Customer Relationship Management
Introduction
What is CRM? Well it stands for customer relationship management. As clear from its name, it deals in maintaining, keeping, improving and developing all sorts of relationships which exist between customers and an organization.
In past, CRM used to have no place in business developments and administrations. But with the developments and advanced studies, the research has shown that the relation that exists between customers and any organization is of vital importance.
Keeping in view such things, CRM finally made its way in organizations and companies.
Concept of CRM and modern era
Now a day, almost each organization has a separate CRM unit in its building which takes care of all the matters regarding customers.
The old concept of CRM used to be like that what an organization must supply or provide to the customers. But this conventional concept has been replaced by the new concept of CRM which includes mottos like what the customers want and what are their demands.
Focus and goals of CRM
An effective CRM is very important in successful running of any business. CRM majorly focuses on keeping the relationships with customers in a good fashion.
It is a vast management system which deals in developing the goals that are common to both an organization and its customers, maintaining the customer support and creating positive image of the organization in view point of customers.
Benefits of CRM
The implementation of CRM takes the performance of a company to higher levels. It can be justified by the fact that once the CRM has been implemented in any company’s structure, this will assist the company in making and developing good relations with its clients and customers.
This in turn will increase the confidence and loyalty of the clients towards that company which will result in a good feedback along with a supportive and increases referral rate.
The availability of more customers and clients to the company will enhance the business of company and this will result in an increased profit. The financial condition of the company will increase.
The only reason for which any person runs his business is to make maximum profit and that reason is well served by successful implementation of CRM in the business. This justifies the fact that how important a CRM is for any organization.
Features of a good CRM
Now any CRM can be good and bad one if not properly implemented. A good CRM is identified from the way it enables the organization to serve its customers.
If the customers are happy and satisfied with the quality and quantity if the product being delivered to them by the organization then this contributes half in making of good CRM.
The other half of the good CRM is supplied to it with the actions and methodology that a company is using in order to deliver the best to the customers. If both these things are happening at best then this shows the implementation of a good CRM.
Remember, a good CRM is a separate thing and its effective implementation or use is another so a border line should be drawn between these two to separately focus and work on these two features of CRM.
A good CRM is all about understanding the needs and wants of customers. Such a CRM must be capable of maintaining its work progress even in presence of large number customers since each customer has a different way of using the service or product resulting in a different feedback of the same product or service.
Food for CRM
The food for CRM is the feedback that is obtained from the customers. It acts like fuel in running CRM.
Through feedbacks of customers, the CRM units make statistics and later on analyze these to make a path that will direct the company to move in right direction so that a good relationship between an organization and customer is ensured.
A lot of CRM software based on information communications technology is being implemented now a day in basic work structure of organizations.
Customer Relationship Management Software
Importance
With the increased demand of CRM in the modern world of advanced business management, a number of solution providers have become dominant in providing software based CRM services. The importance of CRM in organizations can be justified from the fact that the CRM market which is currently valued at $20.6 billion will grow upto$36.5 billion by 2017 on international basis.
The effectiveness of CRM implementation in any business has become prominent as a lot of large and big companies go for this procedure in order to maximize their business as well as make good relations with clients.
The awareness of CRM has risen to such a value that most of the modern companies are investing more in CRM implementation then in intellectual business works.
CRM software venders
A lot of companies have shown remarkable performances by launching very competitive products in market which help in specification, implementation, maintenance and development of CRM.
The top names include Oracle, SAP, Salesforce, Microsoft and SugarCRM.
Oracle CRM
The oracle CRM has been providing its CRM services for a long period of time.
Its most prominent products include Oracle Siebel CRM, Oracle CRM on Demand, Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise, Oracle Contact Center Anywhere, RightNow and Fusion CRM. As of now Oracle has 6000 CRM customers worldwide and around 6 million users. It is a leading company in CRM services. Oracle Siebel has become much popular in providing CRM services through Sale Force Automation.
Its well developed structure is well suited for organizations facing high risks and increase costly development. The new oracle product Oracle Fusion would be top service provider in history of CRM service providers.
SAP CRM
Talking about SAP CRM services, it comprises of a complete CRM system which is integrated to a application which works best for midsized businesses. It has served as the most demanded tool for CRM services for very long time in industries. Most recently released product of SAP is SaaS.
A cloud based CRM service extension is also launched by SAP. SAP and Oracle are very old rivals in field of CRM services. Another name in world of CRM service providers is Salesforce.com. It is third most famous company in providing cloud CRM services.
It provides a variety of customer relationship management applications which may turn out to be the turning point of any falling business if used properly and effectively.
Salesforce.com
Having a top position among CRM service providers, Salesforce.com has reputation of providing these services to bigger firms.
However in case of Salesforce.com, the CRM cloud services are provided on subscription bases and are not allowed to be utilized for private usage.
Microsoft CRM
The next name in CRM world is Microsoft. Dynamics CRM has been an effective and unique device from Microsoft which has served the organization for years by enabling these to make valuable and better relationships with the customers keeping in view the customer management as well.
Microsoft CRM has a feature of welcoming cloud customers and business partners as well to install server-side code in cloud. This increases the versatility and universality of CRM services provided by Microsoft.
Sugar CRM
The last major name with high reputation in CRM world is SugarCRM. SugarCRM is a leading service provider when it comes to open source CRM software. It is most easy to use and cost effective stand alone service provider in the market.
It adapts itself automatically to the challenging industry so that better CRM goals can be achieved. It is known for its low cost services.
The type of the CRM service that an organization needs must be thoroughly concluded with a detailed research because it is very crucial in development of a good CRM. If the right CRM is implemented in any organization at right time then the business of this organization can go up to skies within days!