Employee Orientation for Customer Relationship Management - Case Study Example

System Acquisition and Implementation Management Name Course Name and Code Instructor’s Name Date Introduction Customer Relationship Management (CRM) refers to a strategy coupled with processes used in learning more regarding the needs and behaviours of the clients so as to initiate stronger relationships with them. In the face of growing competitive forces, most markets have considered the retention of clients as being more challenging as opposed to the acquisition of new clients. The approach of traditional transactional marketing therefore became insufficient in the achievement of marketing goals and thus CRM is aimed about bringing change in the organization and also streaming of various organizational processes and information. It is only through CRM that vendors can be able to easily and quickly get and access all aspects of client interactions and business management. In addition, CRM also allows customers to easily and quickly find and use relevant information on their own. CRM greatly helps various organizations to coordinate and manage their own businesses effectively and provide excellent client service through streamlining various aspects of the client-vendor interactions. CRM is thus responsible for the combination of customer, marketing and financial information so that an organization’s management, customers service, customers and the sales people are able to access and use the same information (Adrian & Pennie, 2006). For most organizations, the task of searching, acquiring and retention of clients is usually a bigger challenge that is experienced than ever before. Business organizations are thus required to make most of the information accessible through client interaction by systematically achieving, maintaining and sharing such information across all the client touch points. In order to maximize returns form their client relationships and the information acquired from clients, many business organizations have resorted to the adoption of industry-accepted best practices and business models. Despite of this, ensuring the success of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) implementation process needs extensive knowledge regarding the industry and the associated technological solutions that are available in the marketplace. The implementation of CRM in KATG has proved to be problematic due to poor acquisition and implementation processes of the CRM in KTG. The aim of this paper is therefore to identify the underlying factors, which have negatively contributed to the poor acquisition and implementation processes of the CRM in KATG. The paper will also seek to leverage the implementation and integration of CRM expertise with a view of helping clients to extract maximum value from the CRM investments and thus achieve the best from the client relationships and interactions. The provision of best CRM Consulting Services in KATG will greatly help the customers to adopt relevant industry tailored CRM best practices, which can be wholly included into applications, custom, built applications and hosted solution (Goodhue, et al, 2002). KATG apart from having organizational and technical challenges is also faced with various problems in CRM integration, CRM implementation, application care and general lifecycle management, which have hindered the organization from enjoying low costs of ownership and speed time to value advantages. This is against its intended objectives of implementing CRM within the organization so as offer more services to its entire client base and grow its business. Problems in the acquisition and implementation process of CRM in KATG Just like in any other organization, the initial acquisition and subsequent implementation of CRM in KATG has proved to be a big challenge for the organization due to various problems and factors. The major cause of this disarray is that the company has confused a CRM strategy as being the implementation of technology. The implementation of CRM in KATG is in disarray because the company has not brought on board its structure and culture thus bringing confusion in the whole process. What is lacking in KTG as an organization to ensure that there is effective adoption and implementation of the CRM process is organizational change, employee empowerment, proper staff training and proper integration among the staff. In addition, the CRM process in KATG has proved to be problematic due to lack of a clear understanding among staff regarding the organization’s objective. The CRM objective and the selection of a software which well aligns with the organization’s objective and a software which will eventually result in an inevitable implementation of the CRM process in the organization (Ed Peelen, at al, 2006). The implementation of CRM in KATG as an organization is now in disarray because of various problems associated with both the acquisition and implementation of the CRM process. The company was not aware of the CRM transitional processes and this can be reflected from the lack of reports regarding the CRM process of the organization. In addition, KATG also lacked a comprehensive funding strategy and they were not sure of the attainable goals. According to the Gartner Group, approximately 50% of all the CRM projects have failed to meet their expectations. The implementation of CRM in KATG has become problematic due to lack of strategic CRM frameworks that define success within the organization. The successfully implementation of the CRM process at KATG has been in disarray due to lack of understanding and a clear definition of CRM which has been a great barrier towards both its acquisition and implementation. The initial acquisition and implementation of the CRM process in KATG has not been successful because of lack of management, control and integration of the basic CRM components like for instance people, technology, business relationship and culture and process in the organization. While some of the problems faced by KATG in the acquisition and implementation of CRM in the organization may be inevitable, most of them can actually be avoided. The failure of CRM in the organization has been attributed to the complexity of both organizational and technical issues, which are associated with its implementation. In general, the problems in the acquisition and implementation of the CRM strategy in KATG can generally be summed up as being lack of management support and lack of management change. In addition, absence of a customer centric behaviour or culture, absence of readiness process, poor quality data and underestimation of difficulties which are related to data integration and data mining (Darrel et al, 2002). Customer Records and Data Issues Analyst Felix Chan spent a lot of time on explaining customer record and data issues because of the problems that were prevalent in the organization. Felix Chan is facing problems with the customer records and data because of poor data quality and poor data management and integration in the organization. The customers’ needs are not well met because the right quantity and quality of information on clients is not well acquired and analyzed. Analyst Chan could be facing the problem of poor data quality, which has negatively affected the organization. Dirty data can negatively affect KATG in various ways like for instance; it may lead to misguided marketing promotions, which may mistakenly be sent to wrong people. This will make the company to look stupid in front of any prospective client. Dirty and poor quality data in an organization may make the analyst to waste the organization’s money and resources by targeting a non-existing client and this will imply that the integrity of the organization’s customer database, records and other related client information is suspect. Given the fact that a lot of information streams in and out of KATG as an organization from the call centres, point of sale terminals, client internet forms, web-based applications and from other client information systems, KATG should make data integrity and quality to become a vital part of the organizations CRM and data warehousing efforts. Data quality issues are an ongoing concern for most organizations adopting CRM. This is attributed to the fact that for CRM and data warehousing, data quality issues first emerge during the early design stages when the needs for the extraction and transformation of vital data from the operational systems are first developed. However, the data quality issues do not end there since they remain to be an ongoing concern during the development of the CRM application, during its use and even during its maintenance. The achievement of data quality needs the establishment of some form of organizational or departmental standards in order to aid in the maintenance of data quality and consistency. This will normally involve engaging business individuals tasked with the creation or manipulation of the relevant data like for instance entry people, end users, auditors, e.t.c so as to make them assume full responsibility of owning quality data. Data quality is therefore an important issue, which should be seriously accounted for by organizations right from the initial application design phase up to the final implementation of the system, its maintenance and its subsequent use. The good news in the contemporary world is that most of the companies nowadays posses various options through the form of services or products which help them to easily handle and control their data quality complexities. These solutions can actually range from the installation of the relevant software on site to even the use of online interfaces and third party suppliers of data (Emmanuella, et al, 2008). How to resolve Customer Records and Data Issues in KATG In order to resolve issues regarding customer records and data in KATG as an organization, then it is important to have specialized data enhancement and cleansing tools. These are actually tools which are specifically manufactured with an aim of enhancing and cleansing client files which may consist of the names, addresses, zip codes, telephone numbers and other client or business information with an aim of either correcting, matching and consolidating various database entries like for instance firm names/customers across varied file systems and databases. Due to this fact, the specialized data enhancement and cleansing tools are quite important for direct marketing methods through the use of email, regular mail and other operations that are related to CRM (Carl-Erik, 004). Framework of a successful acquisition and implementation of a packaged CRM application at KATG Given the fact that Jane, the National Marketing Director and Executive sponsor at KATG is so anxious in finding a solution regarding the problems affecting the full implementation of the CRM system in the organization, it is important to inform her that the implementation of a fully operational CRM system is not only dependent on the implementation alone but also on the acquisition of such processes or systems. This research therefore proposes a conceptual framework, which aims at contributing towards the successful implementation of the CRM, proves based on previous studies, experience and common sense. This framework therefore fully comprises the three main constructs namely the CRM major components, the CRM implementation stages of phases and the CRM success factors. The CRM framework starts through a pre-implementation phase in which KATG as an organization has gain the support and encouragement of the company’s top management for the implementation of the CRM before getting involved in the real process of implementation. Upon gaining enough commitment and support from the top management, the process could then further proceed towards the assessment of the organization’s readiness based on its technological, human and organizational capabilities or processes in the implementation of CRM. As a result, the CRM strategy for KATG should be developed or created, aligned and communicated to all the company’s employees and stakeholders. The CRM strategy should then be put into full action through the implementation of the CRM project while placing emphasis on the success factors, which should be measured in order to ascertain the successful implementation of the CRM project. The final stage in the implementation of CRM framework for KATG will focus on the measurement of the effects or impacts of CRM implementation on both the organization’s marketing performance and financial performance to ensure there is realization of the CRM strategies and objectives and also assess or ascertain the impact of other external factors, which could possibly emerge. There is usually a process of learning and feedback during the implementation phase and its continued use. The feedback could be used by KATG to not only redesign but also re-asses the process of implementation. In essence, the proposed framework for the implementation of a CRM process for KATG in future is categorized into three phases namely the pre-implementation phase as the first phase, implementation as the second phase and lastly the post-implementation phase. Bibliography Adrian Payne and Pennie Frow. 2006. “Customer Relationship Management: from Strategy to Implementation”. Journal of Marketing Management, 22: 135-168 Carl-Erik Wikstrom. 2004. “A Case Study of Emergent and Intentional Organizational Change: Some Implications for Customer Relationship Management Success”. Proceedings of the 37th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences – 2004 Darrel K. Rigby, Frederick F. Reichheld, and Phil Schefter. 2002. “Avoid the Four Perils of CRM”. Harvard Business Review, February, 2002 Ed Peelen, Kees van Montfort, Rob Beltman, and Arnoud Klerkx. 2006. “A Study into the Foundation of CRM success”. NRG Working Paper no. 06-09 Emmanuella Plakoyiannaki, Nikolaos Tzokas, Pavlos Dimitratos and Michael Saren. 2008. “How Critical is Employee Orientation for Customer Relationship Management? Insights from a Case Study”. Journal of Management Studies, 42(2): 268-293 Goodhue, D.L., B.H. Wixom, and H.J. Watson. 2002. “Realizing business benefits through CRM: Hitting the right target in the right way”. MIS Quarterly Executive 1(2): 79-94 Read More