Case 3: Laurs & Bridz – implementation of a customer relationship management solution
[ CITATION Pur18 \l 9226 ]
1. Evaluate the direct and indirect effects of CRM initiatives on Laurs & Bridz
Direct
-Build strong relationships with the major physicians
-Increase also the contact with retailers, stockists, and other healthcare providers -Track clients and their preferences, their antecedents, which products are using ( important to focus on the ones of the competitors) -With data like birth and anniversary dates, the company could be more “friendly” with the customers by sending cards or emails -Optimize the time spent on each call, boosting productivity -Sales force automatization, enhance the productivity of the sales force, with this the company can use the information to analysis, prospecting, presentations and collaboration -Automate and integrate different business processes in marketing and sales (the entire cycle)
Indirect
-The financial risk that the company will assume, because they will invest almost 50 million on the CRM solution -The competence will also attack with new and modern tools, so the company needs to be prepared -If everything goes according to the plan to give the customer a better experience and treatment, the profit of the company will increase due to those clients will prefer the company among others. -It helps the company get more revenue from their major physicians -Can have a cost saving effect, due to once the information is collected, to keep in touch with the physicians is easier and will be less expensive with the technological tools -The creation of a multichannel system, in order to have everything connected. -A new department should be created inside the company to focus only on CRM
2. What possible challenges will the company face in implementing a CRM solution? How can it mitigate these potential challenges?
The main challenges the company will face will be related with the people and the personal data that will be required in order to create and structure the relationships at long term, due to at this moment, there are many privacy laws that protect the user, so it is important to review carefully which kind of info is valid in order to do that. To mitigate this, it is important that the company study a lot those types of laws that protect the user. Also, at the moment when the customers are asked for some information, tell them clearly which of that info will be used in order to provide a better experience. According to Dave Chaffey in their book “digital business and e-commerce management” [ CITATION Cha15 \l 9226 ], there are other types of challenges that the company may face while implementing a CRM solution, like: -The customer engagement: this is a big challenge due to the company doesn’t know for sure if they will have the attention of the customers and obtain the loyalty, but for this it is important to study very well what they want and what they need. - Keep also the attention in the profitability: It is important to have clear that the customer loyalty will increase the profitability, but maybe just to pay attention in the CRM can ruin the company due to the amount of money that is needed to apply this, so the challenge is to focus in all the important parts of the customer lifetime cycle and keep the numbers in order. -Create the perfect profile: all the customers are different, but also each client can change dramatically at any moment, so the profiles won’t be forever the same, it is important to track constantly them in order to know what is happening right now (in which phase also they are in his business). -Marketing communications techniques: those techniques must be excellent, because those will facilitate the acquisition, retention and extension of customers. It is important to hire or contact marketing experts to keep updated of the new tools and find the perfect one. -Salesforce – employees: the management of the CRM information and the application of this should be very well know by the employees to give the correct use and obtain excellent results -Avoid the opt-ot: keep updated the customers with the new products but with the enough intensity, not to abuse of the customers time, because they can get tire of this and refuse to the new information of the company.
References
Chaffey, D. (2015). Digital business and e-commerce platform. In D. Chaffey. United Kingdom: Pearson education limited . Puri, S., Khanna, A., & Sen, A. (2018). Laurs & Bridz – implementation of a customer relationship management solution. Ivey business foundation.
