Chip Reeves knows all about the life of a sales guy. That’s because during his nearly 20 years at Dow Corning, a global manufacturer of silicon-based products, he was one. He knows all too well that salespeople ignore any new administrative process or technology unless it allows them to make more sales or use their time more efficiently. Now, as Dow Corning’s director of marketing and sales processes, Reeves is leading the company’s convergence of its CRM and e-business efforts, as well as streamlining its compliance and reporting functions. The goal, naturally, is to provide excellent customer service—and to make it easy for Dow Corning sales and marketing staff to use the expansive CRM system. Real easy . Reeves also served as the …show more content…
It’s sometimes tough to get them to use what seems like administrative functions so that management can have better control.” Reeves says he is always balancing the pushback from the sales folks with the CRM demands of the business. “Heavy involvement with the salespeople has been key, and we’re trying to be responsive to them,” he notes. “But by no means do we have that balance perfected yet.” A huge part of Reeves’ task has been to ensure that Dow Corning’s core enterprise applications, which rest on SAP’s suite of products, are intact and can be used by all users in Dow Corning’s sales and marketing group. “A lot of what we’ve done in the CRM space has been putting a foundation in to help our people work more effectively and give them more access to information,” Reeves says. While Dow Corning had been smoothing out the backoffice infrastructure, however, Reeves and his team also had to ensure that salespeople were being listened to and would want to use the mobile devices and applications. His team approached that by “looking at a day in the life of a salesperson,” he says. “Thinking through their information and task needs, what were their priorities, what were their common tasks, what were the process pain points.” One thing became immediately clear to Reeves: When equipping mobile teams (such as the sales force), less is always more. He says that he has preached a “low input, high
From an organizational and profitability standpoint, an efficient, easy to use, and unified CRM system, captures all key and critical data from sales and marketing to commercial operations, all the while focusing on sales process, sales efficiencies, and increasing sales, all contributing to the bottom-line profitability of the organization. Data has proven that CRM platforms increase the productivity and profitability of individual departments and subsidiaries, these same platforms and characteristics will have the same ramifications on a larger scale organization, especially an organization that spans the global footprint, such as
Chip Reeves, Director of marketing and sales addresses this issue by making systems easier to maneuver. Many companies and CIO's are struggling to determine exactly how to best mobilize critical applications that can bring measurable payback to the company but also limit the disruption to and administrative headaches in their user's lives. (O'brien, Marakas, 2011). Reeve's took into account, the customer's needs and the salespeople as well. Reeves was very focused on the CRM, or Customer Relationship management into account when suggesting products to streamline information for salespeople. Customer Relationship management involves four specific relationships which include: sales, service, quality, and support. Reeve's input a system that downsized the screens on the Blackberry applications to one page, which in turn led to more leads, an increase of about 50% and generated leads faster for salespeople.
The CRM involves gathering data for sales activates and organization by using information system technology. Also, being a crucial tool, CRM helps customers with their needs by making technical and customer support easier. The main goals of a CRM system are, getting new clients and customers, and reducing the cost of sales. With successful implementation of CRM, it allows processes, technology, and even people to work together to help increase profitability while decreasing operational
In the past, individual sales employees have managed customer records, and no standard of data recording has been established. Operating in this manner doesn't allow for a cohesive sales team, which is going to be critical for the new team selling approach being implemented by Riordan. A standardization and consolidation of customer records needs to be implemented for the sales team to be more successful in the future. The CRM will consolidate the sales team into one unit rather than individuals servicing specific accounts. Customer relations will be proficient due to the ability of multiple sales personnel being able to acquire and update account information rather than a single person maintaining individual account records. Not to mention when a sales person is not available due to health, personal issues or vacation, another employee will be able to provide information and support. The CRM will then be connected to the Finance & Accounting System.
(1997). We have seen excellent financial results as we have penetrated markets, grown, and had the luxury of economy of scale in our production which has been manageable from a change perspective. Coming from a start-up, though, our sales process is anecdotal in nature and each sales associate is allowed to cover a district within the region using their own approaches. This has led to sporadic tracking of client contacts, client sales, reasons for wins or losses from major distribution proposals, increases/decreases with individual clients, and overall client satisfaction. This lack of a solid database of sales information leads to an inability to identify trends, difficulty in understanding true sales associate performance, and makes management decision making around existing and new products difficult. I recommend that we implement a systematic sales tracking process across all of our sales associates that allows for better understanding of our performance, allows for trending of that performance, and allows for future decisions to be made based upon a stronger base of information.
SkyTech Inc. - Lead Project Manager of 5-person team on critical CRM implementation for a regional multi-million dollar General Aviation sales firm spanning multiple geographical locations. Implementation was the first time company upgraded from a home grown CRM to an Off-the-shelf solution. Overcame Senior Executive leadership’s reluctance to migrate IP to new platform. Worked closely with Marketing Director to ensure successful integration to include: training, communicating change to employees, database management/customer records, and compliance among other tasks.
Auto retailers were considered to be "doomed" by the Internet as a result of increasing competition from online car-selling services. The most important and challenging for auto dealers is that while still demanding traditional car-buying experiences, customers want to modify their options in various situations (Collins 2002). Under this pressure, CRM solutions have long been identified as a crucial practice since it can provide better-targeted communication, increase professionalism and speed of implementation as well as ensure cost effective (Capgemini 2008, p. 6). On the other hand, Siebel System Inc., a CRM software provider, estimates automotive potential at $1.4 billion in 2015 (Automotive News, 2015).
Finally, Frederick Reichheld’s research indicates the reliance on automated CRM programs is based on “A single flawed assumption: that CRM is software that manages customer relationships for you. It isn’t. Managing customer relationships is bundling
To achieve business agility in the area of marketing, SW4’s sales and marketing departments must collaborate in order to anticipate challenges and opportunities before they occur (Heisterberg & Verma, 2014). To achieve optimal collaborative marketing, SW4 must effectively implement a collaborative CRM software application so that sales, marketing and other departments can easily share information they collect from customers. So that all organizations involved in SW4 have access to one CRM software, these systems must utilize cloud computing as well as be effective in three key marketing management functions: Marketing Planning, Campaign Management, and Customer Analytics. By doing this, SW4 will be able to improve cross marketing campaigns and sales promotions, discover the optimal approach to delivering products and services to different customer segments while creating a competitive advantage for Sonoma Worldwide Wine Week and increasing profitability for each organization (Baltzan, 2013).
A company must be able to maintain significant control of CRM, even if the call center is not physically an integral part of the business. That is because the choices made by a company depend on, among other things, the quality of the relations with their customers. Therefore, teams who will then be reassured about the sustainability of their business and their structure will be able to consider themselves as stakeholders of the organization and bring their best to the organization.
In order to establish a suitable CRM system and increase the success rate, understanding CRM processes is especially important. Building CRM system, there are many works need to do(). Firstly, the target customer market should be identified. Different customer strategies are focused on different target customer markets based on their profitability. Then, firms set customer objectives, for example, acquire customer satisfaction and loyalty. After that, the leaders and managers should support and commit the implementation of a CRM system. At the same time, when companies change their targets, a plan about changing
Salesforce ranks as one of the top CRM systems in the world because it provides intuitive tools for managing customers, leads, accounts, salespeople and business-generating pipelines, but like any system, companies only get effective results from manipulating huge volumes of data. These data include inbound-marketing behavior, browsing habits, customer segmentation profiles and external information when available. Entering all data manually becomes increasingly problematic as B2B databases grow larger and more complex. Sales reps, often unfamiliar with data entry, make lots of mistakes and typos, and many salespeople simply enter part of the required information.
MEMORANDUM TO: FROM: DATE: SUBJECT: Mike Wester, Owner Kimberly Lovern, Designer May 5, 2015 Proposal to Implement Electronic Customer Relationship Management System via Purchase of Field Service Software Attached is my plan to implement an electronic customer relation management system through the purchase of Field Service Software. The dry erase board is as of now the primary data center point. Customer contacts, installations, and job completion dates are recorded on the dry erase board, yet regularly deleted by accident. The dry erase board has created productivity issues and hindered company growth, thus making a general impact on the organization and employees. Clients are the fundamental wellspring of income for the association.
The comparative analysis will be performed on CRM applications that two companies provide. These companies are selected for very specific reasons in their prominence and popularity. Several fortune 500 companies use these products for maintaining relationships with customers. Both the selected companies and their products have huge market of close to 45% at a point of time, and hence have chosen them for our research purposes. As part of the research objective - examining technical features of a CRM system that particularly meets the needs of enterprises. The other reason for choosing the products is that both companies offer free download or free trail for 30 days for research purposes.
This case study that I am discussing is about my earlier company in India which was in the Telecom industry. Since there was an extremely stiff competition in the telecom industry, companies in the telecom business were adopting to new technological imperatives in order to outperform their competitors. Hence my company also chose to implement CRM solution which will connect all business users, stakeholders, inter-departmental executives so that all business processes are automated and the efficiency of operations is improved. CRM signified identifying the needs of the customers and stretching out ways and means to satisfy them. In this perspective CRM was not merely treated as a technology, it also had implications in the strategy formulation for the organization.