Customer Relationship Management Hooghoudt Bv

Customer Relationship Management

 
Table of content
Introduction 2
What is CRM? 3
Advantages 4
Implementation of CRM 5
Costs of implementing a CRM system 6
How IT helps realizing CRM 8
CRM Systems 9
Conclusion 12














Introduction

A good relationship to a company’s customers is a key driver for success. Every company, regardless of size or industry, has toestablish and maintain profitable relationships with its customers in order to achieve and to maintain a competitive position. Therefore it is also important for Hooghoudt to implement effective customer relationship management in the company strategy.
The following report will give a short overview about effective customer relationship management. First of all, a definition of CRM is given,followed by its implementation and its costs. Furthermore, it will be explained how CRM can be realized with the support of IT appliances and what the benefits for Hooghoudt as well as for its customers are. Finally, a short overview about possibilities in choosing an appropriate CRM system will be given connected with an advice for Hooghoudt.












What is CRM?

CRM, Customerrelationship management, will help organizations to become accessible to large groups of customers, to build permanent relationships and to keep out competition; just for a start.
For CRM many definitions are available. In 2000 the Metagroep defined CRM as “the automation of horizontally integrated business processes involving front office customer contact points via multiple, interconnecteddelivery channels”, which indicates that CRM, in this case, is positioned in the “IT corner”.
Another definition pays more attention to the customer and the goal one hopes to achieve vis-à-vis the customer. It says that CRM is “a process that addresses all aspects of identifying customers, creating customer knowledge, building customer relationships, and shaping their perceptions of the organizationand its products”. Through this individualized and proactive approach, customers are afforded a different impression of the organization. They get a feeling of being recognized as a customer and thus respected and that they will receive special attention and care.
The Garner group’s definition from 2004 goes one step further. It describes CRM as a business strategy, instead of a process. Here thegoal is to increase revenue and profit, and to improve customer satisfaction. They say that CRM is “an IT enabled business strategy, the outcomes of which optimize profitability, revenue and customer satisfaction by organizing around customer segments, fostering customer-satisfying behaviors and implementing customer-centric processes”. Their underlying strategy is to develop a long-term mutuallyprofitable relationship with the customer. Thereby the goal is to encourage the customer to make its future purchases from this company and to reduce the share of purchases being made from the competition.
But, the most comprehensive definition was given by Regis McKenna, who recognized that CRM targets the building of an infrastructure which may be used to develop long-term customer-supplierrelationships. Hereby he emphasizes that as a result o this infrastructure, the walls between company and customer are torn down. Customer and supplier activities will be integrated with one another.
Summing up, it is preferable to see CRM as a business strategy from the start, which is aimed towards developing long-term, mutually profitable, individual customer-supplier relationships and is basedon an IT infrastructure to be developed, which enables well-defined and controlled processes, and places capable personnel in a position to function optimally.
Still, CRM has to be applied in a company. And this process is not easy. For integrating CRM, one has to consider its four cornerstones, the customer knowledge, the relationship strategy, the communication and the individual value...