Feb 28 (Chapter 11): Building a Customer Centric Organization—Customer Relationship Management

CRM is a business philosophy based on the premise that those organizations that understand the needs of individual customers are best positioned to achieve sustainable competitive advantages in the future. This chapter discusses:

• The reasons for CRM’s explosive growth


• Using CRM to enhance decision making


• CRM success factors

LEARNING OUTCOMES

11.1 Compare operational and analytical customer relationship management.
Operational CRM supports traditional transactional processing for day-to-day front-office operations or systems that deal directly with the customers. Analytical CRM supports back-office operations and strategic analysis and includes all systems that do not deal directly with the customers. The primary difference between operational CRM and analytical CRM is the direct interaction between the organization and its customers.

11.2 Identify the primary forces driving the explosive growth of customer relationship management.

The primary forces driving the explosive growth of CRM include:

• Automation/Productivity/Efficiency


• Competitive advantage


• Customer demands/requirements


• Increase revenues


• Decrease costs


• Customer support


• Inventory control


• Accessibility

11.3 Define the relationship between decision making and analytical customer relationship management.

Analytical CRM solutions are designed to dig deep into a company’s historical customer information and expose patterns of behavior on which a company can capitalize. Analytical CRM is primarily used to enhance and support decision making and works by identifying patterns in customer information collected from the various operational CRM systems.

11.4 Summarize the best practices for implementing a successful customer relationship management system.

CRM success factors include:

1. Clearly communicate the CRM strategy


2. Define information needs and flows


3. Build an integrated view of the customer


4. Implement in iterations


5. Scalability for organizational growth

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Business Driven Technology (Customized WMU Edition)
Baltzan & Phillips.