This translates into better customer service and increased profits. As a matter of fact, a study by Accenture "How much are CRM capabilities really worth? What every CEO should know" points to a definitive link between CRM and the bottom line. According to the study, a typical $1 billion business unit could add $40 million in profit by enhancing CRM capabilities by 10%.
While some companies are still struggling to blur the boundaries between sales, marketing and service, the bar of CRM has been raised. There is now a requirement for companies to have at their fingertips the same customer data across all channels of customer interaction and provide a consistent service throughout. This is in itself a tall order as customer contact points quickly multiply. A customer may choose today to contact an organization via the Internet, telephone, e-mail, fax or a mobile device. Tomorrow, it may be the TV.
This new requirement gave birth to the contact center, a concept that rose from the ashes of the traditional call center. A new acronym, e-CRM was also born. e-CRM basically extends CRM to include the acquisition and retention of customers via the Internet.
The use of the Internet as a channel added new dimensions to CRM. It became almost a necessity to provide for self-service. Also, with globalization came the requirement for supporting multiple languages and multiple currencies.
With e-CRM, the need for analytics and personalization also became imperative. After all, how good is the unification of transaction capabilities if an organization lacks the ability to analyze holistically the information it collects on a customer and turn it into insight that is distributed across the enterprise? This is intelligent CRM.
However, this is not all. Other challenges further raised the CRM bar as greater emphasis is placed on the management of relationships throughout the value chain. In traditional CRM, the emphasis was for an enterprise to improve service to its immediate customer. Today, it is believed that customer service is a responsibility of all players in the value chain including resellers, distributors and suppliers. We are now talking Partner Relationship Management or PRM.
To top it all, the evolved CRM must have several interfaces. It must interface with all customer touch points. It must integrate with back-end systems, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and e-commerce systems. It must also interface with external partner applications.
