In todays competitive market driven economy it is not only sufficient to provide your customers with the best service

levels and customer experience over the short-term, but also analyze the transactional information to develop better services and products for your customer over the long run through the discovery of not-so-obvious insights into customers wants and needs. WHAT IS CRM? CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It is a process or methodology used to learn more about customers' needs and behaviors in order to develop stronger relationships with them. There are many technological components to CRM, but thinking about CRM in primarily technological terms is a mistake. The more useful way to think about CRM is as a process that will help bring together lots of pieces of information about customers, sales, marketing effectiveness responsiveness and marketing. Definition:- The use of information technology to create a cross-functional enterprise system that integrates and automates many of the customer-serving processes in sales, marketing, and customer services that interact with a companys customers The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service. Customer relationship management describes a company-wide business strategy including customer-interface departments as well as other departments. Companies need a system that manages the entire customer life cycle: acquisition, service and maintenance. Commerce-enabled CRM applications allow organizations to interact with customers through all media or channels: telephone, Web, e-mail, face-to-face. CRM products and services manage every point of contact with the customer to ensure that each customer gets the appropriate level of service and that no sales opportunities are lost. Customer Relationship Management is a customer-focused business strategy designed to optimize revenue, profitability, and customer loyalty. By implementing a CRM strategy, an organization can improve the business processes and technology solutions around selling, marketing and servicing functions across all customer touch-points A primary objective of CRM is to provide the entire organization with a complete, 360-degree view of the customer, no matter where the information resides or where the customer touchpoint occurred. Today, many businesses manage different aspects of customer relationships with multiple information systems, which weaken customer service and ultimate reduce total

sales potential. To realize the benefits of CRM, it is important to have an integrated solution across all customer information systems, tying together the front and back offices for a complete view of customers in order to service them better.

Objectives of CRM
We can measure the CRM objectives from 2 perspectives i.e. from company point of view & customers point of view: To provide the organization & all its customer facing executives with a single, complete view of every customer at every touch point and across all channels Provide the customer with a single, complete view of the company & its extended channels

All the CRM objective can be briefly classify into following ways: Direct Marketing- Acquiring new clients using Internet technologies this leads to reduced cost of marketing. Cross selling by using IT to identify products similar to those purchased earlierIncreasing business with existing clients Service customization- Increasing business with existing clients by providing customers personalized services based on their profile. Improved response to client requests- Reduced cost of responding to clients and retention through better service. Event identification- Increase relationship with client by suggesting services to meet new client circumstances. To enable business & its employees to deliver fast & with reliability To simplify marketing and sales process To provide better customer service To discover new customers and increase customer revenue To cross sell products more effectively

Implementation of CRM
To implement CRM, following factors need to be given due consideration:

Abundant supply of customer information which have been accumulated and integrated from different channels Easy interaction between customers and company, enhancing quick response to customers' request and suggestions Easy access to information about company like content of customization, advantages of the company, benefits doled out to the customers. This establishes profitable relationships with the customers based on mutual trust and respect Grow with customers i.e. customers' information should be updated along with the passage of time Customers' information must be segmented to provide support for customization based on personalized information i.e. tailoring the company's product and services accordingly.

Improvement in customer relationships increases customer loyalty, decreases customer turnover, increases sales revenue, and decreases marketing costs, thus increasing profit margins.

Categories of CRM

Operational CRM

Collaborative CRM

CRM
Portal based CRM

Analytical CRM

There are 4 basic categories of CRM that are being implemented by various companies: 1. 2. 3. 4. Operational CRM Collaborative CRM Analytical CRM Portal Based CRM

1. Operational CRM: Operational CRM supports the "front office" business processes, which include customer contact (sales, marketing and service). Tasks resulting from these processes are forwarded to employees responsible for them, as well as the information necessary for carrying out the tasks and interfaces to back-end applications are being provided and activities with customers are being documented for further reference.
There is interaction between the customer and marketer directly through customer touchpoints. Various touchpoints are

Face to face touchpoints: Sales/Service/Events/Stores/Promotions Database driven touchpoints: Telephones/Email/Mail/SMS/Fax/Loyalty Cards/ATMs Mass Media: Advertising/PR/Websites Any transaction can take place through these touchpoints. Low level managers interact in this stage and process the information to the mid level managers.

2. Collaborative CRM: Collaborative CRM facilitates interactions with customers through all channels (personal, letter, fax, phone, web, e-mail) and supports co-ordination of employee teams and channels. It is a solution that brings people, processes and data together so companies can better serve and retain their customers. The data/activities can be structured, unstructured, conversational, and/or transactional in nature. Collaborative CRM provides the following benefits: Enables efficient productive customer interactions across all communications channels Enables web collaboration to reduce customer service costs Integrates view of the customer while interaction at the transaction level Allows the company to synchronize & manage efficient, productive interaction with customers, prospects, partners, and internal associates across all communication channels Collaborative CRM is basically used by Mid level managers and they transform the information to the top level managers and decision makers.

3. Analytical CRM: In analytical CRM, data gathered within operational CRM and/or other sources are analyzed to segment customers or to identify potential to enhance client relationship. It is also termed as Back-office or strategic CRM and involves understanding the customer activities that occurred in the front office collected via operational CRM. Using technology, mass data is transformed into business knowledge that is behavior patterns, preferences and values of customers. It lets company approach customers with relevant information and offers tailored to customer need. Customer analysis typically can lead to targeted campaigns to increase share of customer's wallet. Top Level managers and decision makers establish the process and convey the message to the mid level and low level managers for implementation. 4. Portal Based CRM: Web Based CRM Portals provide capability to instantly access internal and external information of customers. It is common gateway for various levels of access to all customer information. It provides access to Operational, analytical and collaborative CRM tools for customers, employers and Business partners and empowers quick response to customer demands leading to more customer satisfaction

CRM and Growth Strategies

Growth of any company is dependent upon its customers. If customers are happy, company will flourish. So it is necessary to make new customers, enhance customer satisfaction and retain customers. Thats what CRM is all about. A company can outperform rivals only if it can establish a difference that it can preserve. Customer service can be such a difference. So strategies that are achieved by implementing CRM are: 1. Customer Acquisition: CRM gains the greatest number of new Best customers as early in their lifespan as possible. It helps in acquiring new customers by doing superior job of contact management, sales prospecting, selling, direct marketing etc. Value perceived by customers is of superior product offered by outstanding company

2. Customer Enhancement: CRM Account Management & customer service tools support service from responsive networked team of sales and service specialists & business partners.CRM Sales force Automation & direct marketing and fulfillment tool helps companies cross sell and upsell to customers. Basically, value perceived by customers is one Stop shopping at attractive prices. It helps in increasing customer satisfaction. 3. Customer Retention: Under the present context of competitive environment, the focus of the organizations is more on customer retention than simply on customer acquisition. Customer retention is the process of keeping customers in the customer inventory for an unending period by meeting the needs and exceeding the expectations of those customers. Why is Customer Retention preferred? Why at all should organization to opt for customer retention? The answer lies in the inherent benefits an organization can get by retaining customers. Some of the major benefits are presented below: It is on tenth the cost of acquiring customers It builds good Image in the market It assures volume of sales; hence planning much easier It becomes a good reference in the market

 It is easier to have a customer for long periods of time and to understand customer more Value Perceived by customer is rewarding personalized business relationship with the company Example of such initiative is Loyalty Cards in Retail where focused offers are offered as per spending volume and patterns of customer spending and customer remains attached with the company and company is able to retain the customer. 4. Customer Evangelism: It enables loyal customers to become a volunteer sales force. If a customer is satisfied, he will refer and share his good experience with others thereby acting as a volunteer sales force for organization. 5. Cost Reduction: Helps in reducing costs related to marketing, sales, customer service and support.CRM helps these departments to perform their functions effectively and to the right customers thereby saving both time and money for the organization.

When to adopt and who should adopt CRM:

Companies that do not have repeat business from customers will not gain much from CRM. And also that have walk-in customers not providing multiple sales and service channels will not benefit much from CRM. If maintaining long term relationship with customer is not a priority for the company, it will be wise not to invest in CRM. Thus, more the channels to access customers and more the number of touch points with customers, greater is the need for CRM installation. So companies in

banking finance insurance airlines and hotels telecommunications and health care

benefit most from installing CRM software.

Benefits if CRM
Some of the benefits of implementing CRM at an organisation are as follows: 1. Shared or distributed data As companies realize that customer relationships are happening on many levels (not just through customer service or a web presence), they start to understand the need for sharing all available data throughout the organization. A CRM system is an enabler for making informed decisions and follow-up, on all the different levels.

2. Cost reduction A strong point in Customer Relationship Management is that it is making the customer a partner in your business, not just a subject. As customers are doing their own order entry, and are empowered to find the info they need to come to a buy decision, less order entry and customer support staff is needed.

3. Better Customer Service All data concerning interactions with customers is centralized. The customer service department can greatly benefit from this, because they have all the information they need at their fingertips. No need to guess, no need to ask the customer for the n-th time. And through the use of push-technology, customer service reps can lead the customer towards the information they need. And, most of the time, the customer can do this on their own, as the CRM system (remember, the 3 P's) is more and more able to anticipate the need of the customer. The customer experience is greatly enhanced.

4. Increased Customer Satisfaction The customer feels that he is more "part of the team" instead of just a subject for sales and marketing (the proverbial number), customer service is better, his needs are anticipated. There is no doubt that customer satisfaction will go up. If the products sold exceed the customers expectation, of course, no CRM system can help you with shoddy products. In my opinion, the term satisfaction is a contaminated. Many companies think that if customers are satisfied that this is a good predictor for repeat business. However, this is not the case. Only delighted customers have a great level of loyalty.

5. Better Customer Retention If a CRM system can help to enchant customers, this will increase customer loyalty, and they will keep coming back to buy again and again, hence customer retention.

6. Loyal customers As stated previously, CRM helps us to maintain in-depth knowledge about the customer which helps the organisation serve the customer better. This kind of service usually leads to happy customers who in turn end up becoming their loyal customers.

7. More repeat business The repeat business is coming from the delighted customers, who are turned from doubting clients into loyal advocates.

8. More new business If you are delivering the ultimate customer experience, this will seed the word-of-mouth buzz, which will spawn more new business. More Profit! More business at lower cost equals more profit.

Key Challenges
Companies around the world have leveraged CRM strategies to gain competitive advantage. As more and more companies rush to implement CRM, precautions must be taken to do it right. It is approximated that 50-70% CRM implementations fail, depending on the Industry vertical. Hence, it is essential to identify the key challenges, address risks and build a strategy that can make your CRM successful. CRM is full of talk about strategy, but at the end of the day, someone has to lead the way and implement. Listed below are some practical tips to consider when building effective CRM strategies and implementation plans.

1. Understanding of CRM? CRM is not a software. Its a business philosophy. It is a strategy, implemented using a software solution, that typically covers all customer facing departments like sales, marketing, customer service, etc of a company. Hence CRM is a term, collectively used to refer to a combination of strategy & software. 2. Getting Clarity on Objectives What are the set of objectives the company wishes to achieve with CRM? Trivial as it may sound, a majority of implementations dont have these goals spelled out. We should ensure that these objectives are listed and define a measurement metrics to be used to access the success of the implementation. Without these, the companies cant access the benefits or the ROI of the CRM system. 3. No Core CRM Team Unlike other software implementations, IT team alone should not be expected to roll out a CRM system. It is very critical for companies to form a core CRM team, which in addition to IT draws participation from Top Management, Senior Executives of Sales, Marketing and Customer Service departments and finally the end-users. 4. The Costing Ice-berg It is not unusual for CRM implementations to overrun costs and timelines. When assessing the costing always calculate the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). There are two ways of getting CRM, the license model or the ASP (hosted) model. In the licensing model, licenses typically represent 9 - 18% of the TCO. The actual TCO will need to include the cost of hardware, software, engineering, operations, AMCs, etc. On the other hand, in the ASP model, a subscription fee represents the true TCO. Since ASP models offer a fully managed and a continuously evolving system, it also saves implementation time, upgrade costs and ownership hassles. Any implementation delays also have a cost associated with it, in form of lost time and opportunity.

5. Product Evaluation Metrics In most companies, investment in IT is need based. With time, this buying pattern results in multiple systems that fragment customer data. While short-listing CRM products, it is essential to analyze overall capabilities of the product, in addition to the need driver module. As the company matures in its CRM initiative, the expectation from its CRM system multiplies. As a rule of thumb, consider only those CRM products that offer multiple modules like Sales Force Automation, Marketing Automation, Customer Support & Services, etc. This will enable companies to span horizontally, as requirements evolve. 6. Expectation Curve Every CRM implementation starts with a desire to improve productivity and streamline processes, fast. However, CRM implementation is a cultural change. It has to be planned, and executed in phases. If the change is too fast, it will get derailed, if the change is too slow, CRM will pale into obsceneness. 7. Getting User Adoption User Adoption is the key for success of any CRM. It is important to design effective training programs in order to provide enough skills and understanding to end users for them to be able to effectively use the system. Ensure that the user interface is kept simple. Consultants often underestimate or miss the motivation required to get the end-users to start using the system. Consider the sales executives; their motivation is to meet the targets to get to the incentive cheque. They are happiest when selling, to them everything else is a waste of time. Dont expect them to navigate complex screens or fill detailed time consuming information because it simply wont fly.

8. Managing the Application Once the CRM has been rolled-out, it is important to re-align the working culture of teams around it. At times, the As-is bug bites people. To illustrate, the VP sales direct his sales team to carry excel sheet prints of their pipeline when coming for a review. Here either the report was not configured well in the system, or users have not been updating it enough. Such scenarios need immediate correction or else the CRM system will slowly lose its relevance. The core team must review such anomalies from time-to-time. 9. Process, Process, Process Clearly defined processes and their enforcement are critical to the success of any CRM rollout. The objective is to cut out the ambiguity in the system. It is advisable to create a central depositary, accessible to all, which store all the process definitions. Some key processes that need to be defined are Change Management process, Feature re-evaluation process, Success evaluation process, Business flows, etc. Any process implemented via CRM, must map your real-world process and vice-versa.

Raymond Case study

About the company Raymond India is, a chain of retail stores offering wardrobe solutions for men. This includes brands like Raymond, Park Avenue, Parx, Manzoni and now ColourPlus. Started about five decades ago, Raymond has been one of the pioneers of Indian retail. The Raymond Shop network started with a small corner shop in Ballard Estate, Mumbai. It has grown multi-fold with a dedicated team making it the largest retail store chain in the country with over 300 stores in prime locations in 150 Indian cities. They have also extended their network overseas with around 25 shops in 15 plus cities of the Middle East, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal. The Raymond Shop retail chain ccupies a space of 1 million square feet built-up area. The Raymond Shop offers over 3,000 qualities, shades and designs of Raymond fabric. One of Indias oldest textile manufacturers and retailers, Raymond India operates across cities and deals with different cultures and people. Knowing all these customers and doing business accordingly is not a cakewalk. To deal with this scenario Raymond India decided to implement CRM (customer relationship management) across most of its retail outlets. Know your Customer Retail is all about knowing your customers thoroughly in order to serve them better. It is an age old philosophy of Indian businessmen that if you know your customers better, you can enjoy a better competitive position in the market. Before making extensive use of IT at its outlets, Raymonds business used to run on a manual basis. In order to know its customers better, a team was formed to survey prospective buyers as well as existing customers. After surveying them they would know the pattern of their purchases, their likes and dislikes etc.This process was cumbersome for the surveying team and at times people were apprehensive about replying to questions related to their personal choices. With the growing use of IT in the retail segment, Raymond decided to implement CRM to know its customers better and in a more sophisticated way. The need was to understand the customers and provide services suitable to them. The Solution Customer Relationship Management was implemented by Raymond to solve the problems of knowing the customers better. CRM helps the company understand the colour and design preferred by a particular age group or why a particular group or individual did not buy or did buy a particular product. As a result of the implementation, regular customers get a premium card which has all the details of a particular customer and the purchase patterns of that person can be studied efficiently. The CRM implementation is named Premium Circle. Customers using it are known as premium users and are given a premium card. This is offered to Raymond customers at 265 out of 365 Raymond Shops in India. With the help of this solution, a central repository of information is

created about premium customers whose details are accessible at any retail outlet where this system has been implemented.

The implementation The technology part of the CRM implementation was outsourced to Proximity which owns the infrastructure that provides touch points to the customer through the Web site. Raymonds in-house team was responsible for devising the schemes and plans. Since only the technology part was given to a third party to manage, cost and quality of service provided by the vendor were considered while short listing a vendor.The Retail head from the business side was the champion of the project and he was assisted by the IT department to provide the technological expertise that was required. Three principles The aim of this implementation was to ensure three principlesavailability, reliability and scalability of the solution. Concentrating on availability meant that the solution had to be available at all times and that downtime had to be negligible. Failsafe software would ensure the reliability aspect of the solution. Lastly scalability ensured that the system would work efficiently irrespective of the number of locations at which it was rolled out. With organized retail in the midst of a boom, it is natural that the number of outlets will grow rapidly putting more pressure on ensuring scalability across the chain. Phases The time line for the entire project was close to three months and it was completed in three phases. The first phase consisted of the Proof of concept. In this phase the project was cleared through internal research to prove that the core ideas were workable before going any further. This use of proof of concept helps establish viability, technical issues are uncovered, and overall direction is set. It also helps in providing feedback for udgeting and other forms of commercial discussion and control. The second phase involved running a pilot model created by the project team. This was to ensure that the core solution has been developed satisfactorily and was running as per the requirements. In the final phase, the entire Web based project went live across 265 shops. Initially only 10 shops went live but soon 265 shops were on the network.

Hardware: The entire solution runs on HP servers on Windows Server with the SQL Server database. The database for the CRM is located on a web database server hosted by the vendor at an ISP IDC. The servers are in high availability mode with redundancy at the server link level. In case of a breakdown of the link, the recovery time is approximately an hour.

Customer Response Since this project was Web based, many customers are using it across India. This project helped evaluate customer choices to a large extent. With the use of this oftware, the product lines kept changing according to the customer needs and patterns and the end result has been satisfied customers. The repeat visits made by each customer increased with the help of CRM solution. The only time customers were left a bit dissatisfied was when the database of that customer was not updated properly during the initial days after going live. The overall happiness of the customer has boosted business by a substantial margin.

Enhancements Looking at the success of this CRM implementation Raymond decided to extend the similar exercise to its other product lines and brands such as kids wear. This implementation is going to be implemented across 1,000 shops.