Integrated Customer Relationships Management Strategy Plan for Coles Supermarket - Example

Integrated CRM Strategy Plan: Coles Supermarket University’s Name: Submitted by Names: Tutor: Date: Table of Contents Introduction 3 Coles Company Overview 3 CRM Project Objectives 4 Selected CRM Suite 5 Analytical Capabilities of OCH 6 Master Trusted Customer Data 6 Consolidate 7 Cleanse 8 Govern 8 Share 8 Advantages of OCH 9 Infrastructure Requirements 10 Training 11 Timeline 12 Budget 12 Recommendations 13 Conclusion 13 Reference List 14 Oracle. 2010. Understanding Customer Data Hub Integration. Retrieved from http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E16216_01/crm91pbr0/eng/psbooks/cbom/chapter.htm?File=cb om/htm/cbom27.htm 15 Winlei, M. 2014. Woolworths and Coles have taken over Australians’ lives. Retrieved from http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/woolworths-and-coles-have-taken-over- australians-lives/story-fnkgdftz-1226990860686 16 Introduction Customer Relationships Management refers to the information technology that organizations use to manage their customers through the use of interaction data (Linoff & Berry, 2011). The main aims of adopting a CRM by an organization are to improve its relationship with both the existing and potential customers and to enhance customer’s retention, which in turn will lead to sales growth. This report focuses on the integrated CRM strategy plan of Coles Supermarket. It analyzes the company internal structure, customer relationship and the appropriate CRM technology that suites the company. Coles is the second largest retail store in Australia after Woolworths, and it controls about 31% of the Australian retail market. Coles has its headquarter in Western Australia and it operates both supermarkets and business stores. The company has about 100,000 employees and it generates about $26.3 billion shillings annually (Winlei, 2014). The company offers a wide range of products ranging from household essentials, fresh produce to gourmet foods. Coles Company Overview Cole supermarket is the second largest supermarket after Woolworths because it enjoys both economies of scale and competitive advantage in the whole of Australia (Armstrong et al., 2014). Some of the competitive advantages that the company enjoys include effective supply chain, brand reputation, and effective management. Other strengths of the company include effective advertising and branding strategies, attractive pricing tactics with a lot of discounts and offers, and a wide range of generic brands (Kumar, Bhagwat & Xi, 2015). However, the company has some weaknesses and challenges that affect its productivity. The company has been accused oppressing suppliers through its hard-line negotiation strategies. The strategies have affected its public reputation and some customers have a negative perception about the company (Winlei, 2014). The company also faces stiff competition, especially from Woolworths and other new entrants. Some of the industrial threats that also affect the company include a change in taste and preference of consumers towards organic and healthy food and consumers are becoming more time conscious. Other issues that are likely to affect the implementation of CRM in the company include lack of organized consumer data, inadequate IT systems and infrastructures, difficulties in coming up with customer segments due to close similarities, and lack of proper customer management technologies and structures (Tangaza et al., 2015). Cole supermarket has come up with strategies to counter the emerging challenges, which are likely to affects its customer relationship and productivity. The company has expanded its range of products, including organic food. The company has also extended its operation hours to accommodate customers shopping at different times. It has also improved its IT systems to be in line with the increase use of IT in all its departments. CRM Project Objectives There are three main CRM project objectives that would help Coles Supermarket achieve its main goals of becoming the largest and the most efficient retail shop in the whole of Australia. The three main objectives include: To increase customers retention rate by offering a wide variety of products To increase customer loyalty through customer satisfaction To increase customer satisfaction by improving the quality of goods and services. The best way to achieve the above objectives is for the company to understand the desires, expectation, needs, attitudes and behaviors of existing and potential customers (Chu, 2002). However, understanding the above aspects is only possible if Coles Supermarket organizes and maintains customer information and database in an efficient manner (Feinberg et al., 2002). The latest research reveals that the company has not been doing well in achieving the above objectives. Only about 20% of Coles customers have been reporting a complete satisfaction, which is likely to negatively affect their retention and loyalty. Coles, therefore, should come up with appropriate CRM that can help it improve customer satisfaction, which in turn, will help it improve customer retention and loyalty (Dwivedi et al., 2010). According to loyalty model, quality products and services lead to customer satisfaction, which, in turn, creates customer loyalty. Customer loyalty, on the other hand, leads to profit maximization (Luarn & Lin, 2003). A customer who is loyal to an organization is likely to be retained by that particular organization. Differentiating customer is also an important model in the implementation of CRM. The model states that customers should be differentiated based on their value and their needs. The models help in building stronger relationships with all the customers, leading to higher profits (Van Poucke, van Weele & Matthyssens, P. 2014). Selected CRM Suite The best CRM vendor suite that is suitable for Coles Supermarket is the Oracle Customer Hub (OCH), which is also known as Stebel Universal Customer Master (UCM). It will help Coles Supermarket to achieve its objectives of customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention. OCH is manufactured by Oracle and it is one of the leading customer data integration software that help organizations to centralize all the information from various customers into a single database that can be used across departments in a business (Oracle, 2013). OCH is useful CRM because of its comprehensive functionality that include management of customer data, capturing, standardizing and correcting customer data, identification and merging of data, enriching customer profile, and it helps in enforcement and mitigation of risks. Analytical Capabilities of OCH OCH is designed to play key major roles. First, it is designed to consolidate and manage a set of customer information across the departments in an organization. Secondly, it tracks, identify and maintain changes that occur in customer data, which helps in deepening the context of the database. Finally, disseminate information as a one point of truth to the operational and analytical applications at the right time (Oracle, 2013). To achieve the three roles, OCH has been designed around five pillars with different capabilities. The five pillars of OCH include trusted master data, consolidate, cleanse, govern, and share. Master Trusted Customer Data OCH has a comprehensive customer data model that has the ability to that helps in mastering the profile attribute of customers that are required in various departments, especially by the front desk. OCH is also able to master the attributes of customers that are needed by the system and that may be needed during the application in the organization. The suite also is capable of coordinating the roles and relationships within various master entities in an organization. Further, OCH is capable of allowing an organization to customize existing entities and to include new child and the entities associated with the child. It has the ability to store child entities like address, organization, relatives, financial accounts, and any other affiliations (Oracle, 2013). It also has a customer data model that helps in storing customer profile features in various markets in the different industries and vertical markets. Consolidate Customer data is always distributed across the departments in the company in a fragmented and disorganized manner. Therefore, organizations always find it hard to have a single pool that contains customer profile data, which has made it difficult to identify an accurate customer profile (Oracle, 2013). However, with the invention of OCH by Oracle, organizations have found a solution to this problem because it is merging and managing customer data across all departments in an organization. OHC enables organizations to load customer data into the hub using metadata techniques through the use of the List import workbench. OCH also has the ability to add new user interface that helps in detecting and solving errors that are encountered in the interface. It is also capable of supporting files from various sources like flat, XML and excel. In addition, OCH is capable of importing high volume data from various departments (Oracle, 2013). Further, OCH is capable of customers through its prebuilt customer lifecycle coordination and management process (Oracle, 2013). The process is important in managing the steps needed to create a trusted customer profile like registration, matching customer profiles, identification of customers, and appropriate version of customer profile features. The records of a customer and that of the related child are traced from various departments through the use of various mechanisms like ID number. Cleanse Operations systems mainly use mailing address data as the main source of customer information. However, wrong address data is costly to an organization because it leads to financial loss, increased cost of operation, and lack of effectiveness in an organization. However, OCH, through the use of Oracle Enterprise Data Qyuality Address Server (OEDQ), validates addresses of customers to ensure quality data. OEDQ also enhances the matching of customer data like the names, address, contacts and the ID. Govern Data governance is important to an organization because it stipulates the people that can access the data and those tasked with the responsibility of managing data. OCH enable businesses to govern customer data through the use of data governance manager. It also has policy and privacy software that helps in data management. A company may have an appropriate data, but without proper management, it may not be useful to the organization. Share OCH is capable of sharing master data to various departments for operation and analytical purposes. It has about 20 composite internet services that show daily operational and analytical functionality of various departments that is important in making an appropriate decision (Oracle, 2013). It can also link link the master data with other operation systems within the organization. OCH, therefore, enable various departments within the organization to share customer data, which helps in improving coordination between various departments. Close coordination helps quick and efficient decision-making. The figure below illustrates how OCH works. (Oracle, 2010) Advantages of OCH OCH enables the user organization to realize the following benefits: It helps in enhancing business growth because it helps in customer satisfaction, retention and loyalty. The business using OCH is in a position to obtain information from various segments of customers, which is important in identifying the needs, expectation and customer taste and preference. It improves operational efficiency because it reduces data management cost, reduce sales cost errors and the time taken to serve customers. It also enhances the campaign response rate in an organization It enhances compliance because it minimizes non-compliance risk, credit risks, and it also reduces reporting costs. It also improves efficiency in decision-making because all the departments in an organization are in a position to share the information regarding customer profiles. Infrastructure Requirements There are key infrastructures that must be put in place in order to implement Oracle Customer Hub. There are five main infrastructures that must be available for efficient implementation of OCH and they include integrated system, high scalability, prebuilt components, high throughput, and reduce response time (Oracle, 2012). In addition, the company must have well trained expertise to operate the system for it to be of value. Like any other CRM system, OCH also has integrated system with many components. Some of the components of the systems that Coles Supermarket must ensure that are in place include web server, which it has, load balancer, and an application server. In addition, it must also have data quality server and the various databases that support these components (Oracle, 2012). OCH has many computer nodes and high use of compression, complex flash cache, and disk striping. Consequently, there is a need for high scalability to to implement OCH. In addition, the implementation of OCH requires web logic components because it has to be linked to the operation system through the middleware. Web logic is also needed to enhance its operation speed. Each server should be able to respond to each customer, which is only possible if the speed is enhanced (Oracle, 2012). Other infrastructure requirements are Infiniband fabric and native Infiniband networking protocol, which coordinates with RAC database. Even though Coles supermarket may have some of these infrastructure in place, it must confirm if they are compatible with the needed infrastructure. Training The success of the implementation of any CRM depends on the training and the attitude that employees have towards the new system (Payne & Frow, 2006). CRM is not just a technology, but it also significantly involves a strategy and organizational philosophy towards its use (Buttle, 2009). Top management should be the first people to be trained for them to be able to understand how OCH operates. In addition, top management can easily influence the adoption and perception of junior employees towards the use and adoption of the new system. CRM project manager, the person with the overall mandate to manage and operate the system, should work closely with the identified super-user, an employee who is well conversant with the new system, to train other employees in the organization. The person representing the vendor, Oracle, should also be part of trainers. The training should be internal and should be carried out in all the departments in the company. Training should be a continuous process until it is internalized in the organization. There is a common perception that CRM is only meant for sales and marketing departments in an organization. Therefore, employees from other departments like finance tends to distance themselves from the CRM project. Older employees in the organization are also likely to resist the adoption of OCH in the organization due to technology phobia (Karim, Huda & Khan, 2012). The organization should ensure that all employees understand the need the implementation of the new system. All employees should be involved in the training. Timeline Stage 1: Planning Planning will take three months. During this stage the company will review is vision, goals and objectives, and to identify the resources available. Those to be actively involved in the project are selected. Stage 2: Setting up and Customizing CRM It will take three months and it will include defining security settings, customizing the application process and creating internal report. Stage 3: Deployment of Salesforce CRM This step should take three months and it involves communication to the end users about the coming changes. It also involves the organization of data and training of the end users. Stage 4: Encouraging of adoption of the new system through continuous training. It should go on until the system is internalized. Budget Description Cost ($) 1 Planning process, including the allowances of those involved in the CRM project 100,000 2 Customizing the CRM system in the organization by various salespersons 50,000 3 Training of the end users 40,000 4 Continuous training 50,000 Total Cost 240,000 Recommendations 1. The organization should involve end users from the beginning to minimize resistance during the implementation. 2. Establish the reward system among the people using the new system well to encourage other people who may not be interested in the CRM. 3. The organization should ensure that the CRM is easy to use to speed up the adoption process. Conclusion The use of CRM by an organization has become inevitable. Coles Supermarket is the second largest supermarket in Australia after Woolworths and it therefore needs CRM to give it a competitive advantage. It can only be competitive through customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention. It can only meet the above objectives if it successfully implements Oracle Customer Hub, which will ensure that it consolidates all the required customer data. Coles should have the required infrastructure and it must also train its employees for it to implement the new CRM successfully. Reference List Armstrong, G., Adam, S., Denize, S., & Kotler, P. 2014. Principles of marketing. Pearson Australia. Buttle, F 2009, Customer Relationship Management : Concepts And Technologies, Amsterdam: Routledge, eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost, viewed 30 September 2015 Chu, J, Pike, T. 2002. What top-performing retailers know about satisfying customers: Experience is key, IBM Institute for Business Value. Dwivedi, A., Merrilees, B., Miller, D., & Herington, C. 2010. Building customer-equity in supermarket retailing. Feinberg, R.A., Kadam, R., Hokama, L & Kim, I. 2002. The State of Electronic Customer Relationship Management in Retailing. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management. Vol. 30, 10, pp. 470-481. Karim, M. R., Huda, K. N., & Khan, R. S. 2012. Significance of Training and Post Training Evaluation for Employee Effectiveness: An Empirical Study on Sainsbury’s Supermarket Ltd, UK. International Journal of Business and Management, 7 (18), p141. Kumar, V., Bhagwat, Y., & Xi (Alan), Z. 2015. Regaining "Lost" Customers: The Predictive Power of First-Lifetime Behavior, the Reason for Defection, and the Nature of the Win- Back Offer. Journal Of Marketing, 79(4), 34-55. doi:10/1509/jm.14.0107 Linoff, G. S., & Berry, M. J. 2011. Data mining techniques: for marketing, sales, and customer relationship management. John Wiley & Sons. Luarn, P., & Lin, H. H. 2003. A Customer Loyalty Model for E-Service Context. J. Electron. Commerce Res., 4(4), 156-167. Oracle. 2010. Understanding Customer Data Hub Integration. Retrieved from http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E16216_01/crm91pbr0/eng/psbooks/cbom/chapter.htm?File=cb om/htm/cbom27.htm Oracle. 2012. Siebel CRM Oracle Customer Hub (Siebel UCM) on Oracle Engineered Systems. Retrieved from http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/siebel/customer-hub- engineered-sys-1931263.pdf Oracle. 2013. Oracle Customer Hub. Retrieved from http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/master-data-management/oracle- customer-hub-439838.pdf Payne, A., & Frow, P. 2006. Customer Relationship Management: from Strategy to Implementation. Journal Of Marketing Management, 22 (1/2), 135-168 Tangaza, M. A., Muhammed, A., & Bala, A. A. 2015. A Review of Customer Relationship Management, Implementation and Procedures from the Rich Nation and Emerging Market Perspectives. International Journal Of Computer Science & Management Studies, 15(3), 6 Van Poucke, E., van Weele, A. J., & Matthyssens, P. 2014. The interrelationship between purchasing maturity, internal customer satisfaction and purchasing performance: an empirical case study. Winlei, M. 2014. Woolworths and Coles have taken over Australians’ lives. Retrieved from http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/woolworths-and-coles-have-taken-over- australians-lives/story-fnkgdftz-1226990860686 Read More