Sunday, May 30, 2010

Weekly Questions - Week 10

1) What is your understanding of CRM?

CRM involves the managing of all aspects of customer relations with the intent of keeping customers and profits. The benefits of CRM is that it provides better customer service, improves call centre efficiency, cross-sells products better and helps sales staff close deals faster.



2) Compare operational and analytical customer relationship management.

3) Describe and differentiate the CRM technologies used by marketing departments and sales departments

The marketing departments use a list generator which uses customer information for different marketing campaigns. There is the campaign management which guides the users through marketing campaigns such as through the tasks of planning and scheduling. And finally there is xcoss-selling and Up-selling. Cross-selling is the selling of additional products, whereas up-selling is increasing the value of the sale. The marketing department use CRM technologies to help them when considering the creating of a marketing plan. This is because it helps the business gain greater information on their customers.

The sale department use sale management CRM systems which automates some of the sale processes e.g. calendars etc. Sale also uses contact management CRM systems which maintains customer contact information e.g. features such as maintaining organisational charts and finally opportunity management CRM systems which helps target sale opportunities as it finds potential customers or companies for future sales. The sales department is then different to the marketing department as it does not focus the use of CRM on marketing campaigns but focus' on helping retain the customer and gain new ones.


4) How could a sales department use operational CRM technologies?

The sales department could use operational CRM technologies to:

• list generators - allowing them to provide information on a specific aspect
• campaign management - help schedule and segment the firms resources
• look for systems that cross-sell and up-sell


5) Describe business intelligence and its value to businesses

Business intelligence are the tools and technologies that help provide gather, provide access to and analyse data that will be used in strategic decision making e.g. tools such as data mining. Its value to the business is that it helps provide support for decision making that is based on data that has been analysed. This help the business as the decisions become more accurate as the analysed data benefits the decision, which will benefit them as employees gain knowledge.


6) Explain the problem associated with business intelligence. Describe the solution to this business problem

The problem associated with business intelligence is the idea of data rich, information poor. They don't know what the best tactical move for the business is as they have plenty of data but no solid information. The solution to this problem is the use of business intelligence. This would then allow the whole business to be aligned, which will result in more informed decisions. An example of using BI is in retail and sales where predicted sales and loss prevention are determined with the use of BI. The benefit of this is then that it reduces latency, making it quicker and more efficient when making a decision.


7) What are two possible outcomes a company could get from using data mining?

Two possible outcomes a business could gain from using data mining include:

1. increased profits
2. better sales

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