is essential to achieve a
detailed understanding and study of the trends. Analytics is an extremely significant element of
Customer Relationship Management as it allows to make in-depth study of information that is
required to calculate the progress in the business.

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Different components of Customer Relationship Management are associated with different elements
mainly, the customer acquisition, improved customer value and customer retention. Various
marketing applications are carved out to acquire more customers whereas data warehousing and
analytical tools help the business to hold customers with a better communication and relationship. In
order to enhance the customer value among the existing and future customers, there is a number of
data warehousing and analytical tools.
Overall, each of the discussed components of Customer Relationship Management is very essential to
improve the work structure as well as the market response to the business and their products.

3) What are the types of CRM?

Types of CRM:
1. Operational CRM
Operational CRM streamlines the business process that includes Sales automation, Marketing
automation and Service automation. Main purpose of this type of CRM is to generate leads, convert
them into contacts, capture all required details and provide service throughout customer lifecycle.
Sales Automation:
Sales automation helps an organization to automate sales process. Main purpose of sales automation is
to set standard within organization to acquire new customers and deal with existing customers. It
organizes information in such a way that the business can meet customers’ needs and increase sales
more efficiently and effectively. It includes various CRM sales modules like lead management,
contact management, Quote-to-Order management, sales forecasting.
Marketing Automation:
Main purpose of marketing automation is to find out the best way to offer products and approach
potential customers. Major module in marketing automation is campaign management. It enables
business to decide effective channel/s (like emails, phone calls, face to face meeting, ads on social
media) to reach up to potentials customers.
Service Automation:
Service automation enables business to retain customers by providing best quality of service and
building strong relationship. It includes issue management to fix customers’ problems, customer call
management to handle incoming/outgoing calls, service label management to monitor quality of
service based on key performance indicators.
2. Analytical CRM
Analytical CRM helps top management, marketing, sales and support personnel to determine the
better way to serve customers. Data analysis is the main function of this type of CRM application. It
analyzes customer data, coming from various touch points, to get better insights about current status
of an organization. It helps top management to take better decision, marketing executives to
understand the campaign effectiveness, sales executives to increase sales and support personnel to
improve quality of support and build strong customer relationship.
Features of Analytical CRM:
 Gather customer’s information, coming from different channels and analyze data in a structured way
 Help organization to set business methodology in Sales, Marketing and Support to improve customer
relationship and loyalty
 Improve the CRM system effectiveness and analyze key performance indicators, set by business
3. Collaborative CRM
Collaborative CRM, sometimes called as Strategic CRM, enables an organization to share customers’
information among various business units like sales team, marketing team, technical and support
team. For example, feedback from a support team could be useful for marketing team to approach
targeted customers with specific products or services. In real world, each business unit works as an
independent group and rarely shares customers’ data with other teams that often causes business
losses. Collaborative CRM helps to unite all groups to aim only one goal – use all information to
improve the quality of customer service to gain loyalty and acquire new customers to increase sales.

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4)Why CRM or advantages of CRM or objectives of CRM?

The Advantages of CRM
Collecting and organizing actionable customer data is a full-time job, and one that isn’t very forgiving
of mistakes. As such, investing in a high-quality Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool is a
must for any business that wants to take customer satisfaction to the next level. CRM offers a number
of advantages that will help you identify, understand, and assist your clients, so that you’ll never have
to worry about losing revenue as a result of incomplete data. Here are six benefits of CRM software
that can help your company find success.
Improved Informational Organization
The more you know about your customers, the better you’ll be able to provide them with the kind
of positive experience that really pays off. Everything that they do, and every interaction that they
have with your organization needs to be identified, documented, and recorded. To do this, you need to
move beyond the sticky-notes and disorganized filing cabinets, and start utilizing advanced
organizational technology that can not only accurately quantify and categorize data for easy future
reference, but also make that data available across departments. Thanks to CRM this all becomes a
possibility, it allows you to store a vast list of customers and any important information regarding
them. Access to their file is even more convenient than before due to the cloud, so no matter who it is
that is helping the customer in question, they’ll have the same actionable data instantly available. This
will result in less wasted time for clients and employees.
CRM for Enhanced Communication
As mentioned above, CRM makes it possible for any employee to provide the same high level of
service, by having access to the same customer data. After all, even if your customers have a single,
main point of contact, there’s a good chance that at some point that contact may not be available, and
the client will be forced to have to work with someone new. When that happens, many customers face
the unhappy prospect of having to ‘start fresh’ with someone who doesn’t understand their own
unique preferences and issues. CRM does away with this concern, by making detailed customer
information communicable to whomever might need it. As such, it won’t matter who it is that is
currently assisting the client, because they’ll be working from the same information. And given that
CRM is cloud-based and accessible from any device with an internet connection, the communication
benefits of mobile CRM are not limited to the office.
CRM Improves Your Customer Service
Your time is valuable, but so is your customers’ time. And, should your customers experience a
problem that needs resolution, they’re going to be unhappy unless that problem can be taken care of
quickly. With CRM, as soon as a customer contacts your company, your representatives will be able
to retrieve all available activity concerning past purchases, preferences, and anything else that might
assist them in finding a solution. In many cases, your more experienced representatives, armed with
past information and history, will be able to locate a solution within the first few minutes, thanks to an
accessible database of potential issues. And, should a solution not be readily apparent, then bringing
in other representatives, or even crowdsourcing for answers through customer portals, is a simple
matter. With CRM, customer support becomes a walk in the park.
Automation of Everyday Tasks
Completing a sale is never as easy as just getting a customer to agree to commit. Along with the
surface details of any sale, there are hundreds of smaller tasks that must be completed in order for
everything to function properly. Forms need to be filled out, reports need to be sent, legal issues need
to be addressed—these ancillary chores are a time consuming, yet vital aspect of the sales process.
The best CRM systems are designed to take the burden of many of these tasks from off the shoulders
of your employees, thanks to the magic of automation. This means that your representatives will be

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able to focus more of their efforts towards closing leads and resolving customer pain points, while the
automated CRM system takes care of the details.
Greater efficiency for multiple teams
Automatically stored communication allows you to view emails, calendar and phone call details in
one easily accessible place. Add that to the ability for multiple teams to access the same information,
it simply sky rockets the amount of achievable progress. Sales, marketing, and customer service teams
can share valuable information about clients to continue to funnel them down the pipeline to get the
desired result of closing a sale, knowledge of new products, or excellent customer service. Every
department can now tag team to get the right information to the right individual. With this new found
ease, teams can seamlessly work together to improve the bottom line.
Improved Analytical Data and Reporting
Miscalculated data should not be the reason you cannot succeed, with CRM this is no longer a
possibility. CRM systems store information in one place which leads to improved analyzing of the
data as a whole. Easily integrated with different tools or plugins, you have the ability to generate
automatic reports to maximize your time. Personalize your dashboard views to quickly locate
information needed such as customer information, sales goals, and performance reports to reach
untapped opportunities. With better reporting data you can make resourceful and effective decisions
to reap the rewards in customer loyalty and long run profitability.

5)Various disadvantages of CRM?

Disadvantages of CRM Systems
While advantages usually outweigh disadvantages for most organizations implementing an CRM
system, here are some of the most common obstacles experienced:
 Record Loss
 Training
 Require additional work inputting data
 Require continuous maintenance, information updating, and system upgrading costly
 Difficult to integrate with other management information systems.

6) What the are Implementation issues in CRM?

Challenges in CRM Implementation can be broadly categorized into:
1. People Challenges
2. Technology Challenges
3. Business Process Challenges
4. Other Challenges
People Related Challenges in CRM Implementation
#1 Lack of senior management sponsorship
 CRM initiative solely driven by IT team without management buy-in.
 Business users unclear or unconvinced on benefits of CRM.
 Management not willing to commit to enforce CRM adoption.
 Underestimating Change Management demanded by CRM.
Mitigation – Having an internal CRM champion from executive management.
#2 Expecting too much, too soon – Boiling the Ocean
 Trying to accomplish all CRM objectives in the initial launch.
 Adopting a ‘Water-Fall’ methodology instead of ‘Agile’ methodology for CRM project
implementation.
 Under estimating end-user transition by giving them full-featured, complex CRM system
from get-go.
Mitigation – Adopting “Think Big, Start Small, Move Fast” strategy for CRM.

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#3 Lack of scope clarity & budget overruns

 Not committing adequate time & budget to requirement discovery.

 Underestimating integration effort.
 Not anticipating quantity & quality of data to be migrated to the new CRM.
 Underestimating end-user resistance and training costs.
 Underestimating infrastructure costs. Underestimating customization & implementation costs
Mitigation – Detailed requirement discovery workshops & adopting Agile project methodology
that allows early identification of these issues.
#4 Underestimating Change Management
 Active resistance due to perceived threat from CRM.
 Passive resistance to adoption due to inertia of changing old habits.
 CRM interface slow or un-intuitive, making it cumbersome to use.
 CRM viewed as ‘something that benefits management only’
Mitigation – Making end-users aware of what benefits they get out of CRM. Incentivizing (both
positive & negative) to use CRM system. Ensuring an intuitive, easy to use, fast CRM system.
Planning adequate training exercises.
#5 Changes in Key Stakeholders in Middle of Project
 Internal CRM champion(s) leaving the organization or having change of role or department.
 Arrival of new IT Head or Business Head, who has a different vision for CRM.
 Changes in key personnel from CRM vendor’s side that roll-back the progress made on
vendor’s understanding of organizational objectives
Mitigation – Adequate documentation of CRM project objectives and intermediate progress
sign-offs. Enlisting more than one internal CRM champion for redundancy.
#6 Lack of Expertise of the CRM vendor
 Vendor does not have enough experience with the CRM product being implemented.
 Vendor does not have technology or process maturity of delivering CRM projects of similar
scale.
 Vendor not fully aware of the challenges in CRM implementation and is ill-prepared to
anticipate and deal with them adequately.
Mitigation – Adequate due diligence at vendor selection stage to assess vendor maturity and
expertise.
Technology Related Challenges in CRM Implementation
#7 Lack of CRM Product Fit
 Product cannot support multiple deployment options, namely – On Cloud, On-Premise,
Private Cloud, etc.
 Product not flexible enough to allow for deeper customizations to enable fit with
organization’s growing and changing needs.
 Product not keeping pace with current CRM trends, such as – Global, Social, Mobile, etc.
 Product not intuitive or user-friendly, thereby hindering user adoption.
Mitigation – Adequate due diligence at product selection stage to ensure fit not only for current
business needs, but also for organization’s growing and changing needs.
#8 Integration Related Issues
 Existing legacy systems don’t support modern, web-services based integration that is required
with CRM.
 Lack of adequate support from other vendors of existing systems that need to be integrated
with CRM.
 Data integrity issues and uncertainty over ‘single source of truth’.
Mitigation – Adequate due diligence at requirements discovery stage, identify what data needs
to be pulled from where and involve existing systems’ vendors in discussions early on. Develop
prototype where needed.

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#9 Infrastructure Related Issues

CRM On-Premise
 Inadequately sized hardware leading to poor CRM performance for end users.
 Underestimating the budget for setting up a true High-Availability, secure CRM setup,
leading to cost overruns.
CRM On-Cloud
 Underestimating cost of scaling up on cloud.
 Lack of complete control over your own data and accessibility at all times.
 Compliance/Regulatory Issues.
Mitigation – Plan carefully upfront. Best, choose a CRM that supports both models.
Process Related Challenges in CRM Implementation
#10 Data Migration Gotcha!
 Data fragmented and silo-ed in various existing applications and difficult to integrate and
consolidate in the CRM.
 Data integrity issues in the migrated data.
 Incorrect assumptions about the quality of the data to be migrated. Adequate time and budget
not planned for the inevitable data cleaning/scrubbing exercise.
Mitigation – Know you Data! Having clarity about your data in terms of how much, how good
and where is mandatory.
#11 Impact on Existing Business Processes
 Considering CRM as just a technology, instead of business transformation tool.
 Inflexibility to change existing way of doing things, giving up entrenched (bad) business
practices and adopting best practices that CRM enables.
 Implementation that is overly disruptive of existing business practices.
 Complexities in re-architecting customer facing processes through CRM.
Mitigation – Recognize the transformative power of CRM, be flexible to adopt best practices.
Enlist a sponsor from executive management early on.
Other Challenges Unique to Large Organizations
#12 Difficulty in deploying a single CRM system spanning multiple geographic regions due to
differences in business practices and the required localization.
#13 Artificial time pressures created due to end-of-contract situations with existing vendors. The
urgency and impossible timelines can derail the change management efforts required for
implementation & adoption of new CRM.
#14 Change in business priorities mid way through CRM implementation, e.g. reallocation of CRM
budget, shifted focus on mergers & acquisitions, changes in regulatory environment, etc.
#15 Complexities in information security due to differing encryption standards, Govt access & control
over data, industrial espionage in certain regions etc.

7)Explain about Conceptual Framework in CRM?

A Conceptual Framework in CRM:
A conceptual framework in this study is based on Lu and Shang (2007) who identified six CRM
dimensions making up of thirty CRM attributes under customer acquisition, customer response,
customer knowledge, customer information system, customer value evaluation, and customer
information process. In this study, we are going to use the six CRM dimensions to apply in banking
sector. Figure 1 show a conceptual framework of CRM practices among banks from the customers’
perspectives.

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These six CRM dimensions are described below:

Dimension 1 (Customer Acquisition):
S1 = The bank has flexible measures for customers’ urgent requirements.
S2 = The bank has different marketing mix for target customers.
S3 = The bank would use customer information to develop a new market.
S4 = The bank would apply customer information to marketing planning.
S5 = The bank provides a variety of service items and information.
S6 = The bank provides sales rebates for customers.
S7 = The bank provides solitary services to meet customers’ requirement.
Dimension 2 (Customer Response):
S1 = The bank uses phone calls, e-mails, and personnel visits to communicate with customers.
S2 = The bank rapidly responds to customers’ problems, suggestions, and complaints.
S3 = The bank would initiatively understand customers’ service requirements and expectations.
S4 = The bank has good reputation, therefore, customers would initiatively enquire about bank’s
services.
Dimension 3 (Customer Knowledge):
S1 = The bank is knowledgeable about how to obtain main customers.
S2 =The bank understands main customers’ service requirements.
S3 = The bank has fruitful capabilities to obtain new customers.
S4 = I often introduce other customers to purchase bank’s product and services.
S5 = I often insist on using bank’s services and product.
Dimension 4 (Customer Information System):
S1 = The bank is capable of using their computer system to categorize targeted markets.
S2 = The bank’s computer system is capable of organizing classifying interactions between sale
representatives and customers.
S3 = The bank has a computer system sufficient to handle customers’ information.
S4 = The bank has a management system to check transactions and customer relationships.
Dimension 5 (Customer Value Evaluation):
S1 = The bank would analyze individual customer’s profit contribution.
S2 = The bank would analyze customer types and behaviours to identify customer value.
Dimension 6 (Customer Information Process):
S1 = The bank’s computer system is capable of storing, searching and analyzing customers’ data.
S2 = The bank’s computer system is capable recording customers’ purchases and services.
S3 = The bank has location advantages.

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8) What is the role of CRM in IT marketing?

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