| To keep track and organise contacts with current and prospective customers is one of the fundamental dimensions of firm’s management. Customer relationship management (CRM) usually refers to a holistic approach involving the use of software to handle customer relationships. CRM develops strategies to unify firm’s customer interactions and provide a means to track customer information. The main logic is to attract new customers, whilst improving bonds with existing ones.
CRM includes four central and interacting spheres: Front office, which directly interacts with customers through meetings, phone calls, e-mail, etc. Back office operations prepare the activities of the front office - e.g., billing, marketing, advertising, finance, etc. Inter-business relation deals with other companies and partners. Finally, analysis provides the CRM data that can be used in order to plan marketing campaigns and business strategies.
A fundamental aspect of the front office dimension is the so-called Operational CRM. This provides software-based support to the front office’s core processes, generally storing in customers' contact histories to facilitate staff operations. One of the most used operational CRM is for sales force management – through a sales force automation system (SFA). This is a system that automatically records all the stages in a sales process. It tracks all contacts that have been made with a customer and the purpose of these contacts, reducing the possibility to irk the customer to a very low degree.
SFA is a powerful technology with many advantages, both for the sales and marketing managers. However, there are several disadvantages that need to be addressed. What are they? How can they be solved?
First, it is often hard to get to work with. Intensive training sessions are necessary before implementing SFA.
Second, it requires additional work inputting data. This is a normal task and should be addressed during the training session in order to develop a standard method of data input.
Third, it necessitates constant maintenance and system upgrading. This is costly! But, it’s an aspect should be addressed in accordance with the firm budget.
Fourth, it is often difficult to integrate it with other information systems and other departments. The lack of communication between departments often results in the customer being contacted several times for the same reason. This risk needs to be reduced through a fully integrated SFA.
The author knows a lot about field sales management tools, sales activity reporting and managing sales activity. |
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