CRM portals, Analytics, and Direct Marketing Principles are critical for a Real Time (CRM - Direct Marketing) Platform

Nethra Sambamoorthi, Ph.D

11 Bartram Road

Englishtown, NJ 07726

732-792-3945;  nethra@crmportals.com

We explain the answer to the question Why CRM Analytics is key for CRM Portals? with an answer to What brings CRM analytics to the organization?, first.

It is a systematic way of extracting actionable and profitable information that makes people accountable and responsive. With the advent of CRM, systematic organization of databases, and increased collection of data (The desirable aspects of what are the good data, how they need to be collected, and how privacy plays a role among these, need a detailed discussion.  This will come out under the title, Are we collecting data optimally? in the future), companies are awash as to what to do with that data, and how to leverage for better business decisions. 

Real time is Key for CRM analytics and CRM content:

The very promise of CRM, which the software companies promised is the ability of powering the service reps (web automated agents (reps) for self service) to follow the paradigm "Right person, right message, at the right time for offering or messaging right products/services".  This implicitly assumes that the CRM solution is able to provide such information literally to the finger tips of the CRM reps all the time.  This means that the systems should have well understood CRM analytics delivering rules and contents to the CRM reps.  Some of the recent trends in CRM software technology is to provide such capabilities.  However sophisticated a CRM software is, it is still not there to carry all the CRM intelligence of an analyst and all the CRM intelligence of all the vertical industries in one software, necessitating the relevance of customized CRM solutions.

CRM Analytics enables differentiated service:

A modest example, and still 80% of the companies trying to do this right: A large retailer, having a call center, a large presence in the internet, and having a very large mailing program, is at a loss when it comes to the customer service.  Every customer wants the same undifferentiated, high priority attention to their calls and of course, it is impossible to provide the highest quality of service to all the callers with least amount of waiting time. 

The retailer, using simple but valuable analytical methods, analyzed the data, found most valuable customers Vs least valuable customers (defined using specific value principles) and quickly created three tier services to all the callers, based on their value, and communicated this new customer service to all the customers in their network (which includes co-marketing affiliations with other companies) and instituted the service.

The retailer to their surprise found that, now, people as customers were able to make their own decision whether they should be a preferred customer or not and acted accordingly (we see this based on data) with respect to this retailer. With in a year, the customer service level parameters were significantly above the set key performance indicator levels, and, needless to say that both customers and the retailer were happy.

CRM Analytics enables faster and better product development:

CRM Analytics, which encompasses, optimal data capture, organization of data for powerful utilization, and decisions out of data for customer service enables faster and better product development by way of continuous customer feedback in to the competitive cycle of production, marketing, information, innovation, production, marketing, information, innovation, …

However, information to lead innovation, the data capture processes have to be consistently, relevantly, and accurately relating the collection of data to analyzing and interpretation of data.  Analytics is the guardian and a savior of business processes in this way.  It is the tool that enables management of “what is not measured is not manageable”.

CRM Anaytics is the systematic way of fast forwarding to success:

We hear often, when in doubt, test.  But doing a test in the right way means many careful looks at the list of hypotheses, prioritizing them, creating apples to apples type comparison for experimenting with the test and correctly interpreting the results of those tests, including a clear understanding of caveats of the whole process. I might say test if you are in doubt and test if you not in doubt also,  because even established results with the best ROI, famously called controls under some conditions, may be beaten by a new test result in terms of ROI, due to changes that happen all the time in the market, lifestyles, demographics, and environment of consumers or companies.  So test, test, test, and even if you are leading the market, test.

CRM analytics powers what?

CRM analytics powers Customer Knowledge Management, Customer Interaction Management, B2B marketing (B2B Analytics), and B2C marketing (B2C Analytics).  With out CRM analytics, we will never be able to optimize our resources, effort, and time.  Further more, analytics is the key component of "Marketing Analytics", "Marketing Technology Automation", and "Enterprise Analytics".  Fast forward to better CRM processes, increased CRM productivity, and higher ROI using CRM analytics. Some studies have indicated analytics contributes as much as 50% of ROI by improving your business processes, keeping managers accountable and responsive, and by improving productivity. Interestingly CRM and Quality are two sides of the same coin - Read more

What is direct marketing to do with CRM?

Direct Marketing traditionally reaches out to communicate with prospects and customers using postal mail and telephone with the understanding that the companies will offer the right message / service / products to consumers. With the advent of internet, these two traditional channels can become literally a real time marketing process (there may still be customers who would like to receive traditional postal mail) integrating the direct marketing processes (mail and telephone) and the real time interaction methodology of internet.

Its clear that a smooth selling system at the time of customer interactions is the key for strengthening marketing and it could be done in real time with powerful interactions that are the basis for CRM processes.

The current technologies could be brought together to achieve this. Thus for any company to go into real time marketing it is important that the company taps into their planned CRM system and integrating it with the direct marketing systems and processes.  Even the traditional best practices CRM software companies have left opportunities open for this approach.

We will see in the next article, the myths about CRM analytics, before we move on to what enables CRM analytics in an organization and how it could be integrated with the real time direct marketing.