CRM Implementation
Abstract
CRM is a strategy used by organizations to improve profitability by converging on the needs of consumers and establishing effective and efficient buyer relationships. It encompasses modified and an approach that is interactive to the whole life cycle of the customers. Customer relationship management has continued to grow over the years, following the trends across the globe. It is an approach that works towards ensuring the company and its customers have the most efficient relationship that will enable the company retain the customers and improve its productivity. With the right customer relationship management strategy, customer loyalty will improve leading to profits that are long-term. If done right, the reward will be customer loyalty and long-term profitability. There have been continuous discussions among various organizations across the globe of the features that need to be encompassed and the required technology. From the discus, there have been various perspectives on how to make use of the CRM systems in the most effective and efficient way. The discussions have also facilitated the creation of a large variety of different systems of CRM that are important to businesses. Many organizations have managed to create the CRM systems but failed to successfully implement the systems to fit into the daily operations of the company with law risks and without resistance from the employees. The implementation of the Customer Relationship Management systems is a composite and all-inclusive notion that involves the incorporation of new information technology and a concept that leads to changes in the business processes. In Marriott company’s CRM implementation has continued to grow rapidly in the las few years due to the global trends in the business sector. Marriott company has developed a well-organized approach and orientation towards the consumers. With the availability of the established systematic Customer Relationship Management systems, the firm can develop better relationships with the buyers, attain a higher information sharing among workers and also facilitate improved premeditated decisions in business.
Introduction
Most firms are currently working towards being the best performers in international markets. Many opt for CRM strategy to help gain competitive advantage. Marriott company is a food company that specialized in food production and supply. It is mainly involved with wholesaling, retail marketing and distribution activities. It supplies food products to schools, retails store, and homes. It has kept a relationship with close to four hundred suppliers. The company has employees who are skilled and experienced in their various roles. There is excellent communication with the management and the departments. There is a strong corporation with a low level of staff turnover in the organization. Marriott company has continued to meet higher competition from international markets and the loss of important business opportunities. Due to the rapid changes in the market, the company made a strategic decision to help respond to those changes. The company was to identify the changes, monitor them, and introduce teamwork to help decide on the most appropriate strategy. Marriott decided that the most appropriate solution would be adapting the CRM strategy. Marriott Company applies various elements to help gain a competitive advantage in the market- for instance, the delivery speed, costs reduction, provision of quality services, application of the newest technology, and implementation of CRM strategy in the firm. In saturated markets, the Marriott firm finds it hard to decide the customers to establish a business relationship with. The success of most businesses, including Marriott Company depends on the culture and health of the organization and the way of dealing with customers. Achieving good values and healthy culture in an organization is highly linked to the way a company treats its customers. CRM systems have played crucial responsibilities in improving the relationship between consumers and the entire organization. They act as information systems that help companies identify the main customer focus.
Marriott service company has had to deal with various problems that involve customers. It has been difficult for the company to fully engage in the right relationship management minus the right database that contained all the important data about the businesses of the company and information about the customers. Data servers play an important role in the incorporation of application and data from which data from various CRM solutions are summarized. A Logical CRM system helps in the analysis of customers’ demographic information, profitability, history, and the behavior of individual customers. Solutions for operational CRM plays a crucial role in the development of customer relationships in all the company’s communication channels. This paper will look at the concept of CRM and its implementation in the company, define the CRM systems requirements and the impact of its implementation to the people and processes, and provide suggestions for the future development of the organization’s CRM strategy that considers any implication for the digital marketing. The main objective of this paper is to ensure that companies like Marriott Service Company become successful when implementing the CRM systems and also state some of the difficulties that these organizations may face while implementing the system.
Literature review
The use of CRM begun during the mid-1990s in the technology of information dealer and consultant community. CRM transitioned from business practices like marketing relationships to the rise in highlighting on better consumer maintenance by managing customer relationships in the most effective and efficient ways. According to —CRM involves utilizing information that concerns the customers and the understanding to convey the right products and services to the customers that are of the right quality and quantity. —–further emphasized that Customer Relationship Management is a system that is oriented technologically to help firms gain a competitive advantage. The concept is considered a complex combination of business and technological determinants. It is also considered as a holistic procedure of obtaining, maintaining and establishing long term relationships with the chosen consumers. —- defines CRM as a strategy used by organizations to acquire, retain and partner with the selected customers to develop strong values for the firm and its customers.
From the academic researches done on Customer Relationship Management (CRM), there is a significant discrepancy made between its strategy and the components of information technology. The strategy component puts the main focus on CRM’s logical subject of discernment in establishing and sustaining key customer relationships that are efficient and collaborative. The components of information technology emphasize the amalgamation of computer hardware and software systems to help in the obtaining, storage and analysis of consumers’ important data. This enables the firm to identify a specific group of customers with whom they can establish and maintain the best long term relationships. A study conducted by… shows that Customer relationship management is not an adequate condition. It also not a panacea for the success of the implementation CRM. The technologies can however play vital responsibilities in the CRM programs of the company, mostly for those with a higher consumer base. Undeniably, CRM systems establish the support of many operative components of Customer Relationship Management. CRM technologies that are important to the daily operation of many firms include the Call Center Operations and Sales Force Automation. Many firms are establishing ways of using the CRM systems at the lowest costs to help improve the productivity and profitability of the firm.
—describes CRM as a planned way of using information, procedures, expertise, and the organization staff that have the role of managing the relationship that the company has with its consumers. CRM enables firms to manage customer relationships in the most effective and efficient way. The main focus of CRM is to exploit and leverage interactions with the customers to ensure customers are fully satisfied, enhance customer profitability, and also long-term relationships with the company consumers. Customer Relationship Management is assumed a portion of marketing effort, provision of service to customers, and also a procedure employed by firms to gain competitive advantage and build longer and productive relationships with the consumers. — research identified CRM as a mixture of people, procedures, and technology that aims at understanding a firm’s consumers. The research further identifies the concept as a unified tactic used to help establish the right relationships in an organization by concentrating on retaining buyers and the improvement of relationships. CRM is known to be a crucial technological contribution to most firms in the current society. Most firms are using CRM to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of operations and also gain a competitive advantage in the market. CRM plays a central role in all customer-related activities because of the increase in business applications that are conducted online and the rise in the urge to vend and help consumers using websites. — Suggest a model that can be used in the process of choosing CRM products and assessment of sellers. CRM systems are combined with other systems for making important company decisions in all the serviceable areas of an organization- for instance, the CRM system can be integrated with the supply chain management system, system for managing the product life circle, the Enterprise Resource Planning System and the executive information system. CRM systems enable firms to create an efficient management information when planning, acquiring and controlling activities in various channels of the entity, obtain high-quality products and services that increase customer base, develop customer relationships, increase revenues and profits.—advices firms to adopt an approach that makes CRM the most crucial area in all functions, that supports customer oriented business processes and incorporation of the CRM systems.
—Identifies one of the stimulating results from preceding CRM research is the idea that, in any nationwide setting, firms differ in their awareness level of CRM ideologies. According to him, other firms may not have an idea the CRM theory as a structure for handling their consumer relationships. Those who have an idea about the concept are likely to develop dissimilar understandings of what the CRM strategy includes. For instance, Customer Relationship Management may be viewed as an idea of business, a policy implementation tool or an information technology used by firms to improve its performance.
CRM implementation
The implementation of CRM starts when Marriott company makes the decision of to advance the various processes in business and capitalize in an enhanced information system. During the implementation, the top management contribution and support and project manager play a crucial role in the whole process. The role of the project manager is to have enough information on the outside and the inside environment of the firm. He should know about the consumers, their demands and anticipations. The managers should also to identify the market chances and intimidations, and the strengths and flaws inside the firm. The manager of the project has the responsibility of taking care of the project form the beginning to the finishing project implementation; he therefore should have the overview of the whole project.
—- Explains the various failure that need to be avoided to strategically understand the concept of Customer Relationship Management. For instance, he points out the problem of not having a front to back CRM solutions for the consumers, overstressing the functionality of CRM and not having the right culture in the organization to support the implementation of CRM. To overcome such problems, — advices project managers to repeatedly evaluate the behavior of their customers and also quantity success with benchmarking, minus prospects of instant returns. To successfully implement CRM, the management should do enough research in the industries’ best practices and the adaptation capabilities to the organization in the new application. The organization should adapt the following key steps that play an important role in the success of a CRM strategy. They include strategic context, where the firm is required to understand how the CRM will fit into the context of the company’s overall business strategy. Capability assessment, where the assessment is to be done to confirm the company’s current CRM capabilities, business case development that requires the company to have a good reason to implement CRM. The final step involves creating and executing plan, which clearly defines steps that help to achieve company goals and execute them.
— discuss various approaches that help to successfully implement the Customer Relationship Management. According to them, CRM implementation process should be conducted in steps because it plays a crucial role to businesses that have adjacent conduct with customers but have slighter worth to industries that are away from their consumers. Failures in the implementation of CRM are due to the unavailability of knowledge and research, lack of skills to manage the projects and lack of support and commitment by the top management. Successful implementation of CRM requires commitment, involvement, contractual incentive and control mechanism, specific investment, trust, monetary premium sanctioning and complain management. For a successful implementation of CRM to help a company achieve competitive advantage, firms have to study the firm’s best practices, understand how CRM fits into the overall context of the business strategy of the company, evaluate the current CRM capacities and have a valid reason for implementing CRM in the organization. Firms can also create and execute a plan that needs to be well defined and clearly indicate how the firm will achieve the set goals and achieve the plan.
Steps in CRM implimentation
To creat long term relationships with customers, Marriote need to give customers what they are looking for in the most explicit way. The firm should provide customers with quality products and gve them pesonalized attentions and treatment- this can be achieved through customer relationship management. This strategy enables a firm to learn more about cutomers, their needs and their buying perttern. To benefit from CRM technology, Marriot company need to succesfuly implement it. The following are steps that will help to succesfuly impliment CRM technology.
- Identifying the need to have a CRM system in the company-The company should have a reason that is beneficial to the business before establishing the CRM system in the company.
- Defining the goal- The company should properly evaluate the cruicial areas of the businesss and highlight as per the level of necesity. This is vital becouse it will enable the company to impliment CRM in an organized way. The company should allocate precise objectives that they want to attain after they implement the CRM system. It is easy to achieve the desired results if the goal is set at the beginning.
- Gathering the required documents- After the company has identified the problem, it should recognize the flow of the business and fold all the important documents concerning it. Gathering the required documents allows the firm to implement the CRM system in a way that will help increase productivity in business.
- Draft a configuration plan- Basing on the operative of company business, a configuration plan is important to help in the implementation. It should contain the detailed description of all the data and the procedure which it will be use in the CRM system. The company can ask the CRM worker to make essential variations in the tool in order to cater for the business requirement.
- Planning a smooth data transfer- The company needs to be more accurate when undertaking this step to avoid any additional costs. The project manager should clearly communicate to the team about the whole process. He should ensure there no errors when migrating data because if they occur, it can negatively affect the organization.
- Testing the system- Before putting the system into use, the company should test to check the efficiency of the system. The project manager should identify if there are any errors and come up with the necessary steps to eradicate the problem
- Usage- After responsibility proper tasting, CRM tools should be ready for use by the company. The company should generate eagerness with regards to the CRM tool and motivate workers to be a part of the change in the organization. Proper monitoring and analyzation of the overall performance after the implementation of CRM tool. The company should also establish proper maintenance tools to ensure proper working and durability of the system.
CRM allows companies to gain more know more about their customer, enables them to satisfy their needs. It can also be used to upsurge to the company sales and profits. Companies should implement the CRM system in a hustle-free way with the right strategies so as to benefit from its implementation. Without the right strategy, the company can experience higher losses. The company should also establish new features in future to match with the changing technology and its objectives.
Figure 1 below summarizes the steps involved in the implementation of CRM system in an organization system in an organization.
Impact of CRM implementation
CRM system is significant since customers contribute heavily to the success of the business. Improved customer experience builds loyalty and good relationships with the consumers thus, growth of the business. Having a well and organized CRM strategy will enable Marriott company to make data-driven decisions. The informed decisions made are due to the proper understanding of the information provided. Availability of CRM enable the company to have an easy entree to data points in an easy way that can easily be understood and construed by users. CRM implementation helps to establish and control consumer leads. CRM can greatly affect the efficiency of the sales process. With CRM strategy in place, the firm can easily anticipate customer needs. CRM allows the company to have an easy access to data concerning the customer purchase and service contact history. The firm can also include customer voice in to the Customer Relationship Management system to improve understanding of company customers. Information obtained about customers is vital since it allows the firm anticipate the needs of customer and come up with an idea that will help take care and satisfy the customer needs. Implementing CRM enables a firm to improve products and services because of the feedback received from the customers. Collection of consumer response data and including it to the implemented Customer Relationship Management enables firms to understand the expectations of consumers concerning the product and services offered to the customers.
CRM technologies are used by organizations to support relationship launch, maintain and terminate activities, and execute the right steps required to obtain information that support the activities of the firm. The technologies are used as operative and concerted tools that help to manage the relationship between customers and the company. CRM technologies meaningfully progress organizational knowledge about their customers and learn how to satisfy them. They help in the development of long-term relationships with the customers and their linking competences. CRM software help to improve the overall company returns due to customer retention, revenue growth, better customer information and insights, cost reduction and improved employee output. With CRM system, the company can easily generate sales and encourage team work among the employees. For instance, cloud technology allows the firm to stay informed and have an easy access to the company browser. CRM systems allows the company staff to have an easy access to company activities from wherever they are working, allowing them to track and follow up their sales leads, without duplication of efforts.
The figures below show a clear summery of the importance of implementing CRM in Marriott company.
Fig 2: Importance of CRM
Problems in the implementation of CRM
The implementation of Customer Relationship Management at Marriott company is likely to bring in various problems. Data migration from the old to the new system may not be easy for the workers. The new CRM system may not allow the usage of deployment, models like the private cloud and On Cloud. The product offered by the company may not be flexible for wider customizations that fit with organization’s growing and changing needs. It may leave the organization with less options that facilitate growth. Also, if the product is not conversant with the current CRM trends like Social CRM or Mobile CRM, it may not be appropriate for the firm to implement the system. A CRM will operate only as good as it is combined with prevailing information technology systems like e-commerce and Electronic Resource Planning. Lack of support from workers who may resist the new system in the organization is also a major problem faced by organizations. Resistance by employees make the entire incorporation procedure a problem. It may also consumer the working time hours of the staff with no noticeable outcome. Firms should plan any incorporation needs, to prevent overload during the process of implementing CRM system. The company may experience unforeseen hurdles if the CRM implementation developer does not have the right skills and experience with the company products. The company may find it hard to overcome the problem especially when the CRM implementation process is ongoing. If the developer is also not well prepared to tackle any arising challenges, resulting in loss of resources and time value. Companies that plan to implement CRM systems should thoroughly asses the selected vendors and confirms their qualifications and credentials before signing a formal agreement with them.
Conclusion and recommendations
CRM encompasses a modified and collaborative strategy used by firms to manage customer relationship. Customer relationship management has continued to grow over the years, following the trends across the globe. The main focus of this strategy is to ensure that the company and the customers have the right relationships that will improve productivity and facilitate customer loyalty and retention. Proper implementation of the CRM system in the organization increases consumer base and lucrativeness of the firm. It is a business strategy used by organizations to improve profitability by converging on the needs of consumers and establishing effective and efficient relationships with the customer. There are positive experiences that are brought by the implementation of CRM systems at Marriot company, despite the several problems experienced in the implementation process. The main objective of this paper was attained-this acts as a major contribution to the value of many firms that are trying to implement CRM. It also cautions the firms on any possible difficulties that may come up during the implementation. CRM allows firms to mend relationships with their important consumers, restore information of company workers and assist in strategic decision making. When planning to undertake CRM implementation, the company needs to carefully conducted with the right emphasis om the worker implementation plans. Additional study should be conducted to identify ways in which the process of CRM implementation can be improved to help improved company productivity.
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