Building blocks of the Siebel Deployment

IBM Solutions

IBM offers a vast array of services. However, the following results have been filtered based on the "Business Consulting Area."

- Alliance - Oracle
- Alliance - SAP
- Alliance - Siebel Systems
- Contact center optimization
- CRM business transformation outsourcing
- Customer relationship management strategy
- Field service effectiveness
- IBM IT services for customer relationship management
- Marketing & customer intelligence
- Sales productivity

Find out more!

BEA Solutions

BEA Solutions:
BEA works closely with market leaders to deliver solution frameworks that leverage BEA's award-winning enterprise software foundation and allow Global Fortune 500 companies to deploy a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) for competitive advantage.BEA has following solutions offerings -

- Industry Solutions
- Business Solutions
- Technology Solutions
- SOA Resource Center
- Technology Resource Centers

Find out more!

Haht Solutions

GXS or Haht offers solutions across the following different market segments
- Community Solutions
- Small & Medium Business
- Cost Reduction Solutions
- Value Chain Solutions

Find out more!

Customer Segmenation and CRM Strategy

Customer Segmentation
One of the benefits a CRM system can provide an organisation is the ability to categorise or segment its existing customer base and prospects. This may be based on the products or services that the client purchases, demographic information for consumer clients, industry sector or company size for corporate clients and so on. Once you have this kind of information on your system you can analyse it using a variety of techniques ranging from very simple graphing and summary reports through to sophisticated statistical packages which can be used to draw inferences from your raw data. For instance you might find a link between somebody’s occupation and their likelihood of buying from you, or a company’s location with its profitability to you. So you’ve collected all the information, have the software tools to analyse it – what can you look for that will benefit your company?

The following are some examples of how you can segment your customers.

• Profitable customers. Obviously, you can look at whether some customers are worth doing business with at all but you can also decide how much effort should be put into account management and sales effort for each customer. You should also segment your customer base in other ways (geography, social grouping etc) and see if there is any correlation with the profit they bring to you. This can lead to significant insightsinto where you should be directing your marketing effort.

• Cross selling. If you’ve got more than one product or service then you’ll already know that one of the easiest sales you can make is the sale of a different product to an existing client. If you can analyse what identifies a client as a likely purchaser of a specific product or service you can identify which other current customers might want to buy that product or service but haven’t yet.

• Guiding marketing focus. If you record where your customers first heard about you – a particular advertising campaign, by recommendation etc – then you can calculate which marketing method is proving the mosteffective. Employee Empowerment Implementing a comprehensive CRM system through your organisation can have an interesting side effect that needs to be considered – employee empowerment. If you give employees access to a significant amount of information relating to your clients you have to give them the ability to act on that information, within well understood boundaries. For some organisations this can be a major change in the way people work, for others it is business as usual.

CRM Strategy
The best CRM system in the world can only help where staff can act on the information it provides them with. There are a number of consequences of this that need to be considered when creating a CRM strategy:

• The information in the system needs to be complete and accurate. If you haven’t got every client-facing member of staff contributing then nobody can be sure that all the relevant information that they need to act on is there. If your staff begin to doubt the accuracy and completeness of the system it can soon fall into disuse and your CRM investment is wasted.

• The culture of the company needs to encourage people to act on the information. This is usually less of a problem for smaller companies but for larger organisations there can be a tendency to refer to others even though all the information to make a decision is available. On the other hand, there also need to be clear boundaries on what decisions people can make and what authority they have.

• Individuals can be reluctant to share their knowledge. Some people will always want to retain their ‘special’ relationship with a client or try to protect their position in an organisation by holding onto information that should be put in the CRM system. This can undermine the success of the implementation and has to be addressed at an early stage when you see it happening. Integral to your Existing Technology As we have discussed in preceding sections a CRM system is going to have a significant influence on your business. When it comes to choosing the software that will support your CRM strategy you should be equally careful given the influence it will have on your IT strategy.

As CRM systems can ultimately be used throughout an organisation you have to evaluate the technology used in the systems you already have, where you will need to integrate to these systems and where your IT strategy is directing you. If you don’t have an overall IT strategy it is worth creating one as you put together your CRM strategy. The complexity of documented IT strategies varies widely but our view is that you should take a medium term view, of say 3 to 4 years, which outlines the core technologies that will be used (e.g. server and client operating system(s), strategic database platform, development tools, middleware) and whatprojects are broadly planned to be undertaken. This will mean applications, including CRM, can be chosen to fit the selected technologies and that you know what applications are will need to be integrated in the future. Planning more than a few years ahead can be difficult as technologies, and possibly your business, can change quite rapidly and it is better to have a medium term plan which is reviewed on an annual basis.

Typically systems that you might need to link your CRM solution to include:
• Accounting, especially sales order processing
• Ecommerce
• Existing service management systems
• Delivery support systems
• Existing sales & marketing systems

You will need to review each of these systems and ensure that where integration is needed this is possible with the CRM solutions you are considering. You also need to look at the longer term future of the systems – all of this again revolves around getting your IT strategy set out as fully as possible. It is obvious that selecting well known, open technologies that are likely to be supported by a wide range of IT vendors will usually be a sensible part of any strategy.

Introduction to CRM

What is CRM?
CRM is a concept that has developed from marketing theory. During the latter half of the last century a major shift in thinking occurred based on evidence that it is more profitable to retain a customer than to acquire anew one. Consequently, relationship marketing theory suggests that companies change their focus from pursuing the aim of selling to the maximum number of people to concentrating on developing relationships withtheir existing customers. The main focus of CRM is the formation of relationships with customers with the intention of improving customer satisfaction and maximising profits.

With the development of technology many IT systems have been developed to assist this aim. They range from contact databases to campaign management software. All of these various systems, which can assistwith improving the efficiency of CRM, have been grouped together and are now generically know as CRM software.

Why do I need CRM?
Every organisation needs at least one customer. A customer is not just someone who makes payment for a product or service, in the case of not-for-profit organisations they can be the recipient of charity or theprovider of a donation. It is imperative that every organisation needs to look at how it manages relationships with its customers for the best long term interests of the organisation. CRM software is designed to help your organisation manage these relationships to achieve the best possible outcomes. Talk to any individual management consultant or IT vendor and they will tend to have a narrow focus on their particular area of expertise. Some of these specific parts of CRM may be relevant to you, others may not, but the overall concept of improving the manner in which you deal with your source of income, your customers, has to be of interest to everyone.

More than Technology?
Often when people talk about ‘doing a CRM project’ they are simply talking about the software they are installing and how they are going to use it. This approach is not going to bring great improvement to the company – possibly some, but not a radical change. The main focus of any CRM project should be on the benefit it will produce for the customer and for the business. The first thing that should be looked at is what is being done now and then working out what should be done in the future to improve the way you work with your customers. Then, and only then, start looking at how it can be done and how that can be helped with an IT solution.This may seem obvious but it is often forgotten and the rush to use technology can result in a lot of money being spent on CRM systems that disappoint. There are many examples of companies using revolutionary methods to deal with their customers which have led to great success. Think of the budget airlines, telephone banking and online insurance – all revolutionary when introduced and all made significant changes to their industry, not by changing the core concept of what they do but in the way they dealt with their customers. Admittedly, all of these examples rely heavily on the use of their IT systems but the concept came first and the technology was put in place to support the concept.

Some of the departments or functions that might benefit from a CRM overhaul are discussed below but it is important that you have an overall strategy for your entire business and don’t implement overlapping or even conflicting systems in different parts of the organisation. It is also a significant advantage if you have a complete view of each of your customers and capture all your dealings with them and collect all your knowledge about them into a single, cohesive data source.

Sales
This is the most obvious contact point a business has with its (potential) customers and is usually the first place considered for a CRM project. There are a number of ways that sales teams can be organised and the sales process managed and monitored – a topic covered by many books in the last few decades. There is no single ‘right’ way to manage a sales team just as there is no ‘right’ way to make a sale but the consensus is that a good, well understood and well managed sales process is the most effective route to success. So if you set up a process for your sales team it is only natural that the best way to control and monitor that process is through the use of an appropriate IT system. These systems are at the core of the majority of main-stream CRM solutions.

Marketing
Sales and Marketing work together closely in any organisation and for smaller companies both roles are often fulfilled by the same people. This close link is reflected in most sales management systems which generally provide functionality to cover marketing processes in addition to sales processes. However, the degree to which they do this can vary considerably and specialists have emerged providing dedicated, sophisticated systems designed purely for marketing departments.

Administration & Management
One key contact point that customers have with a company is its management and general administration staff, such as those in accounting. Amazingly, though these groups of people are often overlooked when considering a CRM strategy. If a manager is dealing with a client or if a member of the accounts team is handling an enquiry it can reflect badly on your organisation if they don’t have the relevant facts to hand. Many of these facts are captured and available in a CRM system, so why not make it available to them? For example, a customer may have a question about an invoice which differs to what was agreed with your sales representative.

Service/Product Delivery
An increasingly high proportion of UK companies are either service companies or they create complex, customised products which are unique to each of their customers. If you work in an organisation like this thenyou know that it is essential that the delivered product or service is exactly what the customer was expecting. To achieve this your product/service delivery team must know exactly what the customer has ordered and yet, time and time again, you find occasions where some small, but crucial, part of the customer’s requirements isn’t passed on by the sales team to the delivery team or is forgotten about somewhere along the line. If all the customer’s details, requirements and circumstances have been accurately captured in a CRM system, to which the delivery team has access, these problems can be reduced. Equally importantly the delivery team can feed back any changes or new information relating to the customer that they come across during their work. This information could indicate to a sales person that an additional sale could be made of a different product or service and means the investment in a CRM system can rapidly pay for itself.

After Sales Service
The importance of after sales service varies massively from one company to another. Of course, we all also know that even where after sales service is important, some companies treat it more seriously than others.There are a range of helpdesk and service management solutions on the market place which suit a wide variety of situations from dealing with product guarantees & repairs to providing scheduled maintenance visits.Although these are commonly grouped together as service management solutions they should be considered part of an integrated CRM strategy and work in conjunction with other CRM systems within your company. It is possible that the majority of your customer interactions are actually through after sales service and capturing this information will help guide your sales force on how to serve the customer better and look for additional sales opportunities.

Complimentary Webcast Notification

Webcast: "The Impact of Social Media and the Entitled Customer"
Presented By: Lynda Kate Smith, Vice President, General Manager Care Business Unit, Nuance
Date: August 23rd, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Register Now>>>

Gone are the days when people just complain to their friends, family, and coworkers when service is bad. Now, very passionate, disgruntled and creative individuals will leverage the power of technology and social media to voice their issues via emails, blogs or websites. The effect is very viral, fast moving and ultimately can result in millions of global consumers getting a new - and not so favorable - impression of a brand, product or service. This negative impression can cost millions of dollars to improve.

Welcome to the Care 2.0 world, where the model of building and managing relationships with customers has dramatically changed. With the appropriate resources and solutions, your organization can successfully compete in this new environment.

In this webcast, you will learn:
1. How the expectations for customer service have changed.
2. How technology has shifted power from the business to the consumer.
3. Five critical things your business needs to do to succeed in this new world

Complimentary Webcast Notifications

Webcast: "Using Automated Customer Surveys to Improve Agent Performance in Real-Time"

Presented By: Erich Dietz, Director, Mindshare Technologies

Date: August 21st, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm Eastern

Register Now>>>

Many companies run surveys and solicit feedback, but data is not channeled to front-line managers in an actionable or timely manner. If utilized properly, automated customer survey systems can be a powerful tool to improve agent performance. Next-generation hosted survey solutions allow companies to quickly deploy cost-effective feedback programs and realize the benefits of responding to the voice of the customer. In this webinar you will learn how to:

1. Design action-oriented customer surveys.

2. Use customer feedback to drive front-line consistency and accuracy in real time.

3. Recover more customers using automated surveys.

4. Turn customer information into objective measurement for rewarding managers.