Broadly speaking, CRM solutions should allow big companies to behave like little companies - by aggregating their customer information and providing its contact staff with easy access to information regarding its customers.
Technically speaking, CRM relies on a series of tightly integrated databases. But that is the easy part. In the real world, CRM solutions need to draw on information recorded at different times from different sources, sort their way through dirty data, provide an intuitive interface for tech-wary employees and become integrated into a company without its operations skipping a beat.
According to Jim Fisher, business development manager at software vendor Computer Associates, the early horror stories about massive CRM implementations going off the rails and over budget served at the very least to educate the next level of customers.
-When CRM wasn't successful, and companies were still throwing a lot of money at it, there were a lot of companies watching from the sideline and getting completely different pictures about what could be achieved," Fisher said. -Now those companies have a good idea of what CRM can do, and how they want to use it within their organisation."
A case in point is Peter Ffrench, retail group manager for sales and marketing at energy utility Energex. In the hunt for new revenue streams in an increasingly deregulated market Ffrench is looking for ways to improve profits through cross selling.
-I am not aiming for customers to wake up in the morning, roll over and say 'oh I'm so glad I buy electricity from Energex'," Ffrench said jokingly. -But when their hot water system breaks down, I want Energex to be who they call to fix it or to buy a new one."
Accordingly, Ffrench's own corporate take on CRM will result in an E.piphany solution implemented so as to indicate appropriate cross-selling and up-selling opportunities when they arise.
-We would make more margin selling and installing one heater, than we will supplying the electricity to run it for years," Ffrench said. -But to do that we need to know when such opportunities are going to come about, and that's where CRM comes into the equation."
This new level of customer understanding of CRM is also leading to an interesting market trend towards a renewed interest in customers.
Chris Ciauri, managing director of CRM software vendor E.piphany points out that as the difficulties and costs associated with CRM are ironed out, many more companies are opting to reclaim their customer relationships, rather than outsource them to a call centre.
-The reason a lot of these relationships were farmed-out in the first place, is that companies did not have a comprehensive customer strategy, to the extent that the call centres could offer," Ciauri said. -CRM implementation is now reaching the level where customers see the value in running their customer contacts internally, because they are able to achieve tangible results without a cost blow out."
The guy's name is "Ffrench"?