Outsource Issue 30 - (Page 66)

CUSTOMER MATTERS A Customer Relationship Management system can be one of the deadliest weapons in an organisation’s arsenal – and providing CRM capability is increasingly huge business. These are fascinating times for the CRM space globally. Why? We turned to the experts to find out… WHAT HAVE BEEN THE MAJOR TRENDS IN THE CRM SPACE OVER THE PAST FEW QUARTERS AND HOW HAVE THEY IMPACTED UPON THE END-USER EXPERIENCE? Mark Stonham, Business Development Consultant and Sales Funnel Analyst That’s a mighty big question that will get a broad range of answers. I’ll offer up the following trends that I’m seeing: 1) Integration of marketing and sales activities through three main areas: selling, lead nurture and acquisition, to improve the buying experience, improve conversion, reduce costs and more. 2) Social media integration to increasing levels of sophistication, with the potential for this to become near-real-time triggers of needs and issues, for those buyers who are social media adopters, and vendors who invest. 3) Increasing options, choices, and overwhelm for organisations seeking better CRM systems, from ECRM to niche vendors, plus rapid releases. 4) Low entry cost of CRM based on SaaS model, but increasing cost of ownership for set-up, support, integration, sales process updates, user training, operational marketing etc. 5) Community Relationship Management emerging as organisations recognise opportunities to work with the increased customer power and facilitate it through social platforms; so delighted customers can be advocates to draw in prospects, partners, new employees and more. Ian Moyse, Sales Director, Workbooks.com CRM has in the market been hyped with new functions that supposedly every customer must have, when in reality the majority of businesses are still to employ CRM effectively to gain the true reality of the benefits they want and need. Many CRMs are acting ineffectively and are purely enhanced contact management systems and a lot more focus in the market needs to be on delivering the true value to a business that is possible when CRM is matched to a customer’s processes, their interactions and their desired outcome that they visualised. @NikkoYamada: Life's just one big hotel and we're all on vacation and I'm just a disgruntled customer who's upset with the service here. 66 ● ● www.outsourcemagazine.co.uk http://www.Workbooks.com http://www.outsourcemagazine.co.uk

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Outsource Issue 30

Peering through the fog
Who moved my world
Bringing on the beeb
Courting the commentariat
Everyone is responsible
Our survey says
Fast money
Smarten up
Seeing the biggest picture
NOA round-up
Embracing enterprise innovation
Customer matters
Application development outsourcing
India: rules for offshoring
Talent gap
The Professionals
Book learning
The outsourcing jigsaw
The legal view
Top ten
NelsonHall round-up
Spontaneity
Online round-up
The deal doctor
Inside source
The last word

Outsource Issue 30

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