Archive for September 5th, 2010

Process automation elevates virtualization use while transforming IT’s function to service broker

Process automation elevates virtualization use while transforming IT’s function to service broker
The trap of unchecked virtualization complexity can have a stifling effect on the advantageous spread of virtualization in data centers.

Read more on IT-Analysis

Microsoft the Alternative in Hostile VMware Territory

Microsoft the Alternative in Hostile VMware Territory
Small delegation from Seattle knocks VMware’s view of the cloud world, talks up Azure as the better way to go.

Read more on eWeek

Customer Relationship Management

Customer Relationship Management

“Marketing takes a day to learn. Unfortunately, it takes a lifetime to master.”

– Philip Kotler

Introduction

In today’s competitive business customer is the king and important member who is said to contribute towards the overall success of a business enterprise. Identifying and building a strong relationship with the loyal customers is always a competitive advantage to every business enterprise in form of saving cost on promotions and sales expenses in finding new customers. The concept of customer relationship management is powerful and dynamic in modern marketing scenario.

Meaning of CRM

Customer relationship management (CRM) is the systematic process of managing detailed information about the loyal customers to build a continuous business relationship for the overall long run success of business enterprise.

Understanding the concept of CRM

CRM helps the business to provide better service ti its customers with new market offerings of products and services integrated with adequate marketing communication to a target group of loyal high value customers.CRM reduces the company’s eager search for new customers in the market for its product and helps to concentrate on its existing customers which builds brand loyalty for their products and services.

Creating a strong connection with loyal customers is a strategic key to a long term marketing success .For establishing a profitable business a company need not always search for new customers in a short span of time in its target market the company should always look forward to meet the changing needs of the existing customers, the satisfied customer will always add word of mouth which is powerful tool for gaining wide acceptance and popularity for the product or service. For example: airline services of jet airways, Vodafone teleservices, etc.

Here are few tips for building a strong business relationship with your loyal customers:

Ø Maintaining a customer profile: Customer  profiling enables the company’s marketing department to list out consumer’s likes and dislikes, where can be a target market can be established, how to provide  innovate products and services to retain the existing customers,etc.
Ø Reducing customer defection: A group of professionals can be chosen and provided appropriate training to build a friendly relationship with high value customers to cater their regular changing needs.
Ø Encouraging cross selling and up selling: A marketer may encourage a customer to buy a product which is related to similar brand offered by company to market or a complementary product.
Ø Profiling competitor’s strengths and weakness: Identifying competitor’s strengths and weakness of market offerings to similar target customers of one which the company intends to do will allow the company to devise intelligence/audit system that can maintain the track record of competitors in the market.
Ø Maintaining good call center management and auto response system: A company having a good call center management team and best manager’s may always provide assistance to customers against regular queries and problems.
Ø Customer relationship analysis (CRA): A company can choose actual process of collecting and analyzing data about its customer in order to better understanding about their marketing efforts to improve the sales and render customer service and reduce costs.

Case study

Bharti Tele-Ventures is one of India’s leading private sector telecom operators. Its cellular business, AirTel, is a leading mobile telephony brand. Like any telco, Bharti considers information technology a key business enabler. “For telecom, IT is like bread and butter. We believe it plays two significant roles-it works as a support system, and it can also be a business driver. Thus IT is very important to us,” says Amrita Gangotra, vice president of Information Technology at Bharti. It had a WAN in place with a mix of leased lines and E1 and E3 lines. The company also has an extranet in place through which it extends different applications to its dealers and partners. “We have an extremely large infrastructure based on products from multiple vendors,” says Gangotra. This includes a range of high-end servers from Sun and HP. “In the telecom business volumes are very large. We have millions of records and we process them every day, so for us storage is in terabytes,” she adds.
Bharti also has a storage area network (SAN) in place. The main data centre is located in Gurgaon, Haryana. As far as software is concerned, some of the applications that are running on its network are billing, fraud management, revenue assurance and data warehousing. They also have some internal-facing applications like Oracle Financial and Oracle HRMS.

The case for CRM

Initially, when Bharti started operations, the whole system was run manually. “At that point of time only 40 percent of our customer issues were getting resolved-this has now gone up to about 90 percent,” reveals Gangotra.
“It is vital for us to manage the expectations of our customers and provide them with innovative products and services in a manner which makes them loyal,” explains Gangotra. To achieve this, Bharti needed the right tools. “It is this need that made us opt for a CRM (customer relationship management) solution,” she says.

Cherrypicking a solution

Today Bharti is using the Oracle CRM platform. “As part of our vision, we intend to provide AirTel services anywhere and at any time. A customer should get the same quality of service no matter which of our call centres he contacts. This has been our vision, and because of that we have gone in for a centralized application like CRM,” Gangotra adds.
Before choosing its CRM tool, Bharti evaluated many options. It considered factors like proper workflow automation, facilitation of knowledge sharing, and integration with the billing system. After a thorough evaluation exercise, it decided to go ahead with the Oracle CRM platform.

Roll it

After starting its services in Delhi, Bharti acquired many circles and sought new licences in other circles; whenever they got a new license, they implemented the CRM tool immediately. But they had to put in a migration strategy in those acquired circles which had an existing subscriber base. “The migration had to be done in such a manner that the existing customer base did not suffer; we have already completed this in 14 of the 15 circles that we operate in,” says Gangotra. The goal was that all the circles would go live by the first quarter of 2004.
The biggest challenge for Bharti was to have a unified process in place. Once this was done they faced the challenge of imparting training. “When you go in for such a large-scale implementation you will definitely have problems,” says Gangotra. “We also had certain technical difficulties during implementation, but we were able to overcome them.”
The CRM strategy at Airtel revolves around two aspects: operational CRM and analytical CRM. The first is about helping their call centres in the workflow part, helping them in their day-to-day activities. The second provides staff with the required information on customers; this is used for business development activities. Together they help Bharti provide better services to its customers.

Tailor-made schemes

Gangotra says it is important to understand and segregate customer needs depending on the product and services he is buying. “One of the primary things that we have done in this solution is the segmentation of customers. With this, AirTel is now able to give its customers more value for money,” she says. With the help of CRM, they are able to provide customers different schemes and services depending on airtime usage. If the customer is a heavy user then they have some specific schemes; for normal users they have other schemes. Apart from this, they have also managed to segregate their workflow with the help of the CRM tool.

Source: http://casestudy.co.in/

Summary

Customer relationship management (CRM) is the systematic process of managing detailed information about the loyal customers to build a continuous business relationship for the overall long run success of business enterprise. Understanding and identifying the area for its successful implementation provides a competitive advantage for every business enterprise in the long run of the business with its marketing strategies the success story of Bharti Airtel is a live example of corporate success and best management practices and corporate heights of achievement.

Key words:

Customer profiling, customer defection, cross selling and up selling, customer     relationship analysis, call center management and auto response system.

Pradeep Raj.S

MBA Student

Bangalore, India

Email: Pradeepraj1@live.com

Bath Holes in Britains municipal coffers | Made in Germany

The city of Bath, England, is known as an elegant spa city but now the residents’ tempers are boiling. One of Britain’s wealthiest communities is experiencing bitter budget debates for the first time in decades.The municipal administration has to let employees go and the giant service company Helphire has cut 300 call center jobs in the region. Savings measures are being introduced everywhere. Report by Holger Trzeczak

Business Briefs for Sept. 5, 2010

Business Briefs for Sept. 5, 2010
Labarre Associates Inc., of Denham Springs, will open a branch office Oct. 1 in Tallahassee, Fla. The Florida office will provide architecture, facility management and consulting services to businesses from Mobile, Ala., to Palm Coast, Fla.

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iPhone 4.0 a great device that deserves better reception

iPhone 4.0 a great device that deserves better reception
Despite its problems with AT&T, the iPhone’s easy-to-use navigation and sleek construction makes it easy to overlook the antenna nightmares. I reviewed a $199, 16G unit running Version 4.0.1 of Apple’s iPhone operating system and found it hard to criticize anything else about the phone.

Read more on Federal Computer Week

Travel Guard® North America Offers Free Assistance to U.S. Travelers Affected by Hurricane Earl

Travel Guard® North America Offers Free Assistance to U.S. Travelers Affected by Hurricane Earl
According to the National Hurricane Center , residents and travelers spanning a swath of the country from North Carolina in the south along the East Coast to the north as far as Nova Scotia can anticipate a series of hurricane and tropical storm advisories in advance of Hurricane Earl, currently a category 4 storm.

Read more on PR Newswire via Yahoo! Finance