Taking the Plunge
Old-school customer relationship management (CRM) technology is designed for companies with thousands of customers. The strategy for CG companies, however, is based on a supply chain model and may only rely on a handful of relationships with distribution partners. How can CG firms justify the need for a targeted CRM strategy? Finding a solution that is not only cost-effective but produces measurable returns is key to boosting user adoption, according to Laura Preslan, research director at AMR Research.
"CRM is as useful as your business practices are," says Preslan. For instance, a company's investment in POS data capture, training and business process changes tailored to specific organizational needs will help drive CRM adoption in today's challengeing economic climate.
"Consumer goods companies should understand that it's all about the supply chain, and feeding consumer information to the supply chain," says Preslan.
Driving Data
The formation of a multi-departmental task force to flag redundancies in data can help lower operating costs immediately. Task force goals should be to: Examine the quality of the data, whether customer, support, marketing, product or financial and determine if it is timely; question the technology you own today and figure out if it is being fully utilized or if there is further value that can be extracted from it; and find out if an upgrade path is available from the vendor.
Creating a multi-departmental task force not only increases the company CRM vision, it gains buy-in to the process and value of developing a corporate CRM strategy since every department shares in decision making and the overall success of the implementation.
Online Visibility
Seattle-based, Pacific Coast Feather manufactures and sells bedding products through a retail supplier network. As the company grew, it expanded into the small-to-medium sized retailer market, according to Gwen Babcock, CIO of Pacific Coast Feather.
"We realized that this market requires a different service model, as the large retail distributors place bulk orders electronically and the transaction is done," says Babcock.
How could Pacific Feather Bed raise the customer service bar for its smaller retailers without incurring huge overhead expense?
The company uses SAP for its back office applications, so SAP was the first vendor it approached when researching CRM solutions. Working closely with the internal marketing and sales teams, the company's IT staff produced a new Web-site tailored to the needs of small-to-medium retailers. The SAP CRM solution integrates seamlessly into Pacific Feather Bed's existing network. An implementation project that kicked off this spring will go live in September.
"We used internal resources to install the SAP CRM as a cost savings measure, which took a little longer, but now we know the product and can support it as well," says Babcock.
Beginning in September, the company's small-to-medium retailers will now be able to browse an online catalog as well as place orders, access order history, get shipping cost comparisons and check the status of orders. This type of robust, self-serve model at Pacific Coast Feather provides a valuable customer knowledge base for marketing, product, sales and financial analysis.
Easy Access
Many current CRM packages contain tools that allow access to existing data. Integrated solutions decrease IT headaches by eliminating unnecessary data movement or redundant data entry. Less customization means less expense, greater compatibility with existing data and simplification of future upgrades. Taking a phased approach to installation also means on-the-go troubleshooting. If something goes wrong in one department installation, for instance, it can be corrected before moving forward to the next phase.
Hewlett-Packard recently implemented the PeopleSoft CRM solution to gain easy access to its customer profiles.
"We chose PeopleSoft CRM because it allows access at any time to customers, employees, world wide service partners and suppliers," says Chris Shea, vice president of consumer services and support, HP Americas.
"PeopleSoft's service solution easily integrates with internal support services, connecting consumer call center agents and customer service in real time."
This adds up to shortened call times and increased first call resolution rates for HP.
Bountiful Benefits
Clearly, real-time data visibility and the knowledge captured by CRM solutions are invaluable to every business process in an organization. CRM solutions also capture and analyze customer suggestions and other data that drives product development. For a technology that was not initially created with the consumer goods model in mind, CRM solutions is an asset that offers a wealth of beneficial functionality in businesses today.