Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems support both the collection of information about clients and its use for an intended purpose. It should be emphasised that the range of different technologies used in CRM systems is vast. Below is a brief overview of such technologies.
In its simplest form, the collection of information about your clients consists of a simple IT solution allowing the employees of your company to enter the relevant data about your customers. Such a system, though, should be uniform for all workers and partners of the company. A unified CRM system ensures that all the information arrives at the same, overarching, database, which will allow for efficient utilisation of these data. An additional requirement that JMC sets for its own CRM projects is that the system be easily accessible, both from the office and from outside.
Information about your clients can also be obtained from other sources - most often from the operational databases of your company. This implies that the CRM system be integrated with othser subsystems within the firm. By creating a "data warehouse" of sorts, an integrated CRM solution can provide access to all the data on one place.
To collect the maximal amount of information about one's clients, one must overcome technological challenges also. Especially for larger companies the creation of a data warehouse that is organised in an analytical manner becomes especially significant.
To facilitate analysis and a trasnsparent access to the data, specialised analytical OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) systems are introduced. The task of these systems is to present the information in a swift and accessible manner - for example, by drawing charts or graphs of the changes in customer behaviour.
It should not be forgotten that CRM is also a means for building better customer relations: CRM can also function as a decision support system. A suitably designed OLAP system, presenting the information in an appropriate form, can be a powerful tool for the managerial staff.
Beyond the aforementioned sources, also the Internet is an important channel for collecting data about your customers. In addition to log-files written by the HTTP server, one can include other software, which more effectively learns the preferences and behaviour of your clients. One can analyse, among other things, the level of interest in particular products and the paths your clients navigate through Internet websites. The finding of regularities in information obtained from the Internet is called "web mining".
The range of possible CRM solutions is as broad and complex as the concept of CRM, or the marketing-mix, itself. These solutions are equally systems for for data collecion and contact management, as they are advanced algorithms for the analysis and research of client behaviour.
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