Customer Relationship Management

This section of our technical library presents information and documentation relating to CRM Applications and Customer relationship management software and products. Providing timely customer contact information is vital to maintaining successful business environment. Accurate information provided in an organized and thoughtful manner is the key to any business success. TELEMATION, our CRM and contact center software, was built on this foundation. The ability to modify your Customer Relationship Management software is just as important in this ever changing business environment. Our customer contact management and CRM call center software was developed initially with this concept. Our Telemation Customer Relationship Management solution and contact center software is ideally suited for call centers throughout the world.

The following article relates to the CRM industry.

A Watershed Event

Although it is now lost in the avalanche of articles and books written about SFA and CRM, in 1988 an article appeared in the Harvard Business Review that essentially legitimized SFA as a valid tool for managing sales and marketing. Not only did it reference evidence of justification, but it also positioned SFA in an enterprise context. At that point in its evolution, many consulting experts were viewing SFA as a novelty. From a vendor standpoint it was a welcomed relief from the barrage of negative press. With validation from the HBR, SFA could now be recognized as a legitimate and viable force in the marketplace. However, until the concept of CRM became popularized the enterprise aspect of the article was largely unfulfilled and some would say remains unfulfilled by today’s organizations.

SFA to CAM to CRM

The road to CRM started with the idea that all customer data should be available to the organization and that Sales and Customer Support functions should share the same database. To support this notion and technology, the term Customer Asset Management (CAM) was coined. CAM embraced the idea that an organization’s most important asset is its customers and therefore must manage these assets (obviously with technology). As this concept became popular, there emerged a land grab for point solution companies so as to assemble what would be recognized as a suite of applications. Terminology switched from CAM to Customer Relationship Management (CRM). These changes also position SFA as a mechanism to help sales people deliver value to customer organizations. For example, configurators offer a great opportunity to add such value while enhancing productivity.

The “e” Thing

We are all too familiar with the excesses of the late 90s regarding the Internet. Unfortunately, these behaviors were reflected in using "e", "i", and @ in every company name and service possible. This overuse has essentially obscured and trivialized a very important set of capabilities. The “e” infers the ability to extend an organization’s infrastructure to partners, customers, stakeholders, and shareholders in a way that adds value to their relationship with the company. User organizations need to cut through the hype to find the true competitive nuggets amongst the fool’s gold.

Where Are We Headed?

We must remember that the industry is based on technology; therefore it will describe itself in terms of these capabilities. Based on today’s applications, it is difficult to draw clean lines between that which is e-Business versus CRM or eCRM; therefore it is likely that there will be a move toward an encompassing concept such as demand chain management. There are many critics of the industry that would suggest that demand chain management is merely a guise to take attention away from the fact that the industry failed to adequately define CRM much less deliver it. There is an element of truth here but ultimately organizations must be about the business of optimizing channel performance on the road to satisfying customers. This is the foundation of the notion of demand chain management. Supply chain management will forever be constrained by the accuracy and timeliness of the forecasts (or transactions) as they occur in the market. Therefore, the linkage of demand and supply chain capabilities is inevitable and represents a quantum leap in asset utilization for many organizations.