Read this article and focus on how different departments within a business use customer data for CRM. Then, complete the case study. What data did the company collect for database marketing? How did this company use database marketing to improve customer relationships (CRM)? The case study was an example of a real-world CRM process used to improve customer interaction.
While there are numerous reports of "failed" implementations of various types of CRM projects, these are often the result of unrealistic high expectations and exaggerated claims by CRM vendors.
Many of these "failures" are also related to data quality and availability. Data cleaning is a major issue. If a company's CRM strategy is to track life-cycle revenues, costs, margins, and interactions between individual customers, this must be reflected in all business processes. Data must be extracted from multiple sources (e.g., departmental/divisional databases such as sales, manufacturing, supply chain, logistics, finance, service etc.), which requires an integrated, comprehensive system in place with well-defined structures and high data quality. Data from other systems can be transferred to CRM systems using appropriate interfaces.
A well specified system is of vital importance before starting any implementation, as it can lead to a significant reduction in the time and cost of implementation, as well as highlighting any unrealistic expectations.
Failure of CRM system starts when the prime users - sales reps are not comfortable with the system. Too many data entry points will make the usage painful. The data entry points should be minimal and the integration between various modules involving the customers should be efficient enough to pre populate values based on a unique customer code. Data integration from other systems, like, daily currency exchange values inducted into the CRM system are more beneficiary to the end users. The system should be closely linked to frequently used software like MS Word / MS excel etc.
The design method should be bottom up to make the system user friendly than management friendly. Users should be periodically and extensively educated with the updates and added functionality to increase the adoption rate - as old habits die hard.