tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-343362822024-03-08T12:06:26.576-08:00CRM - CRM InformationProvides comprehensive information on CRM.Rama Krishnahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05390040330617501948noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34336282.post-82393083376165596552008-08-27T04:54:00.000-07:002008-08-27T05:03:53.866-07:00<strong><center>The origin of Online CRM </center></strong><br />Online CRM is the fastest growing area of CRM applications. It promises to render on-site CRM services obsolete in a few years to come. But it all began a few years ago when competition amongst small to medium sized businesses increased to an all time high. These businesses were competing against each other for a larger share of the pie and there was a need for improvised business practices, strategies and applications.<br /><br />Software automation was the need of the hour but the lack of a single comprehensive platform that integrates all departments of software was apparent. Onsite CRM was a distant and far too expensive proposition for small companies to venture into.<br /><br /> CRM vendors were the first to notice this and they immediately went back to the drawing board and created a much more cost effective version of the CRM tool. This was called hosted CRM, onsite CRM, online CRM and software as a service or Saas.<br /><br /><strong>The Pros</strong><br /><br /><ul> <li>CRM tools are hosted by a third party web host, typically the software vendor. These services are then delivered over the internet. </li><br /><br /><li>Cost effectiveness: The cost of entry and installation is reduced by a huge margin as there is no infrastructure needed. All that is required is a high speed internet connection and you are all set. </li><br /><br /><li>Data sharing and collaboration: You can share and collaborate data across the entire organization at multiple levels.</li><br /><br /><li>Scalability and flexibility: Unlike an on-site CRM, online CRM is far more scalable and flexible. You can customize it and add unlimited number of users to it. </li><br /><br /><li>Features: Online CRM for small businesses has some of the best features that are required for small and medium sized businesses to succeed.</li> </ul><br /><br /><strong>The cons</strong><br /><br />It isn’t really easy to choose the best CRM vendor. There are hundreds of such vendors and you have to ensure that you make the right choice.Rama Krishnahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05390040330617501948noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34336282.post-6024403566584633292008-06-12T06:10:00.000-07:002008-06-12T06:12:50.180-07:00<div align="center">CRM on demand: Software as a Service</div><br />Suddenly, the whole small to medium sized business market seems to be infatuated with ‘On demand CRM’ also known as ‘Software-as-a-Service’ (SaaS). Why this sudden surge in the number of companies opting for on demand CRM over traditional on-site models?<br /><br />With the advancement in technology and the internet making huge inroads into the lives of people, customers have become more product savvy. They only expect the best from any business and even a small amount of complacency on the part of any business can lead to the loss of a customer. Hence, small businesses relied on software automation and data analysis to improve customer loyalty.<br /><br /> However, they had to rely on a patchwork of applications as CRM was only available for large scale enterprises. So CRM vendors started working on a far cheaper and flexible version of CRM that is best suited for SMBs. The result is on demand CRM.<br /><br />On demand CRM has been carefully marketed as the perfect integration point for SMBs. The favorable cost factors, the convenience in setting it up and the hardware-free maintenance are some of the reasons why SaaS has really taken over.<br /><br /> But, as a SMB, you should be slightly more careful while choosing any CRM on demand. I will explain the reasons behind this.<br /><br />Most CRM on demand software comes with a three to four year contract attached to it. This means, that you are stuck with it for that period. So you better be careful about what you choose.<br />Not all on demand CRM software is flexible enough to be integrated with existing software applications. If it cannot be done, then it will end up costing more in the long run.<br /><br />If you are new to the concept of on demand CRM, then seek advice from a CRM consultant who can give you the right advice and help you choose the best hosted CRM.Rama Krishnahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05390040330617501948noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34336282.post-62454561960881280042007-12-24T01:42:00.000-08:002007-12-24T01:46:54.190-08:00<div align="left"><strong>In depth analysis of a CRM solution</strong><br /><br />The ideal CRM solution is the one that leverages your existing technology, can be upgraded with ease and keeps your Cost of ownership within acceptable limits. At the same time, it should minimize risks and drive profits. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">Does your CRM solution do all this? No? Then maybe you need to reconsider your business plan.<br /><br />The 360 degree view<br /><br />I cannot emphasize on the importance of getting a 360 degree view of the customer. This 360 degree view should be available across all departments in the organization. Believe me; this is not as easy as it sounds. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">The 360 degree view should show you complete information about all past customer interactions in a graphical interface. You can start off with the most important departments that need customer data and then add other departments subsequently. The CRM should have multi department and multi channel capabilities.<br /><br />Room for Improvement<br /><br />The needs and demands of the customer are constantly changing and the smart business will change and adapt with it. Your CRM should offer you a platform to automate critical customer tasks and also analyze these processes for their effectiveness. If they fail to deliver, you should always be able to modify them with ease. Once again a cross departmental system is needed to maximize its effectiveness.<br /><br />Your employees<br /><br />When you are constantly thinking in terms of your customers, spare a thought for your employees. It is these guys who run your business. They need a CRM system that they can easily adapt to. A certain level of personalization must be allowed within the system so that they can get it to work the way they want to. Automation of tasks that are performed commonly is a great addition. In addition to the above, employees should have access to effective support material .<br /><br />Apart from the above mentioned traits, your IT requirements are something that you need to consider. </div>Rama Krishnahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05390040330617501948noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34336282.post-2745755488678771222007-12-19T03:01:00.000-08:002007-12-19T03:04:08.515-08:00<strong>CRM: Are you making the right choice? </strong><br /><br />It is imperative that you make the right choices as far as CRM is concerned. Venture out into the market and you will be greeted by hundreds of vendors offering CRM solutions for your company. But how do you make the right choice? How do you know whether a CRM solution is the right one for you? What do you need to look for in a CRM solution? Is it scalability? Is it flexibility or maybe its functionality? <br /><br />The first step<br /><br />Most companies make the mistake of selecting a CRM product and then tailor their needs around the product. However, to maximize the effectiveness of the CRM and to ensure maximum returns, the opposite should happen. You should be able to completely customize the CRM around the needs of your company. Start off by deciding whether you need an on premise CRM solution, a hosted one or a combination of the two. <br /><br />Functionalities on offer<br /><br />What functionalities does the CRM offer? Does your business require real time interactive analytics? Then the CRM must provide precise insights about historical trends that have affected customer behavior in the past and might affect it in the future. Your complete decision making ability rests on this functionality. Without it, your organization’s predictive analytics will be hindered. <br /><br />The Vendor<br /><br />Before you jump off and buy a CRM application based on its cost effectiveness, spare a thought for the vendor. The vendor must have the necessary technical expertise and skill to help you achieve your desired business goals. There must be constant support available 24x7 to clients. Always remember that the very success of your organization depends on the choice you make. So make an informed and right decision. <br /><br />The features that we mentioned are the most basic ones that you need to look for. There are many more such hidden features that can give you a new insight into customer relationships. Are you aware of them?Rama Krishnahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05390040330617501948noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34336282.post-69073259368299189572007-12-03T06:57:00.000-08:002007-12-03T07:02:59.410-08:00<div align="center"><br /><strong> Rise of the CRM Juggernaut</strong></div><br /><br />When CRM arrived it was looked upon with contempt. Not many companies were open to the idea of creating an enormous customer database and then utilizing it to enhance customer relationships.<br /><br />Only the biggest and technically advanced companies were willing to experiment with CRM applications.<br /><br />But in the last few years, CRM has become a tremendous force which is now propelling business into an altogether new direction. Terms like ROI (Return on Investment) and timely quality deliverables have been redefined.<br /><br />Today, CRM is heading into an all new zone and more and more companies are now turning to CRM to rise in this extremely competitive environment.<br /><br />Meeting Objectives<br /><br />However, a recent report says that only about ¼ of all CRM applications meet their deliverables. This means that simply having a CRM system in place doesn’t really make your position any safer.<br /><br />The CRM system has to be tailored to suit your company and more importantly you need to work towards understanding how you can use the CRM to improve your business.<br /><br />The main aim of a CRM application is to create a customer centric work force that will attain greater profits. It is NOT an automated system that will work on its own and create profits for you.<br /><br />Choose wisely<br /><br />If you are a new company entering the market looking for a CRM application, then keep a few things in mind.<br />• Make sure that you choose only a CRM system that meets the needs of your business.<br />• Apart from this, you need to choose from a hosted or on site CRM. This will bring in your budget into the picture.<br />• What is the scalability of the CRM application? Does it allow room for growth?<br /><br />Keeping these factors in mind will help you make a wise decision.Rama Krishnahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05390040330617501948noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34336282.post-37020541218909823872007-10-15T01:20:00.000-07:002007-10-15T01:27:07.754-07:00<p><strong>Analyzing Changing trends in CRM</strong></p><p>Its time to look at the freshest CRM trends again. CRM once started off as the set of tools that would garner the relationship with the customer thereby improving the quality of the business. But now it has gone much beyond that. </p><p>Today CRM tools can very well make or break your business. There have been several changes that have come into CRM ever since it originated a few years ago.</p><p>One of the latest changing trends is that companies are now looking beyond cost containment and looking to forge stronger relationships with customers. </p><p>This is crucial to the success of the business as recently there was a scenario where the customer was lost in the midst of business to business competition.</p><br /><p><b>The Mid Market </b></p><p>Also most CRM companies are now courting the mid market which is made up of the elusive customers who wait until a product has proven itself in the market. Since these customers have relatively small budgets it is not very easy to win them over. As a result of this, we are already witnessing a boost in the number of companies opting for CRM services. </p>Rama Krishnahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05390040330617501948noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34336282.post-76048967362154309122007-05-24T05:38:00.000-07:002007-05-24T05:49:12.122-07:00<p align="justify"> <b> Enhancing the long run ROI with excellent CRM strategies and techniques: </b> <br />Return of Investment (ROI), measures the effectiveness of a company when using capital to earn more profit in the monetary sense of the term than what it had invested initially in the business. <br /><br />CRM return of investment (ROI) path way for improving the effectiveness of a company is achieved not by economizing on customer support techniques but by promoting loyalty of the existing customers and finding innovative ways to retain customers would prove beneficial for substantially increasing the revenue in the long run. The modern era of business performance evolves around the development of lucrative customer relationships.<br /><br />Today customer support services play a vital role in the operating structure of a business organization. With the chant that customer rules, very few customer relation managers (CRM) take note of the amount of funds being spent on customer maintenance strategies by calling them, sending out emails, server charges, downloading their personal information etc. CRM ROI strategies and techniques are essential to manage and control investment costs down and drive higher returns. <br /><br />As far back as 2003 PricewaterhouseCoopers “Trendsetters Barometer” survey stated that, 81% of the fastest growing U.S. companies had initiated CRM programs over the last three years, and many plan to expand their CRM capabilities in 2004. These firms had achieved 46% faster revenue growth than their competitors over the past five years (fueled by an expected 60% revenue growth rate through 2003). Given such findings, it’s no surprise that Boston-based AMR Research estimated the CRM market growth rate to $10.8 billion in 2004, a $1 billion leap from 2003.<br /><br /><strong>How to achieve CRM ROI effectively</strong>:<br /><ul><li>STRATEGIC PLANNING : Achieving CRM ROI begins with sound strategic planning. </li><br /><li> Focus in Reducing Costs, Boost your Revenue : To maximize the ROI and realize the potential of a customer base, one must first understand the value and needs of individual customers, using that insight to treat each customer uniquely, with utmost care. </li><br /><li> Efficient collection and analysis of customer information : Collecting and analyzing of customer preferences, companies can also determine new techniques for addressing each customer’s unmet needs and enhance the value of each customer relationship, there by increasing the ROI in the long run. </li> </ul><br />In order for the firm to earn a substantial ROI every year, where the capital gains exceeds the capital losses, one should have a flexible technology which promotes changes to its structure facilitating the inter connectivity of customers and the business development. Efficient management of customers is very crucial for the development of the business. Hence management committee, along with efficient CRM strategies, needs to have a bird’s eye view of the business if the ROI of the firm has to have a tremendous growth rate in the long run.Rama Krishnahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05390040330617501948noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34336282.post-7091297707014973162007-04-02T07:47:00.000-07:002007-04-10T08:21:16.541-07:00<p align="justify"><strong>Efficient Marketing Strategies with CRM</strong></p><br /><p align="justify">Why do we need CRM while making marketing strategy decisions and choices?</p><br /><p align="justify">Marketing is not all about advertisements and enticing people to buy your product. Its more about being an managerial concept relating to the attainment of the firm’s goals and objectives. When we talk about marketing in general, we look at the strategies that give the customers the price, promotion and distributive details. CRM is an essential tool for ensuring a big stake in the market.</p><br /><p align="justify">In order to capitalize our stake in the market, a few tips to remember,<br /><ul><li>What kind of exchange policy we are going to adopt.</li><br /><li>How efficiently will be managing the customer/client contact information.</li><br /><li>What method of promotion will be adopted to campaign our product/service in the market.</li><br /><li>Who is our target audience? Small or big businesses, Self- oriented start-ups, society centered welfare set-ups to name a few.</li></ul><p></p><br /><p align="justify">Understanding how the customers make their decisions are just as important as why do they choose your product. Making one sale is not the end, ensuring that you have long term and life time loyalty is the key to a successful marketing strategy. CRM, will help realize all the above stated goals and objectives. With its centralized database which stores mission critical customer information accessible anywhere anytime on demand, is one of the essential reasons for adapting CRM in your marketing strategy. You can be a small business, big business, b2b or c2b, CRM will ensure segmentation of customers into various categories, providing prompt responses to all the client/ customer queries, providing automatic updates in the database after each and every transaction.</p><br /><p align="justify">CRM facilitates the integration of marketing, sales and customer service information, determines the required quality of maintaining your leads and how to generate new leads. CRM also helps in determining what the various marketing activities are that would generate the maximum ROI. </p>Rama Krishnahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05390040330617501948noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34336282.post-1170171392232786492007-01-30T07:34:00.000-08:002007-01-30T07:36:32.480-08:00<strong>Sales Management Made Easier with CRM</strong><br /><strong></strong><br />How does CRM help with efficiently managing the sales?<br /><br />Like the general saying goes, you need to please the customer, make a sale and end of the day, know you have won the customer’s loyalty.<br /><br />This is so simply stated, to achieve this, one need’s to adopt the right CRM, that could be easily integrated into your business which enables automatic managing, tracking, linking customer enquiries to a centralized data base, with easy access to all the relevant sales representatives. This centralized easy access data base should be synchronized with all the branches on demand anywhere any time without having a time or place constraint. This further facilitates the firm having a bigger and more competitive share in the market.<br /><br />Besides the above, CRM enables a systematic streamlined approach of customer information by keeping tabs on each and every unique need and preference of the customer, maintaining records of all the sales transactions of every customer, finding more innovative ways to retain the customer loyalty, and come up with better ways to serve the clients in a more responsive manner.<br /><br />Every thing has both its positive and negative view points. The above listed benefits of CRM, can be achieved only if the firm has selected an appropriate, easy to adapt, with minimum or no training at all required. All in all CRM is similar to a two edged sword, it has to be selected well and more importantly implemented with the utmost efficiency to yield the desirable results.<br /><br />Once you have your customers and sales management taken care of, marketing is the next function to look into along with how to improve your return of investment with CRM applications in your business environment.Rama Krishnahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05390040330617501948noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34336282.post-1164133906481142572006-11-21T10:27:00.000-08:002006-11-21T10:31:46.500-08:00<p><b>Ascend to the Next Higher Level in Customer Support Functions with CRM Customer-Centric Solutions!</b></p><br /><p>Your ability to hit revenue targets hinges on the ability to attract and retain the right kind of customers. To this effect, CRM solutions help to establish a stable committed platform to effectively manage business customers.</p><br /><p>A CRM solution if implemented properly enables you to create and maintain a long-term relationship with your customers.</p><br /><p>The customer-centric applications help to safely store and manage customer data. Customer profile can be accurately documented. In-depth customer records and transaction history can be maintained. Consolidating customer information into a single secure database makes it easy to understand customer preferences and mange customer issues. You have instant access to an always up-to-date database of customer information, which makes it easy to quickly easily identify customer requirements and provide timely services in a one-to-one personalized manner.</p><br /><p>Such a focused approach to customer service creates customer value, improves business-customer intimacy, maximizes customer satisfaction, increases client retention, and makes customers more loyal to your business, all of which drastically increases your business ROI. </p><br /><p>However, CRM benefits do not end with just Customer Relationship Management. A good customer support strategy is one that helps you to identify and retain customers while also effectively streamlining business sales and marketing functions….</p>Rama Krishnahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05390040330617501948noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34336282.post-1161963295878310642006-10-27T08:29:00.000-07:002006-10-27T08:34:55.890-07:00<p align="justify"><b>How can CRM help your business?</b></p><br /><br /><p align="justify">CRM service-oriented architecture helps to consolidate business customer data into a single secure database. By implementing CRM in your business you can collect, organize and store customer information in a secure, organized fashion. In-depth customer history can be maintained. You can easily, accurately track the preferences and buying patterns of customers individually. This enables you to provide one-to-one customized services as per unique customer requirements. Such focused customer relationship management helps to increase customer satisfaction, improves customer retention, and, makes customers more valuable to your company.</p> <br /><br /><p align="justify">CRM applications also help to effectively streamline business operations. By automating key business functions – Sales, Marketing and Customer Support, CRM applications help you to manage your business processes more quickly and efficiently. You can also collaborate across departments and persons in a timely manner using CRM software. The solutions are feature-rich, quick and hassle-free, and allow you to focus on specific business function areas to improve productivity and to increase business ROI. </p>Rama Krishnahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05390040330617501948noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34336282.post-1158255504498066792006-09-14T10:30:00.000-07:002006-09-14T10:38:24.506-07:00<p><strong>What is CRM - Customer Relationship Management?</strong> </p><br /><p align="justify">Present day customer-centric business culture lays great emphasis on managing customers. Businesspersons are increasingly realizing that to maximize profits it is important to maximize customer satisfaction. By focusing on maximizing customer loyalty you can improve customer retention and also make them more useful to the company.</p><br /><p align="justify">Customer Relationship Management (CRM) typically involves the entire business processes to support and manage business customers. By introducing reliable systems and processes, CRM focuses on creating and maintaining lasting customer relationships. A successful CRM strategy encompasses the following:<br /><ul><li>Operational CRM : Automation of key business processes and functions – Sales, Marketing and Customer Service. </li><li>Analytical CRM : Store customer data and analyze customer behavior in the suitable manner .</li><li>Collaborative CRM : Interact across departments effectively to ensure timely delivery of customer services.</li></ul><p></p>Rama Krishnahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05390040330617501948noreply@blogger.com0