CRM Software, Contact Centre & Marketing Software

Selecting powerful CRM software: Access

Why CRM and why now? Perhaps you’ve been thinking about investing for a while, but you’ve been waiting for the economic storm to subside. And you’re not alone – latest research suggests that 62% of companies think that having an effective customer management strategy is now much more important than three years ago. On the other hand, perhaps you’ve been put off by horror stories of companies who spent heavily in CRM systems and have yet to see the benefits. These high profile failures have hit the headlines in recent years – and let’s face it, you’d rather sit it out than be one of them. What this paper does is outline, quite simply, what CRM is, the benefits you can expect and some of the technologies available. We also talk you through the broad range of functionality on offer. By the time you finish reading this, we want you to feel confident in choosing both the software and vendor that’s right for you and your business.

CRM – the answer for marketers?: Sage

The last few years have seen billions spent on customer relationship management (CRM) solutions and yet many organisations feel they have failed to deliver. While it makes intuitive sense that improving customer relationships will improve the bottom line, there is often a lack of evidence to support this notion and some companies actually believe that CRM could damage relationships with long standing customers. With their budgets under threat, many marketers may therefore be sceptical about the value of CRM. Yet approached properly and with the right measures for success applied, CRM really can improve performance. Integrating customerfacing operations, CRM improves an organisation’s ability to target potentially profitable customers, craft propositions to meet their needs, and build strong and long lasting relationships.

Improving efficiency by combining finance and CRM solutions: Concentrix

It’s becoming less and less common to find organisations that still perform book-keeping manually. Hand-written book-keeping is timeconsuming, labour-intensive, prone to error and tedious. So most businesses use some form of software to record financial transactions, update ledgers, produce invoices and financial reports and generally manage their business. Similarly, customer relationship management (CRM) systems have moved from being ‘nice-to-have’ applications to essential components of many successful organisations. Properly implemented, modern CRM software delivers significant benefits to virtually all areas of a business, and in particular the front-office functions including marketing, sales and customer service. All businesses need to manage their finances. All businesses need to manage their customers.

Business recovery using CRM: Sage

This white paper looks at how Sage is helping businesses recover, through its customer relationship management (CRM) software. It’s helping small and medium businesses protect and grow their revenues, during the good and not so good times. There are a number of benefits associated with CRM. It helps companies to: deliver exceptional and personalised service consistently to their customers; increase their customer revenue share through highly-focused business development programmes; extend the reach and effectiveness of new business programmes; and achieve significant cost savings and ongoing productivity.

CRM best practices: Access

On the battleground of today’s business environment, the customer experience has become the competitive differentiator. And those who fail to take customer service seriously take a hit on the bottom line: the average business loses 50% of its customers every five years; new customers cost 7-10 times more than retaining an existing one; and an increase in retention of 5% can increase profits 25-75%. As the term ‘customer relationship management’ implies, your goal is maintaining strong relationships with customers. It’s the feelings evoked during interactions with your organisation that leave the greatest impression. So, if you’re not romancing your customers, who is? Companies that maximise the customer experience – and keep customers for life – typically follow these best practices.

Maximising CRM effectiveness during lean times: Oracle

“A downturn is a terrible thing to waste.” This quote, from a Home Depot vendor, reinforces the premise of investing for growth when times turn tough. Yet the conventional wisdom is that in the face of an economic downturn, consolidation is the name of the game. Spend less on IT. Work with fewer hardware and software vendors. And only invest in those technologies that enable your organisation to meet its most basic operational requirements – in other words, reduce the IT budget to the minimum amount needed to support building and delivering your product or service. Unfortunately, in relation to customer relationship management, this behaviour could be detrimental in both the short and long term to your business success. In fact, an article in The McKinsey Quarterly cites the risk of making wholesale reductions in IT spending: “Simplistic cuts, applied across the board, may endanger critical business priorities from sales support to customer service”.

Keeping your customers: Concentrix

The phrase ‘It costs more to gain a new customer than keep an existing one’ has been in common use for many years now. And, despite the advances in online and digital marketing technology, it’s a phrase which is still true. For many businesses, online and e-marketing methods have made gaining new customers quicker and cheaper, but it’s still far less expensive to keep your existing customers coming back than it is to gain new ones. In a tightening economy, with results and return on investment more important than ever, one of the most efficient and effective ways to spend marketing budgets is by developing your existing customer base. What’s more, satisfied customers are one of your most powerful marketing tools. There’s still nothing stronger than genuine personal recommendation, and keeping your existing customers happy will in itself help you generate more business. This white paper discusses the effective use of modern CRM systems, business intelligence and visual data analysis tools, integrated front and back-office solutions, and the potential of CRM 2.0 in customer retention.

Real-world predictive analytics: putting analysis into action: SPSS

Predictive analytics connects data to effective action by drawing reliable conclusions about current conditions and future events. This approach, rooted in advanced mathematical analysis, can seem esoteric and may almost be perceived as an academic discipline. Organisations may read case studies that list high-ROI applications of predictive analytics but often struggle to understand, in ways relevant to their business, how predictive analytics can be applied in numerous operational areas to improve outcomes significantly. By discussing a number of typical scenarios in which predictive analytics addresses key business issues and illustrating ways analytical capabilities are deployed in business processes and the operational systems that support them, this white paper aims to show how predictive analytics delivers business value across the enterprise.

CRM and social networking: engaging the social customer: Microsoft

As social networking sites explode in popularity, the hype and interest continue to build. Facebook alone topped 200 million users in 2009 (Wauter, 2009). But sorting the fact from the hype can be a challenge. Social networking at a high level is described as the convergence of technologies that make it possible for individuals to easily communicate, share information and form new communities online. But the big question today is not what social networking is, but rather what it means for businesses. While social networks began as the province of individuals, businesses are now trying to capitalise on this trend as they search for specific strategies and tactics to derive value from it. In fact, Gartner Research shows a large increase in investment in social networking by businesses (Metz, 2008). Used effectively, social networking sites can enable marketing professionals, salespeople and customer service agents to develop meaningful relationships with customers in new ways. But the true value from social networking can’t be achieved in isolation.

The service optimisation challenge: ClickSoftware

One of the greatest challenges in service optimisation is increasing customer service levels while reducing operational costs. It is often difficult – if not impossible – to achieve one without sacrificing the other. The reason is the inherent conflict between sending the most cost-effective resource and sending the best qualified one. Service operations must also take into account a number of other factors when dispatching field resources, including geography, parts required, breaks, unforeseen emergencies, service levels and other constraints. A relatively small workload of 100 service calls in a single eight-hour day makes it virtually impossible to effectively balance all of the simultaneous calculations and decisions required to ensure happy customers at the lowest possible cost. Some scheduling systems with less evolved optimisation methods solve this problem by narrowing down the possible choices in a sequential step-by-step approach, where each step attempts to identify the best technician and/or time, based on a single rule.

Challenging the economic downturn: control, confidence and CRM: Vodafone

Today’s news is full of crashes, collapses and crunches: businesses in every industry are anxiously considering what sort of onslaught they can expect in the coming months. But what are the smartest, most successful organisations doing to ensure they weather the storms ahead? Cutting costs, of course. Maximising efficiency and productivity – take it for granted. The main objective for most companies is to maintain sales and profits by managing their resources and customers ever more effectively. In fact, some organisations will emerge from this challenging period with greater competitive advantage and a more successful business model than ever before. In this white paper, we discuss the options and opportunities for commercial success in the current economic environment, based on our recent engagements with real organisations drawing up their strategies to survive and prosper in the coming months and years.

Converting inbound customer contact into opportunities: Cirquent

Marketers are constantly under pressure to demonstrate the effectiveness of their marketing interactions, especially in the current tough economic climate. Traditionally, there has been a strong focus on ‘outbound’ activities such as direct mail and email campaigns: more recently, there has been a great deal of hype surrounding the importance of newer channels such as social networking and online gaming. However, marketers are increasingly starting to realise the enormous potential and untapped value of inbound channels. Some of the biggest consumer finance, telecoms and media companies now make over 30 million offers a month via inbound marketing channels, with take-up rates of over 20%. Companies who can take the context of the customer’s interaction and map this against an appropriate offer or service are achieving considerable competitive advantage, especially as inbound marketing has much higher response and acceptance rates than traditional outbound marketing.

Six ways 'The Oracle Advantage' benefits your organisation: Oracle

Deciding on the right customer relationship management (CRM) solution for your organisation is no easy feat. Companies have a wide array of vendors and accompanying solutions to choose from – ranging from simple to more complex applications, from on-demand to on-premise deployments, from niche players to more established technology and application vendors. Oracle understands the challenges organisations face when making such a critical decision. These considerations should not only address current business requirements but also encompass unanticipated changes as organisations evolve and macro-business environments change. The best CRM evaluations are conducted by analysing a combination of vendor criteria in addition to assessing product features and functionality. This white paper summarises the key questions every organisation should ask of a vendor and the ways ‘The Oracle Advantage’ addresses each of these areas.