CRM

Introduction.

To attain higher levels of productivity, every business unceasingly seeks to perfect the performance of its operations, using Intelligence technologies, especially when it involves alterations in practice management. Intelligence systems and technologies are major empowering instruments for the organisations to develop new services and products as well as engineering advanced business models.

Many businesses have acknowledged the importance of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and its opportunity to obtain new customers,hold to the existing clients as well as become a standout organisations among competitors. But in order to run such technique and maintain a close relationship with clients a solid-based interaction between marketing and IT departments is required.

Customer Relationship Management is the creation, elaboration, maintenance and improvement of long-lasting valuable cooperation between businesses and its clients. The main purpose of such technique is to research the pool of clients for the potential ones, attract former customers back and minimise costs of marketing and customer service.

CRM technique is “the computer software designed to help companies keep a track of an easily-accessed information about the customers the business is dealing with”(Managementstudyguide.com, 2014). CRM was created with a purpose of providing fast and effective customer service by developing a relationship with each customer while putting organisation strategy and IT together. Such combination is vital because of linking together technologies and intelligence with business operations throughout the entire organization.

The main aim of this report is to identify the utilisation of CRM systems and hence establish the challenges and benefits which could emerge using CRM systems within the organisation.

Challenges and benefits of adopting CRM

The CRM application traces the preferences of customers and their shopping habits;handles with complaints as well as different types of requests.Accumulated customer information helps to provide services much faster and acquire new clients. The CRM software opens an opportunity for every member of sales team to access information on each customers, their contacts and sales transactions in no time. It also "underlines the primary tasks to be done following up the sale's transactions" (Kokemuller, 2014).

Advantages:

It is important to meet the deadlines in a today's world of business. Every day businesses waste valuable time using different types of software and spreadsheets in order to trace all transactions and complaints. The largest advantage of utilising CRM technique is the combination of all these software packages, used to track down the clients' activities, therefore there is no need for searching same information multiple amount of times across contact systems or various databases. Consequently CRM enables a completion of all daily tasks in a short time with the same saving thousands of hours each year, the time which could be used to accomplish other business goals (Biobm.com, 2014).

Confronting a huge amount of customers is most likely to lead to disorganisation and overwhelming of business operations. However CRM system makes it easy to store client information in an organised way, by storing all customer details in the same place, which could then be obtained by anyone with a correct permission within the business. Another benefit of having a CRM system in place is that even if one of the employees falls out of the organisation, an access to up-to-date customer information is still at hand, regardless of employee turnover or lost data.Some platforms also introduced synchronisation of this data with a calendar that informs managers about upcoming deadlines and tasks. For example when a manager has a scheduled sales call or a valuable transaction in his calendar, CRM system sends an email beforehand as a reminder. Whenever a customer has an upcoming birthday, CRM notifies about it, so the birthday wishes could be sent over. Consequently, this makes customers feel more valued and allows building deeper relationships between a client and organisation with the same giving an opportunity for the managers to make sure"that each customer gets the attention and nothing is forgotten" (Schaeffer, 2014).

For many businesses one of the reasons of a revenue downfall is in a failure of replying with the instant quote request and leaving invoices unattended. And with the CRM at hand quoting and invoicing is rationalized. As a rule the invoices and quotes are created in a short period of time which leads to the quotes being looked after and all the invoices mailed in time (Small Business - Chron.com, 2014).

Usually as information on customers piles up, more potentials emerge. For instance, tracing particular buying habits of customers would build up a list of their preferences. Therefore, when launching a similar product,based on a sales history, CRM will help to prioritise a list of customers, who would be particularly interested in it. As a result, the use of CRM system enables a sales growth with no need to advertise the product to new customers(Preact.co.uk, 2014).

It is also possible for the head managers of the companies to trace their employees, once CRM software is implemented. For instance when one of the staff is away on holidays or sick leave, CRM will easily provide a live roster with the potential employees who would be available to cover the missing worker. Also CRM system allows tracking of a progress of all staff and their schedules, including which transactions they’re involved into, how many sales they are closing and as a result enables the owner to make changes based on performance immediately.

One of the huge advantages of CRM practice is that it can assist in marketing by creating profitable marketing campaigns once analysing the purchase history of customers.The benefit of evaluating such buying history is in identifying relationship between factual sales performance and campaigns. This supplementary information lets to comprehend customers thoughts regarding their purchases and helps to identify which types of campaigns results in success. Some platforms also introduced such feature as integration with social media networks like Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedInand Facebook. Such technique enables tracking all subtleties of a social media campaign. For instance, it allows to recognise which networking services account for the most traffic, what is the customers' opinion about one or another brand and the overall experience(Itinfo.am, 2014).

The privilege of the today's business world is that portable devices such as netbooks,tablets and smartphones became a norm of every company, enabling a task completion and staying up-to-date on projects regardless of location. CRM programs, which can be easily installed on these devices,allows an access to the same information that could be viewed from an office.With an access to internet, staff can instantly update customer information, arrange orders any minute, search database for any complaints and plan meetings. Thus a boost of productivity is done on the move within a few clicks. Mobile version of CRM software is perfect to schedule and reschedule service calls and provide employees with a fast update regarding the recent changes. CRM also allows the employees to trace inventory while running the business outside the office, look into the contact history between every customer and a company. Most mobile CRM platforms give an opportunity to manage calendar and events,invoices and task schedules(Worketc.com, 2014).

A cloud CRM is a version of CRM software that is commonly accessed via internet, which means there is no need to host CRM on a personal computer. The key distinctive elements of cloud CRM involve an advanced customer service regarding troubleshooting issues,high standard security and an easily accessible information from any device. Since all the data and the software itself are stored in a cloud purchasing hardware and its constant updates are not required. The businesses that use the web-based CRM usually have to obtain only licences, which in this case creates an advantage for customers as they have to pay only for particular features they are using. Those who have limited IT departments could experience a lot of troubleshooting while installing the programs and managing the server problems as an aftermath. Hence cloud solution makes the task easier as it saves time as well as resources and makes work of employees more productive. Another beneficial feature of Cloud CRM solutions is that the providers take responsibility for storing and backing-up of information with the same relieving their customers from an additional trouble (Benefitsofcrm.com, 2014).

Challenges:

Despite a huge amount of advantages, utilising of CRM also brings some problems.  The initial problem begins with the expensive costs that occur when implementing the system and maintaining a customer database. Additionally, the finances are required for the computer hardware, software, and personnel to keep CRM running.  Thusexcessive costs can become burdensome and might result in a CRM collapse(Sites.google.com, 2014).

Taking into an account the amount of tasks performed by CRM, it becomes obvious that the system itself is far from simple. Sufficient employee training is required in order for them to comprehend and deal with the difficulties at the later stages.

 Companies need to keep in mind that the business needs are the most vital.  An issue stands out when an organisation on installing this technology applies it to company problems to discover whether it solves the main problems. In this case analyses of the company problems must be performed beforehand and only then a search for an appropriate CRM solution(Rishabhsoft.com, 2014).

Ideally, CRM system is customer-based;however on implementing CRM system the company may lose its prior focus. The problem arises when the employees forget of this fact and utilise the system in a wrong way. It is highly essential for every organisation to encourage their employees maintain focus on its primal target, which can be expensive(Sssworld.com, 2014).

Also, CRM system,unfortunately, pays off at a slow pace. In other words it takes time to return the budget investment and can take years. As a result a company gives up on further improvement of the system, which in its turn makes CRM a useless tool.

CRM system holds huge amount of private and valuable information about existing or potential clients. Thus an issue of a security arises, especially when it comes to CRM system being hosted in the Cloud. A chance of a virus attacking a system or a "black-hat" braking into it is not excluded.

Utilisation of CRM by the levels of Management

The levels of each organization's hierarchy tightly depend on each other. Therefore it is vital to maintain focus on relationship between all three of them.

In order to guide its decision the top management follows a strategic plan which is usually a long-term forward looking campaign that concentrates on a future growth of the company as a whole. Relying on the very aggregated information received from the CRM allows the top managers to make their decision with regard to such areas as service or product development, markets and products, strategic alliances, etc. In other words whether the company should remain in business, which products to produce, where to locate its facilities, what production equipment to use.  CRM is designed to provide the executive level of management with detailed and rich information on up-to-date basis, accessed 24/7, which means it is more effective and quick than a static weekly report. Having such opportunity the top management can make just-in-time decisions to improve the performance of the organisation and get more revenue.

Once the executive level of the management chooses the general direction of the organisation, it is up to middle management resolve smaller tactical objectives, which would accomplish the strategic goals of the company. Tactical plans that are more detailed comparing to strategic ones, are usually a medium range plans, meaning it can take from 6 months to two years into the future. As a rule, the medium management utilises CRM in order to concentrate its attention on department functionality and productivity, for instance whether one or another objective requires some quality improvement or measureable efficiency. Also, though basic production capacity is usually resolved by a long-range consideration, it can also be managed within limits in the medium term. Just like the executive level, the medium level of management has an instant access to the database of CRM, throughout a year, every day, seven days a week(Plus, 2013).

Day-to-day business involves operational planning, which are short-term activities targeting the needs of the customers on daily basis. Operational planning requires very detailed information in order to accomplish the objectives set by a middle management. When decisions are to be made, the operational management, known also as a first line management, relies onto CRM to identify the most immediate requirements of organisation, for instance what to produce, when or what machinery to utilise, in what quantity or in what order, etc. In general the first line management tends to concentrate its attention on such areas as departments and sections hence with an access to CRM, a weekly or daily scheduling will help to analyse the productivity, change a system and adapt to one or another alteration.  As a rule a short range operating takes the orders directly from the customers(Managementstudyguide.com, 2014). 

Conclusion

Attraction, satisfaction, and retention of the most valuable customers are the main features of CRM system, which make every company successful. Byorganising and controlling all the company's processes looking after customers in sales, marketing, and service CRM allowsincrease revenue, improve customer satisfaction, and optimise customer retention.

Customer Relationship Managementsoftware brings together a significant amount of  information about customers the business is dealing with:

- market,

- responsiveness

- marketing effectiveness,

- trends

-sales,.

This program is utilizedfor storing information on customers thatcould be reached by employees across the board. For large and small organisationsweb-founded software becomes a best approach in a scenario when the staff is working outside the office premises or has poor IT resources.

Ideally CRM categorises and stores information in a user-friendly format and is aimed to offer the best services to customers, based on the history transactions. This improves the company's effectivenessand efficiency which results in theincreased revenue margins.

Accumulated information within the system helps every organisation improve its profitability by interacting with each and every customer in a friendlier way through individualisation. Its keygoal is to enhance and retain satisfaction of every customer by integrating technologiesinto business processes.