CRM: Recession Proof your Business?

You don’t need me to tell you times are a bit tough right now. Buyer confidence is low, and that means that keeping the customers you have is even more important—let alone attracting new customers.

Can a customer relationship management system be the way to do this?

A white paper published by VendorGuru.com claims it is.

While everyone’s avoiding the R-word (recession), most businesses as well as consumers are tightening the purse strings. Customers are suddenly more valuable than just a short time ago.

CRM systems can help a company of any size ensure these customers keep returning—and it’s common knowledge that existing customers are cheaper to retain and more likely to buy than new customers.

“Businesses could find an effective CRM approach will give them an important competitive advantage under recessionary conditions,” states the white paper.

With an effective CRM system in place, businesses may retain profitability and grow even during a recession. Some view recessions as a bit of “natural selection” in the business world, allowing the fittest to survive and paring away those without the strength to weather tough times.

The white paper highlights three strategies for surviving—possibly prospering—during a recession.

Increasing customer penetration is the first. Customer relationship management tools can work to boost profitability as much as 70 percent, according to the white paper. Acquisition costs for new business tops the cost of servicing current customers; there are also opportunities for cross selling. CRM software guides your sales force by offering scripts for cross selling and showing the customers’ order histories.

Achieving efficiencies is second in line; streamlining a business from within is key during lean economic times, and unproductive salespeople can be identified and helped. In fact, CRM can help a company automate processes and develop greater efficiency throughout the entire sales cycle.

Finally, the white paper says CRM can help to use resources effectively. During slower times, keep your staff busy by trying new CRM strategies and solutions.

CRM the Game?

Entellium just announced it’s going to release a “gamer influenced design” which is intended to create a CRM application that is both rewarding and challenging for salespeople. This new version which is due out in May, is called “Rave CRM“. I thinkEntellium has the right idea and is definitely thinking outside the box, but a gamer design won’t be the answer.

Isn’t CRM fun enough already salespeople? Umm….no. The only way I see CRM becoming more sticky for salespeople is to do something like embedding fantasy sport scores and myspace comments on their splash screens. That way every morning when they get into work, they’ll have a compelling reason to login in. Why not? They look at them anyhow — might as well make it easier right?

Seriously, here’s a better idea that management would actually approve. Salespeople are competitive in nature and strive to be the top salesperson. Why not take advantage of that and create a leader board listing each and every salesperson in order of total pipeline or revenue generated? No, I’m not talking about the weekly management email — I’m talking about build it right into your CRM system. Make it real-time. Have the sales rep close a deal and quickly click over to the “leader board” page to see if he moved up a notch. Competition is how you turn your CRM system into a game and add to your bottom line.

He-5 Resources: Triple Crown CRM Software Applications are Functional and Available

NEW YORK -- The New York office of HE-5 Resources (other OTC: HRRN.PK) is proud to launch the web based Triple Crown CRM software suites. CRM (Customer Relationships Management) meshes people, business processes and technology, to enhance interactions, eliminate inefficiencies, and increase profitability.

Our first commercial program for immediate release is “Mustang-Look.” Secure, encrypted, W3 (World-Wide Web) access to your information is but “one internet connection".

We are a developing service company, offering innovative and proprietary software solutions, to deal with "customer relationship management" (CRM). Our integrated software suites are designed for the needs of companies to increase profitability and improve productivity of the "front and back office operations," (e.g. billing, marketing, finance, e-mails, etc...).

With business relationships, and CRM data that needs to be tracked and analyzed, the proper tools will encourage cost-efficient customer oriented relationships. Furthermore, with the accelerating shift to "software as a service" (SaaS) delivered via the internet and the incorporation of social media (web 2.0) in the person's private and work environment, the versatile CRM software, which forms the base of our TBB ( Trading Barter Bank ) platform, will become a necessary and advantageous software for businesses and individuals.

define CRM

A simple search on Google for define crm will display its main definition as customer relationship management. While it sounds interesting, what does it really mean? Well, the expanded definition gives some hints - CRM could be interpreted as a way to manage the relationship you have with your customers (business relationship). While this is a shallow definition of CRM, it points however in the right direction, it's all about the way you do your business so that you gain, keep and maintain a good relation with existing and future customers.

But in the process of getting new customers and maintaining an excellent relationship with the existing ones there are other factors involved. For instance, let's assume you produce airplanes (not in your backyard though), and let's see which factors involve the relationship with your customer:

• Sales and Marketing. To be able to have a relationship with your customer you need first to have a customer. Now that's a pickle. You have to have well trained salesmen and marketing strategies to touch the right niche and grab your customers.
• Suppliers. You got a customer, now you need to start working on his product. To create an airplane you need good materials from your suppliers and delivered in time (if you don't have the materials when you need them, the customer doesn't get the plane in time so the relation is damaged).
• Customer preferences. Now since an airplane involves high costs, you might through in some special customization for your customer. But for that you need to know what the customer preferences are (wouldn't be a good relationship if you would deliver a pink airplane when he wanted a white one).
• Internal processes. You have the parts, you know what the customer wants. Now it's time to produce it using your knowledge, services and people.
• Customer communications. It doesn't take a couple of hours to create the plane, so while the plane is being created you want to be sure that the customer receives the proper information about how the production goes. So you need to communicate with him for a better relationship.
• Delivery. How shiny it looks, now that is ready. However, it's not something you can send via Fedex, so you need to be sure that it's delivered to your customer without any scratches or pee smell on its tires.
• Training. Well it's no use if you give him the plane without an instruction manual. While a manual might work for how to use the radio, to use the plane your customer would need serious training.
• Customer support. Not everything is perfect, and even if it is then your customer still needs some support because he doesn't know why the tiny red button now looks brighter. You want to offer support when he needs it and right to the point.
• Customer followup. Now it's been about 4 months since your customer is been playing around with his new toy. Wouldn't be excellent if you would call or meet him in person to ask if he needs new tires or a new surround system for the passengers?
• Performance management. You're happy and your customer is happy. That's a good relationship. But could you have done something better that would have resulted in a better product or a better service (or even driving costs down a little bit)? It's time for an analysis, so you process all the information gathered and you draw the conclusions. And since this is a process that will be repeating with each new customer, anything you do now to improve it will just improve the relationship with your future customers. But don't forget your people. They did a good job too and they need to be compensated so that they'll do the same good job in the future too.

The above list could go on. As you can see customer relationship management involves a lot of functions and is influenced by a lot of factors. Maybe now we're able to give a better definition for CRM: A business process that has as its main goal your customer satisfaction. Because if your customers are happy, then they'll purchase from you in the future too and also recommend you to others, so your revenue will increase from a healthy customer relationship. Supporting this CRM business strategy is not done with a pen and paper (at least not only with). There are lots of CRM solutions from big names like Oracle, SAP, Salesforce and many others, that include the usage of CRM software. However, to be successful with your CRM strategy, you must align the usage of CRM software with the type of your customers and the particularities of your product.

A little bit more about CRM software and how it helps in the relationship with your customer. A typical CRM program allows you to gather, store and analyze not only the information about your customer, but also the information about the other factors that influence the CRM, such as your partners (suppliers, vendors) and your own people (internal processes). Beside this function, a CRM program also allows you to: plan and execute your sales and marketing strategies, offer customer support and training, manage the performance of your your own processes. Also, there are 2 major types of CRM software: On-demand and On-premise. In a few words, CRM On Demand is the type of CRM program that is accessed as a web service (either provided by a third party for a recurring fee, or installed as a centralized solution in your company), while CRM On Premise is the type of CRM program that is actually installed on your computer and you don't access it as a web service (though communication and data sharing are key elements too and are available in CRM On-Premise too).

So now can you define CRM? defining CRM is not as easy as saying customer relationship management. It's much more than that, because of everything else that influences the business process.

Four Ways Social Media Impacts CRM

Social media is all the rage, and not just with the kids--we use these networks to share information and, increasingly, to conduct business. We’ve seen the statistics on the staggering growth of social networks, most notably Twitter and Facebook. We are now beginning to realise the potential when used correctly by businesses.

The most interesting aspect of social media isn’t the individual social networks, but the evolving ecosystem engendered by their openness. This results in unprecedented creativity for network integration, application development, and content management for businesses. This is where customer relationship management joins the story.

Customer relationship management (CRM) has always promised the vision of managing customer interactions at the right time, in the right place, and in the right style to maximise customer value to the company. The tipping point of social media gives us the perfect opportunity to revolutionize CRM and build true customer relationship programs. Social media offers four of game-changing extensions to existing CRM capabilities for the creation of truly unified customer experiences.

1. Listening

Customers are talking about your company, your products, and your competitors. The information waiting to be harvested from social media conversations is invaluable. Social media monitoring isn’t just about public relations or periodic brand audits; it is about listening to what your customers want. Listening to social media is an active process that generates insights that should inform all of your activities: direct marketing campaigns, Web site management, search marketing, offers and promotions, call center scripts, and competitive intelligence.

2. Responding

Once you are listening, it will be abundantly clear that your customers are using social media at this very moment. Buying behavior, or lack thereof, will be the ultimate outcome of these sentiments, but by then it’s too late. Social media gives CRM practitioners the ability to participate in these conversations in real time and talk directly to the most engaged and active customers and prospects. This involves using social networks for customer service: proactively reaching out to customers who are having problems. It means identifying and mediating potential problems before they explode in the public consciousness or in the media. Finally, it means engaging with influencers and the networks where customers are active to be a participant in the story of your brand online.

3. Consolidated Customer and Prospect Profiles

The first two ways CRM intersects with social media is as a participant, but now it’s time to starting using this information to address individual customers and prospects to directly generate more business. The CRM system already knows each customer’s promotional and transactional history, and social media provides another facet of information about each individual. It provides information on which social networks customers use, what they are saying about you, what needs they have expressed, and what the sentiment of their activities is. This expanded customer profile supports the development of a more productive customer experience across all contact points. In B2B CRM situations, it provides critical color for sales reps as they manage customers through the sales cycle.

4. Self-Managed CRM

If enterprises can successfully engage Social Media as a component of their CRM strategy, then customers and prospects should expect to self-manage their participation in CRM in the future. These efforts have already started as many organisations offer self-service portals and Web sites, but it is going deeper as customer service reorganises into genuine communities where the enterprise and customers collaborate. These activities will span existing public social networks as well as enterprise-sponsored communities where customers and partners opt in to participate.

These four capabilities are major changes to the CRM playbook. In the long term, these will become seamless as social media becomes fully integrated in CRM processes, data management, and execution at customer touch points. But despite this inevitability and feelings of pressure to get on the social media bandwagon, organisations need to carefully consider their approach to bringing social media into the mix and determine what is appropriate based on their own industry, CRM goals, and organisational maturity. Social Media is a component of CRM that is still evolving--as are consumers’ expectations. Everyone is learning together on this journey; this is a golden opportunity to make CRM everything it was intended to be.