business definition
development path
Before the 1980s, the supply of products on the market was mostly less than the demand, which belonged to the seller's market. The standardization of product production and the scale of enterprise production determined the market competition position. With the continuous development of productivity, the situation of insufficient production capacity and commodity shortage has been gradually changed. Product types and styles have become richer, supply exceeds demand, customers have more choices, and individual demand for products has also followed.In order to meet customer needs and increase customers' desire to purchase products, enterprises must fully grasp customer information, accurately grasp customer needs, quickly respond to individual needs, provide convenient purchase channels, good after-sales service and regular customer care, etc. Enterprises try to measure the potential profitability of each customer, and assign a dedicated customer representative to manage customers. In this case, the business will send customers what they need instead of letting customers find what they need. In this context, the status of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has been continuously promoted and gradually improved.
What is CRM?
Regarding the definition of CRM, different scholars or business organizations have put forward their own views from different angles. The various definitions are analyzed below in order to have a more comprehensive understanding of CRM.- Definition 1: Gartner Group first proposed the definition of customer relationship management. Think that customer relationship management is a strategy within the entire enterprise. This strategic goal is to organize market segments, cultivate customer satisfaction behaviors, and connect a series of processes from suppliers to customers, so as to maximize profits, revenues, and customer satisfaction. change. It clearly points out that CRM is not a simple IT technology, but a business strategy of an enterprise, focusing on enterprise profitability and customer satisfaction.
- Definition 2: The Customer Relationship Management Professional Committee of the China Informatization Promotion Alliance of the Ministry of Information Industry believes that customer relationship management is the product of the combination of modern management science and advanced information technology. The entire business process carried out on the Internet includes judgment, selection, acquisition, development and retention of customers. It is a work practice for enterprises to focus on customer relationship, carry out systematic customer research, improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, and improve operational efficiency and profit by reengineering the corporate organizational system and optimizing business processes. It is the sum of software and hardware systems and integrated management methods and solutions created and used by enterprises to achieve informatization and operational goals.
The angles and emphases of the above definitions are different, but in general they are consistent, that is, they all believe that "customer relationship" is a mutually beneficial and interactive relationship established between the company and customers, and thus put CRM has risen to the strategic height of the enterprise, and at the same time, it is believed that technology plays a very important driving role in CRM. To summarize the definition of CRM: CRM is a combination of modern information technology, business philosophy and management thinking. It uses information technology as a means to form an automated solution through the recombination and design of "customer-centric" business processes. , Improve customer loyalty, to achieve the purpose of shortening the sales cycle, reducing sales costs, increasing revenue, expanding markets, and comprehensively improving corporate profitability and competitiveness.
Purpose of CRM system
We can understand the use of CRM from two perspectives of strategy and tactics. From a strategic point of view, CRM regards customers as an important corporate resource, and improves customer satisfaction and loyalty through perfect customer service and in-depth customer analysis, thereby attracting and retaining more valuable customers. ultimately increase corporate profits. From a tactical point of view, the best business practices are closely combined with information technologies such as data mining, data warehouse, and network technology to provide a business automation solution for the fields of sales, customer service, and decision support.CRM system application
Business scene
The core business object of the CRM system is the customers in the demand part of the supply chain, including distributors, retailers and end customers. Business scenarios include the conversion of lead business opportunities, customer accumulation and maintenance, product quotations, contract orders, payment collection, repurchase, and other operations directly related to customer needs and customer interactions. The scenario boundary of the CRM system is a pre-sales-sales-after-sales closed loop with sales management as the core. For detailed business scenarios and processes, please refer to the figure below for understanding.
The composition of CRM system
The functions of the CRM system can be summarized into three aspects: the informatization of the three business processes of marketing, sales and customer service; the integration and integration of the means (such as telephone, fax, network, E-mail, etc.) Automated processing: processing the information accumulated by the functions of marketing and sales to generate customer intelligence and support the strategic and tactical decisions of the enterprise. Therefore, customer relationship management systems can be divided into: operational CRM that is closely related to business operations; analytical CRM that implements customer data analysis based on data warehouse and data mining; and multimedia customer contact center based on a unified interface. Collaborative CRM on the platform. The system architecture of the CRM system can be understood by referring to the figure below.
Industry map of CRM system
Since the rise of the concept of CRM, there have been more than 40 years of business history. Due to the differences in the industry, the huge market prospect and the rapid development of information infrastructure, a large wave of system manufacturers has poured in to contribute to the construction of the CRM system ecosystem.
Future trends
Regarding the future development trend of the CRM system, I have summarized the following three points:- Emerging technologies have spawned diversified touchpoints (Douyin, Mini Programs, social networks, etc.), extending the interactive value chain.
- Scenario-focused, differentiated services for different companies.
- Perfect big data analysis ability, thousands of people and thousands of faces for marketing.