Customer Relationship Management Systems (Essay Sample)

Customer Relationship Management Systems
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Trusty Carpets is a small business that has been operating for the last twenty years in the industry. It is however facing a lot of challenges in its bid to cope with the competition and the demanding environment in which it operates. Trusty Carpets has a small number of employees and still carries out some of its operations manually. It has a lot of paperwork and in attempt to improve its systems, it faced with financial constraints such that the intervention of a bank is needed for funding. In addition, it wants to expand by acquiring another business whose owner wants to quit the market. It is therefore easy for this company to achieve its goals by operating in the old ways and that is why intending to use a Customer Relations Management system, which will help to boost sales.
In order to effectively manage its customers and improve the customer experience, which will in return lead to increased sales and profits, Trusty Carpets has opted to develop a Customer Relations Management system to carry out the following roles: Manage contacts database, Automate sales, Report sales, Automate the marketing, Client management and bulk Emails.
Components of the CRM
The system will consist of several software applications and hardware such as monitors, power supply and backup including the CPUs that work together to create an effective system. Human resources will be required for controlling purposes and data input, which will be processed within the system and stored in magnetic tapes such as flash disks and memory cards. Others will include Microsoft Windows, Internet explorer, Exchange Servers, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Dynamics and SQL Server.
The goal of this system will be customer satisfaction. Trusty Carpets intends to have its customers fully satisfied by all means. It is expected that once every customer is satisfied, they are more likely to return to the premises of the firm for repeat purchase. This will by all means promote the company’s good name and also refer other customers to the same place for their needs. This CRM is aimed at making the customers to want and feel more engaged in the company and also feel valued by being listened to, consulted and respected. This will improve consumer experience, which will make them want to come back again (Bygstad, 2003).
The CRM will also enable running of an efficient business: the use of the CRM will help the business to establish better working practices among departments. Its implementation will aid in reacting to customers’ queries and concerns quickly and more efficiently. This will therefore boost the company’s productivity and add to customer satisfaction. Satisfied customers, who will return for more business, are the overall goal of this CRM system.
This CRM will be used to produce improved and better marketing campaigns. This will be possible because the CRM will work out on whom to target and the kind of communication mode they will easily and quickly respond to. This will be used in implementing great and more efficient campaign for promotion and marketing. With the CRM data, it is also possible to profile the target groups which are nonperforming in order to know what methods to use to boost sales in such an area, bearing in mind the ultimate goal of profit maximisation.
To gain new customers, CRM will still be used. CRM will help Trusty Carpets to find out a lot of useful information about its customer base, and will allow us to fix gaps that need to be filled. It is the CRM system, which help us to explore the reasons why customers fail to make frequent purchases or why they do not prefer the company as the best to acquire the carpets (Pai & Tu, 2011). By so doing, we will be in a position to adapt new policies in order to attract new customers. The same principles will apply where is a need to work out why previous customers may have stopped using our carpets or why they may prefer to visit our competitors instead.
Finally, the CRM will boost sales. This is the last objective, which drives all the others. Due to the evident competition in the market today we need to be at the forefront as far as it is concerned with our sales. It is therefore important more than ever that our business stay relevant by keeping offering new products and deals to the clients (Starkey & Woodcock, 2002). This will be achieved through improving the way the business operates, the interaction between the customer and the business and ensuring that effective marketing strategies are produced. This CRM will be the spearhead in improving the way our business is positioned among our competitors and attract new customers, and ensure that existing customers keep coming back. Without any doubts, this will boost the profits and help keep the company ahead of the competitors.
The proposed technological solution will also be lead-generation enabled lead generation involves finding new customers by generating pointers automatically from different sources such as website visitors by use of click-stream technology, social media networks, inbound calls, and newsletter sign-ups, among other sources of data.
The CRM will also be prospect-nurturing enabled. Prospect nurturing uses pre-set communications vial electronic mail and other tasks to automatically follow up with leads. The CRM will nurture prospects through the entire sales pipeline all the way from lead generation to closing the sale (Bull, 2003).
The system will also include email marketing service. Electronic mail marketing robotically builds mailing lists, launches online marketing campaigns via email and measures performance. The CRM solution will be used to send email reminders to customers and prospects with an aim of driving sales.
To drive sales in the organization, sales quotes and invoices ought to be automated. CRM technological solution will be used to create and store sales quotes for both individual customers and customers in groups (Stein & Smith, 2009). CRM will also process the quotes robotically into invoices when they are ready to purchase, which are then received by the POS, accounting department and other designated solutions. As such, the CRM will give a whole new and integrated solution to the management of invoicing. In addition to invoicing, with the CRM system the firm will be receive tracking information straight from the CRM dashboard. All information about the order will be appearing on the customers' individual accounts, which will allow swift and expedient access.
The proposed solution will also enable Trusty Carpets to project their sales and also meas...