You Don't Manage Customer Relationships, You Cultivate Them

Customer Relationship Management is an attitude, a set of business practices and processes, and the supporting people and technology, all working toward one goal: maximizing the lifetime value of your customers. If your philosophy is to maximize the profit on your first engagement with each customer then move on, CRM is not for you. However, if you value repeat business, and you know that it costs 10 times as much to find a new client as it does to sell more services to an existing client, CRM is absolutely necessary to maximize your success.

What CRM Is Not: A System. Much of the hype about CRM comes from CRM system vendors, but the system is actually the least significant component of what we call Customer Relationship Cultivation. Consider an analogy: If you want to design and build a house from scratch, you won't start with a Skilsaw from Home Depot. You'd do much better learning what it takes to construct a house first.

For successful customer relationship cultivation, there are a number of things any organization has to master:

• Philosophy & Culture: If you don't believe in the ultimate value of the customer, you can't motivate any of the remaining items. First then, adopt an attitude that the relationship with the customer is the most important thing you think about day-in and day-out. Make it part of your culture.
• Process: You must understand your business process as a whole, for two reasons: First, you have to assure it can meet your business goals. Second, you want to measure the total outcome of the process - customer value gained - to make sure it's working and improving year over year.
• Organization: The structure of the company and its reward system must enable the process and must implement your philosophy and culture.
• System: This is the power tool. It must be chosen and tailored to your process, culture, business, and organization.

This is a four-legged stool. You may be able to have a weak or missing leg, but it won't be as stable or strong as it can be,

This may seem like a lot. It's not necessary to "eat an elephant" to begin getting benefits, however. To move to effective CRM at lowest cost, you'll be served best by an incremental deployment approach. Build the foundation. Choose those parts of the process, organization, systems, and culture to upgrade. Keep the bigger picture in mind.

Last, CRM is not an island. At some point in the life of the company, you'll want to integrate the processes and systems with two other major business processes -- ERP and Finance. At its simplest, client orders will increase demands on your enterprise resources (HR and manufacturing), and client orders will lead to revenues and collectibles.

Let us help you develop your big picture, choose the stages, and deploy. We'll work with you to develop the path of most efficient implementation.