“What is my Job as a CRM Consultant?” This is a problematic question to answer, mainly because there is no single definition as to what a CRM consultant actually is; and I often give different answers to different people depending what they can understand! Most of us consider CRM developers as CRM Consultants, people that customise and develop CRM systems. These developers generally work for a CRM vendor or implementation organization; most of them specialize in a particular CRM technology. This is the first step where any good CRM Consultant begins with. CRM Analysts are also at times considered as CRM Consultants however they are not the technical guys. They work for a CRM Vendor or an implementation company but might not be limited to
CRM Archive
It has been quite a while that I am working as a CRM Consultant. Over the time I have been wondering what goes in the mind of a consultant while the consulting assignment is on! Spending my time among IT cum Functional consultants, we often disregard the objective of having a CRM altogether. We forget, at times, Customer Relationship Management starts with the word ‘Customer’ whereas our focus is more or less now on getting-the-software-right! Customer Relationship Management is a concept that assists marketers in making vital decisions in an organization. We often misinterpret CRM with software which is a slip-up as IT / ITES / CRM consultants. It is important to understand that CRM is a functional aspect for an organization to improve on existing & new business;
If you are already active in the social web, or are at least taking a peek at what your competitors are up to, likely you have noticed that no two retailers have identical seeming social media strategies. This one is for retailers, let’s look at the key uses of social media for retail brands today, Customer service: directly responding to customer’s questions, complaints and inquiries via social media. Crisis management: having your finger on the pulse of a crisis just as it unfolds or directly after it occurs and being able to respond, diffuse and assist quickly. Campaign or promotion management: the use of social media channels to spread word about a contest/sale/exciting change that you want your community to hear about and participate in
There was an interesting question that I found someone asking on Internet. “What is Salesforce CRM everybody is talking about? How will it help my organization, specifically getting more Sales? Can a software really help get clients?” This is one of most innocent question a businessman could have asked. Specially the last one, where he finds it difficult to digest whether some information on a computer screen help him get more sales! Since the question is asked with so much inquisitiveness and innocence; I might not be able to answer this question directly however will try to justify that CRM, in some cases, can be extremely useful for a business in more than one ways. I will try to be generic here so that all
If you believe that only highly profitable companies use CRM to manage clients, vendors and sales; give it a thought once again. Just like in sales, its easy to receive donations from the same donor, rather than searching for new ones. Hence, its important to maintain relations. I have figured out few CRM vendors for non-profits and NGOs assuming Low upfront implementation costs. A complete Customizing solution in 5-12 months. Multinational Operations. Considering Functionalities like Analytics, Business Intelligence, Customer Service, E-commerce Model, Email Marketing, Retail Solutions, Sales force automation, Commission management, Project management, Surveys etc. 100-500 employees. 25-50 users. CRM for NGOs and Non Profit Organizations Microsoft Dynamics CRM Whether it’s monthly using CRM Online or hosted on-premise a Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution can be
If you are an organization currently looking for implementing CRM or hiring a consultant for evaluating various vendors, here is a higher level view after which you start getting deeper into stuff. Here is a short list of CRM companies which may prove helpful. The list is a mix of traditional large software companies and fast growing CRM companies with a lot of momentum. The CRM short list is aimed towards medium and large enterprise customers and should be sufficiently long for 90% of the target group to find their prospective CRM supplier in this list, or better, to provide a starting point for a software selection trajectory. If you are a small and growing organization, I shall come up with a list soon. These companies have