 |
 |
 |
|
01.07.10 Utilizing Customer Data To Add Real Value  By Jim Berkowitz Here are several excerpts from an interesting article by David Loshin, President of Knowledge Integrity, Inc., Customer Analytics, Focus on What Truly Adds Value: The perceived appeal of customer analytics is the potential to garner such specific information about your customer constituency that you can accurately predict all customer behaviors and actions with enough advanced notice to identify key opportunities and take advantage of them, and maximize value to both your customers and your organization. Yet for every mature organization that has an impactful and effective customer analytics program, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of organizations that are struggling with just the mere basics. So if you were to start from scratch, where would you start? As a technologist, my first impulse is always to jump directly to implementing a solution - customer data integration, CRM, even specific solutions such as popular online marketing and sales software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions. This is what often happens. A typical scenario is this: a senior manager reads an article exclaiming that "analytics leads to better cross-selling and up-selling." That manager then declares that the company must institute analytics, with the corresponding waterfall effect that the technology must be brought in so that the company can then cross-sell and up-sell (notwithstanding an absence of a plan for specifying what is being cross-sold or how that is to be done). So as a consultant, that desire to "build" is tempered by a consistent need to focus on what truly adds value to the organization, so I lean on my four conceptual value focus areas as the starting point - decrease costs, increase revenue, maximize productivity, establish trust. The question then concentrates on what sub areas can benefit from optimization or performance improvement, what business processes are involved, and what types of customer analyses support those optimizations. This leads into a different thought process, though, when you realize that any analysis itself is not sufficient to add value. We have to consider the holistic view of the associated business processes to understand not only how additional customer insight will add value, but what other aspects of the business need to change in order to add value. To begin, you have to ask these questions: • What business process can be improved with the addition of customer insight? • Do we currently have performance metrics to baseline how well the business process works? • How does our business process change with the addition of customer insight? • What additional resources are necessary to support those changes? • How do people need to change to support those changes and what additional training is needed? • How will individuals be incentivized to make those changes? • How will any improvement be measured and reported? Continue reading this article. About the Author: Jim Berkowitz is a seasoned executive with more than 30 years of professional services and project management experience related to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Financial Management (Accounting & ERP) software solutions for small, mid-sized and Fortune 500 companies. As a Sales Force Automation and CRM Consultant, Jim has assisted more then 100 companies with the design and implementation of custom CRM solutions. Mr. Berkowitz is the founder and President of CRM Mastery, Inc.; a company dedicated to serving small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) by offering affordable tools and guidance to help them plan for and succeed with their CRM initiatives. |
||||||||
|
| ||
 |
| -- CRMNewz
is an iEntry, Inc. publication -- iEntry, Inc. 2549 Richmond Rd. Lexington KY, 40509 2010 iEntry, Inc. All Rights Reserved Privacy Policy Legal archives | advertising info | news headlines | free newsletters | comments/feedback | submit article |
CRMNewz is brought to you by: