102552 Resource 102302 102466 102466 1126662928646 1128355150813 Controlled I wish I had a nickel for every definition of CRM

Big Retail CRM, The Engineering Firm's CRM, The Software Company's CRM, The Car Dealership CRM, The Ice Cream Store Franchisor CRM, The Huge Sales Force CRM, The Huge Customer Service CRM...

Recently read an article about how Best Buy has used CRM to come up with brand new store configurations.  They collected millions of customer records in a CRM database and then put on their data mining hardhats and headed into the great unknown.  After a lot of digging and marrying of sales transactions to demographic data they decided that female customers, especially moms, are a very underserved market. These women are interested in appliances, technology and media to enrich the lives of their children and exercise equipment. So Best Buy rolls out a store configuration to meet this need. With a very happy ending - increased sales. Now I am not trying to make fun of Best Buy. To the contrary this is a very profitable way of leveraging CRM in their marketplace.  You can't really understand your retail business unless you have the ability to mine a mountain of data and understand buying patterns of specific demographic profiles. Then I read an article about how an Ice Cream store franchisor  is going to use CRM to communicate and collaborate with 1000 or so franchisees. A very different use of CRM. Now I don't think that the big retail example and the franchisor/franchisee example are two ends of the spectrum when it comes to CRM, but they are far enough apart to give us a sense of the completely different ways in which a company can use CRM, based on the specific needs of their business model. Certainly if you are a huge retailer, who has perhaps billions of transactions, you are not going to opt for an on-demand CRM solution.  You need some major infrastructure to support the level of data analysis for this business model.  On the other side, if you have a thousand franchisees who all need access to the same CRM system, how are you going to accommodate them with an in-house client-server solution? It can be done, but it wouldn't be pretty and an on-demand solution looks like a better bet. The upshot? CRM, unlike it older brother ERP, must be more flexible and adaptable. Double entry accounting is a well understood body of knowledge. What you expect from ERP is stability and specific functionality. The market now considers ERP the staid and stable older brother (how times have changed!) and CRM is the rambunctious, hyper little punk that makes everyone a little uncomfortable. This explains why CRM raises eyebrows in some quarters. It does not feel like ERP, with which we have become familiar. CRM requires more time and effort to understand its value proposition. The most important lesson is that CRM, whatever your business model, adds value to relationships with customers or clients.  But the Big Retail CRM is not going to fit the Engineering Firm CRM.  CRM, unlike ERP, is really business model specific. Before any company starts looking for a CRM system they need a complete inventory of how they currently interact with customers or clients. Do you have highly paid technical staff who deliver services? Or retail staff who sell to strangers on the floor? CRM as a collaboration tool, or as a sales transaction engine? Fortunately there are a lot of options in the marketplace and you won't have a problem finding one that fits. First understand that the CRM acronym is not helpful and that you need a highly specific requirement to make a good match. 10 application/xml false CRM customer relationship management Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; T312461; YPC 3.0.1; (R1 1.5); .NET CLR 1.1.4322) 69.212.126.205 69.212.126.205 tfoydel false true false false true 205861 false false true false false false true 102302 blog blogsite/SightLines/web