Customer satisfaction is the primary focus of most organizations these days. The rapid growth in technology has also increased the expectation of customers in terms of the quality and service of products. In the past, the only point-of-contact for companies with their customers were sales personnel. Today, however, there are a variety of channels available. These include sales people, service personnel, marketing departments, call centers, e-mail, cell phones, fax, and Internet. While each of these units can function independently, the challenge faced by most companies today is how to integrate these various modes of communication so that information is available across the different channels in a company. For example, a customer who makes use of the Internet to place an order online would also expect the call center staff to know his order details in case he calls the call center for order verification.

This is where a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) System steps in. It helps companies in setting up a frontline information system for sharing information about the customers across all interface units. eCRM is nothing but the electronic counter part of CRM. It doesn’t replace the traditional channels of communication, such as phone or fax, but is just another extension for the customers to interact with companies on a one-to-one basis. It’s a more personalized and interactive form of communication and synchronizes communications across both electronic as well as traditional channels. Such a system has training benefits too. A new salesperson, for instance, can use the CRM package to quickly learn about his customers or their past history.

A typical CRM application integrates and co-ordinates multiple business functions such as sales, marketing, support/service, and the multiple channels of communication with the customer, such as, face-to-face, call center, and Web. Thus the key requirements for a CRM solution includes: Analytical capabilities, unified channel of customer interaction, Web-based functionality, centralized database of customer data, integrated workflow, and integration with ERP applications. The various applications that form an eCRM solution are SFA (Sales Force Automation), Marketing Applications, and Customer Service and Support Applications.

SFA is used for automating activities of sales professionals. It includes applications like calendar and scheduling, contact and account management, sales forecasting, opportunity management, proposal generation and management, pricing, territory management, and expense reporting. The marketing applications complement the SFA applications and includes features that are unique to marketing. It includes campaign planning, analysis and execution, list generation and management, budgeting and forecasting, and lead tracking. Customer service and support applications help improve a company’s customer service and support processes and aims to give timely service to its customers. It includes customer care, service, defect and order tracking.

The CRM application market is full of various products from different vendors. However, there are typically four categories of solutions available. These can be classified as: Integrated application suite, application bundle, best-of-breed solution, and best of cluster. An integrated application suite is a set of applications that employ a common architecture and makes use of a common logical database. An integrated application bundle is a set of interfaced applications from a single vendor containing more than one technical architecture or more than one logical database. An interfaced best-of-breed solution is a set of applications from multiple vendors, which an enterprise selects depending on their needs and are interfaced to work together.

However, the drawback with such an application suite is that at times the individual applications might not be interfaced properly together. Best-of-cluster is similar to best-of-breed except that the best are chosen from the cluster and are interfaced together.

Some of the key players in CRM include Siebel, Clarify, PeopleSoft, Vantive, Oracle, and SAP. Leaner versions of eCRM packages, such as Talisma corporations’ eCRM suit are also available that are quick and easy to deploy. CRM usually requires customized implementation. So, CRM packages cost a few hundred-thousand rupees depending on the number of licenses, and customization required. For example, the Talisma 4 eCRM package would cost an SME user Rs 2 million with about 10-active users. Some organizations already using such a system in India are Citibank, HDFC, Kotak Mahindra, Rediff, and GE Capital.

Neelima Vaid