The People Factor

Customer Relationship Management has an essential factor, the people factor. That is why, when talking about CRM, we cannot only talk about the management and strategy, the goal and objectives, other things such as technology, people, process, collaboration, culture should be talked and they all have to be blended and mixed together.

The people factor is one of the toughest factor, which I think it is also the driver of CRM. People means everybody involves in this CRM thing. How big is that?!  The success is more or less on average, it cannot be either very satisfying or very poor. People is a subjective thing, which makes the inheritence can be said as subjective as well. Anyway, in business world, everything can be expected to be done and measured. As more business people see CRM as an important thing in doing business, then the people factor should be more understand, aware, and knowledgeable about CRM. Then, what’s next?…

Dashboard

A feature that is used to describe a big picture of something can be called a dashboard. What’s in a dashboard? It depends on users’ need. For example, sales dashboard that is used by management  contains summarized information of revenue and target comparison of one fiscal year, sales per region, cost, etc. Most dashboards will use graphs, charts, indicator, or other visualization tools that is eye-catching and easy to see. Some allows drill down, and some only show note or description of graphs or charts. It’s a mixture between data, visualization, and summarization. The important factors are need to be defined to be shown in a dashboard. Usually, KPI or Key Performance Indicator will be included in it. Summarized target and actual comparisons are included also. I think dashboard is quite a personalized tool in an application. Maybe we will never see the same data or dashboard from one application to another. That’s good, because each application or users might need different thing.

Dashboard design is challenging. First, know your users. Second, analyze the summarized important information needed. Third, create good information visualization. Give necessary details if needed. Good infovis here means simple and easy to see at a glance. I read this site about infovis which is quite interesting http://www.perceptualedge.com/. Four, evaluation. It is necessary to ask users about the implemented dashboard, from the data and design point of views.

Collaborative CRM & Social Software – an issue

Collaborative comes from collaborate which means work together to reach one goal. CRM is a strategic management approach intended to acquire, enhance, and retain profitable and potential customers by managing relationship with them. Collaborative CRM means working together in order to manage customer-company relationship. Who? A company has departments, people in company need to work together to manage it. Who? The object here is important, the customer. A company needs to work together with them as well. The customers are not “objects” anymore, they are the “centre” of CRM. Collaborative CRM has communication and interaction as its centre, the information and knowledge flows which aims to understand customers’ needs and take them into action, then gain customers’ satisfaction and loyalty.

One interesting combination is using social software in collaborative CRM. It allows two-way communication and interaction. Moreover, customers can inquiry, share opinion, experience, and feedback. I believe most company will think “twice” to use social software as communication tools with customers. Don’t let social software be the company’s boomerang, when a company has good intention in implementing it, but it can turn out to be implemented in a wrong way and it can turn the company upside down later. It is good to have this kind of thinking.

Though, I’m sure that customers will tell you the “truth” about what happen, from their own point of view. This is what matter! You need to know where you stand, you also need to know how the customers see you; without asumption, without hesitation, you will know for sure. It will be an important point where you can finally see your “face” from customers’ point of views. It sounds cruel, doesn’t it? Comments aren’t always negative. There will be two sides of everything. It is what it is, let it be, you can’t change it. But you can change and improve, and trying to be sustainable in giving good service to customers. Aren’t we all in a process? Anticipation is important, but to know the truth, get the picture, understand customers’ needs then take it into action are more important.

This is an issue I feel for implementing social software as part of collaborative CRM.

Collaborative CRM

CRM or customer relationship management is a strategic management approach to maintain relationship with customers. It is divided into several categories; operational CRM, analytical CRM, collaborative CRM. Some research mention about e-commerce CRM and mobile CRM as well. Operational CRM is front-office CRM to improve customer service. Analytical CRM is intended to analyze customers data, usually requires data warehouse and data mining in finding patterns or reveal data that is useful in gaining and maintaining customers. Collaborative CRM is CRM approach intended to optimize communication between customers and company. Usually it provides various channels as customer’s contact points. They can choose the most convinient way in interacting with company.

Collaborative CRM is interesting in some ways. What is the collaborative? Why is it collaborative? CRM is about customers-company relationship. Customers can have many meanings such as direct consumers, suppliers, agents, distributors, or whoever which has business relation with the company. We can call it customers. What kind of collaboration can it be? How would they gonna do that? What are the issues in implementing collaborative CRM? What are the CSF of implementing it?

Social software and CRM

I just think about this topic since yesterday. I’m thinking that one core business process is managing customer service, to do that, organizations can use CRM. I see CRM as a whole process from front-end until back-end system. Is that true? Then, the adoption of social software is also able to be used internally and externally. Hmm, maybe the external usage is interesting. Because I assume that external party is more unpredictable than insiders, which are employees of organizations. If it is possible, social software adoption can be used as front end application to communicate and interact with customers, then it integrates with other system in organization to finally process the end result; reports, forecasting, sales dashboard, etc. The results might depend on customers’ participations in the front end system. Well, it’s kinda interesting though, then I can add more things inside later.