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Mobile CRM - It's Here Now
Today's workforce is truly mobile. Most of us now work at the office, from home and on the road. ‘On demand access' to critical customer information from anywhere is becoming a ‘must have' facility.
Search Engine SmackDown
While the prospect of the seeing the Super Session panel members dressed for Friday Nights on UPN may be a frightening prospect, seeing them at WebmasterWorld's PubCon Boston and hearing their advice on search provided a better experience for WebProNews editor Mike McDonald.
Link Building And Dangerous Heights
Verticals may be the place to be for a particular business, but Eric Ward warned attendees at a WebmasterWorld PubCon Boston session to beware of flying too close to the Sun.
Yahoo Scales Heights On Earnings Report
A strong quarter for Yahoo returned revenue of $1.08 billion driven by the company's strength in brand-name advertising, which offset softer returns on the paid search side of the business.
Building Links At PubCon
WebProNews' Mike McDonald overcomes his arachnophobia long enough to send along some notes from WebmasterWorld's PubCon Boston from the Link Building Clinic.
Burst Squeezing Apple Over Patents
Apple sued Burst in January 2006 and sought a declaratory judgment to invalidate Burst's patents on video and audio real-time delivery technology, and now Burst has responded with a counterclaim seeking damages, royalties, and an end to Apple's infringement.
Apple, Bloggers Fight In Court
A battle that could determine whether bloggers may enjoy conventional journalistic protection behind the First Amendment has a court date coming up on April 20th.
Blogs Leap To 35.3 Million Online
Technorati's David Sifry released his latest State of the Blogosphere assessment, and found that his blog search engine now tracks over 35 million blogs. That's a lot of baby pictures and political rants being posted online.
Don’t Miss WPN’s PubCon Coverage
iEntry Inc's Mike McDonald is heading to Bean Town for next week's PubCon, put on by WebMasterWorld. And just for you, our loyal readership, he will exercise the restraint of an ascetic monk, depriving himself of Boston's basketball heritage just long enough to relay the latest developments in web marketing and e-commerce.
Fiasco! AOL Censoring Critics' Mail?
The high drama surrounding AOL's arrangement with Goodmail's CertifiedEmail service was further escalated Thursday after MoveOn.org, one of the company's most brutal critics, announced that AOL had blocked emails containing links to MoveOn's petition site, DearAOL.com.
Microsoft Researching Search By Camera Phone
The Web Search and Mining group with Microsoft Research Asia thinks the best way to search for information on something you see is by taking a picture of it.
Google Calendar Wants To Date You
Months of waiting and leaked screenshots have finally
led to the official launch, in beta, of the Google Calendar
product. Google Calendar has occupied the minds of Googlites everywhere...
Search Is Academic To Windows Live
Microsoft announced the beta release of its Windows Live
Academic Search service in seven countries...
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05.04.06
Making CRM Work
 By Richard Hill
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a business philosophy, not just a technology - understanding your customers' needs enables you to build better relationships and increase sales.
Using the philosophy of CRM helps "to get and to keep more customers who stay with you longer".
Although a sound customer relationship management strategy has to come first, it can be effectively supported by CRM software.
The benefits of software?
Excellent customer service is about being aware of customer needs and reacting to them effectively.
CRM technology helps you to understand, anticipate and respond to your customers' needs in a consistent way, right across your organization because it provides you with management information. It has been said that the creation, distribution and manipulation of information is all that management is about and it is certainly true that without information about what is going on, when, by whom, with what, at what cost, at what margin etc. a business will almost certainly fail.
CRM technology also needs to be integrated into the business process. Organizations can only benefit from the discipline CRM imposes if it is.
As the management at Customer FOCUS have noted: "Changing your system means you are leaving behind something that everyone is comfortable and familiar with. Replacing it with a modern business operation & management system such as Customer FOCUS, is like getting out from behind the wheel of your familiar old Ford Mondeo with the worn leather seats and jumping into the cockpit of a Boeing 747. When installing a CRM system the right combination of critical factors need to come together at the right time. If they do your project will be a success and your business will take off to new heights. If certain critical elements are ignored by you or not given enough importance, you could find your project resembling a smoking crater!"
How does a CRM system help?
CRM will help your business if you view it as a set of tools that let you to do more for, and get more from, your customers. CRM can help you with:
1. Operational efficiency - to be more productive. All businesses need to make their existing resources more productive, improve quality and service. Indeed surveys suggest that, for example, sales people spend as little as 10% of their time actually selling.
2. Customer responsiveness - to meet demanding customer's increasing demands. Customers are becoming used to shopping and interacting with businesses over the Internet and email and they expect instant responses and rapid, personalized service.
3. Cost containment - to do more with fewer resources. Continually evolve to keep pace with change and competition and make sure the investments you make today support you tomorrow, without the costs of 'elephant' upgrades.
A good system, like Customer FOCUS, also provides:
1. One system for all tasks. No separate spreadsheets, databases and different software packages that you can access from anywhere - work from home, remote sites or even customer sites in your live business system.
2. The information you want when you want it. For example the identification of target customers or prospects in minutes delivered in your own report design as print or spreadsheets that are automatically e-mailed to you and / or your chosen colleagues.
3. Contact & quotation Information on all prospects and clients - enable your sales team to use to reduce the time they spend on admin and increase the information available to other areas of the business. Proposals can be generated in minutes and then stored and referenced by probability, value, margin or date.
4. Electronic integration - produce everything from quotes to statements as e-mails direct from the desktop. Link with Microsoft Office, Outlook, the Internet and your XDA to ensure you gain the full benefit of other packages on or off site.
5. A fully customisable system. Your own customer, prospect, supplier, product & service and staff databases, diary, planner, quotations, enquiries, sales order, despatch and invoice, manufacturing, purchase, receipts, projects and job costing, CRM operations, service and support, marketing planning and execution, general ledger and accounts all in your own language as all wording & drop down menus can be easily customised to suit your business and industry.
About the Author:
Richard Hill is a Director of E-CRM Solutions, that specialises in CRM, direct and internet marketing for SMEs. He is non-executive Chairman of Innovantage, a business intelligence company and a non-executive director of Innovecom, a computer networking company.
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