Customer Relationship Management: Ravi Teja Akshay Sowjanya Sohail Sai Krishna
Customer Relationship Management: Ravi Teja Akshay Sowjanya Sohail Sai Krishna
Customer Relationship Management: Ravi Teja Akshay Sowjanya Sohail Sai Krishna
MANAGEMENT
[DOCUMENT SUBTITLE]
SUBMITTED BY
RAVI TEJA
AKSHAY
SOWJANYA
SOHAIL
SAI KRISHNA
Customer Relationship management
Customer relationship management is creating a team relationship among sales,
marketing, and customer support activities within an organization. Another narrow, yet
relevant, viewpoint is to consider CRM only as customer retention in which a variety of
after marketing tactics is used for customer bonding or staying in touch after the sale is
made.
It is defined as “an integrated effort to identify, maintain, and build up a network with
individual consumers and to continuously strengthen the network for mutual benefit of
both sides, through interactive, individualized and value-added contacts over a period of
time”.
The core theme of all CRM and relationship marketing perspectives is its focus on
cooperative and collaborative relationships between the firm and its customers, and/or
other marketing actors. CRM is based on the premise that, by having a better
understanding of the customers’ needs and desires we can keep them longer and sell
more to them.
There are a number of reasons why CRM has become so important in the last 10 years.
The competition in the global market has become highly competitive, and it has become
easier for customers to switch companies if they are not happy with the service they
receive. One of the primary goals of CRM is to maintain clients. When it is used
effectively, a company will be able to build a relationship with their customers that can
last a lifetime. Customer relationship management tools will generally come in the form
of software. Each software program may vary in the way it approaches CRM. It is
important to realize that CRM is more than just a technology.
All customers are not equal; recognize and reward best customers disproportionately.
Understanding each customer becomes particularly important. And the same
customers’ reaction to a cellular company operator may be quite different as compared
to a car dealer. Besides for the same product or the service not all customers can be
treated alike and CRM needs to differentiate between a high value customer and a low
value customer.
Grading customers from very satisfied to very disappoint should help the organization in
improving its customer satisfaction levels and scores. As the satisfaction level for each
customer improve so shall the customer retention with the organization.
Exploit up-selling and cross-selling potential. By identifying life stage and life event
trigger points by customer, marketers can maximize share of purchase potential. Thus
the single adults shall require a new car stereo and as he grows into a married couple
his needs grow into appliances.
Increase Loyalty
Loyal customers are more profitable. Any company will like its mind share status to
improve from being a suspect to being an advocate. Company has to invest in terms of
its product and service offerings to its customers. It has to innovate and meet the very
needs of its clients/ customers so that they remain as advocates on the loyalty curve.
Referral sales invariably are low cost high margin sales.
3. Creating loyalty
5. Creating profits
Customer Relationship Life Cycle
Customer Engagement
Business Transaction
In the business transaction phase of the relationship life cycle Customer Relationship
Management supports the following key functional areas:
Telesales -- Manages inbound and outbound calls; handles high call volumes;
provides efficient user interface; integrates sales information from back-office
systems and product information from online catalogs.
Field Sales -- Delivers key customer and prospect information to sales personnel
at any place, at any time; facilitates planning and maintenance of sales activities,
such as appointments, visits, and calls, and provides activity reports; creates
quotations and takes orders; includes support for mobile and wireless devices.
Order Fulfillment
In the order fulfillment phase of the relationship life cycle Customer Relationship
Management supports the following key functional areas:
Complete Order Life Cycle Process -- Provides the ability to track and
trace orders at all points along order management, manufacturing,
distribution, and service processes; proactively notifies customers of
changes that affect delivery.
Being implemented in phases since 2003 the combined on-line CRM-DMS initiative now
supports over 15,000 users, within the company and among its channel partners in
India and abroad, to conduct all customer-facing transactions.
The real time availability of customer and product information is enabling the company
and its channel partners to improve response time and customer service. The success
of this complex implementation extending across geographies is being made possible
by strong partnerships with CMC, IBM, INCAT & Tata Technologies Limited (TTL),
Oracle, Mercuri International,
Quality Kiosk, TCS, Tata Indicom, TIVS (Tatanet) and VSNL. Tata Motors has built its
DMS using Oracle’s Siebel verticals and uses Siebel CRM and Siebel Analytics for all
pre and post sales operations. The unique outside-in approach adopted by Tata Motors
and the extended use of Oracle’s Siebel CRM makes it one of the most sophisticated
and largest Siebel CRM implementations globally.
The implementation on IBM's high-end Power5 servers & enterprise storage is the
largest centrally hosted implementation of Siebel CRM worldwide within the automotive
industry. Tata Motors has also partnered with IBM to become IBM's first automotive on-
demand client in India, taking benefits of the Global Service Delivery Centre based in
Bangalore.
Tata Motors chose Siebel for its CRM programme, which with its user-friendly interface
simplified the process of training the company’s 15,000-plus dealer sales force. To
support each dealer — who is actually a business partner representing the company
with the end customer — Tata Motors involved dealers throughout the configuration and
deployment process.
“Integrating the Siebel Automotive CRM with our system ensured that our dealers would
immediately see the value in the solution,” says KR Sreenivasan, head of CRM and
DMS. “This helped us overcome the usual resistance to change and gain rapid
acceptance from our dealers.” Its CRM-DMS initiative, which has cost Tata Motors
about Rs35 crore to date, has enabled the company to connect with 1,200 dealers
online (the number is expected to rise to 1,600 in the next few months) and has allowed
it to monitor finances and inventory at the dealer level, and services, spares and
complaints at the customer end.
CRM-DMS has helped Tata Motors enormously in getting a firmer handle on its
business. The system was implemented in three phases, the objective being to achieve
success in one before moving on to the next:
Phase 1 focused on capturing customer and vehicle data and automating routine
tasks.
Phase 2 this data was used to improve customer interactions and streamline
product development and planning. ·
Phase 3, now underway, concentrates on tuning the system and delivering
additional value-added services to customers.
The CRM-DMS platform has been integrated with a wide array of back-office
applications, including inventory management, fulfilment and parts location. Pricing and
tax calculations can now be adjusted for each dealer’s requirements. The
comprehensive sales and reporting functionality built into the Siebel solution allows Tata
Motors to distribute sales targets directly to its dealers and roll up sales numbers across
the country in real time.
Tata Motors' dealers are a happy lot, too. The dealer management system has meant a
gross reduction in the amount of working capital needed to run their businesses.
Transactions between the company and dealers, which earlier took up to 60 days, are
now completed online and sealed in under seven days.
Even the service bays at the workshops have happy stories to tell. The system-based
job card enables the mechanic to follow a checklist and diagnose faults through a
process of elimination of probable causes, slashing diagnosis time. Simultaneously, the
stores manager uses the system-based job card to assort a basket of the spare parts
needed to fix the fault, and they are ready for pickup even before the mechanic walks
into the stores. With zero waiting times built into the service process, the system
generates a dashboard for the workshop supervisor, indicating idle capacity and
process times, and highlighting bottlenecks to optimise the use of service bays. The
recent implementation of an SMS capability means that the system directly pings the
customer when the job card is closed on the system and his vehicle is ready.
The company can also now track each vehicle right through its operating lifetime, giving
it valuable insights on product performance over time (earlier this was limited to the
warranty period, after which scant information was forthcoming). “Overall, we have
transformed our organisation and made it truly customercentric,” says Sreenivasan.
“One of our first dealers to install the system doubled his sales volume in three months
without the need for additional manpower. Another said that he can, for the first time,
view his entire stock of vehicles and see how his inventory was ageing.” But, as the old
cliché goes, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The real reward comes from the
customer. With a product line spanning commercial, utility, and passenger vehicles,
Tata Motors is on the road to forging ever stronger relationships with the people who
have bet their money on the company’s products.