1.1.1 Overview & Objectives
The first unit provides you with an overview of the content of Customer Relationship Management(CRM). It also describes the system architecture on which the SAP CRM system is based and the basic principles of the SAP CRM.
1.1.2 What is CRM?
This topic describes the content of CRM and explains what this means for the business processes of a company. It also describes the requirements the enterprise organization is expected to fulfill as a result of this.
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management and places the customer at the center of a company's business rocesses.
All the business processes of a company are geared towards identifying valuable customers, acquire their customers, providing them with optimum service and retaining their long-time loyalty.
Focusing all of the business processes on the customer naturally has an effect on the organization of an enterprise. Active CRM requires all the different areas of an enterprise from Logistics through to Controlling to work very closely with each other.
The areas affected in particular are Sales, Marketing and Service. Generally speaking, though, areas such as Accounting can also be included.
One of the most import objectives is to use CRM to control the value of your enterprise as a whole and increase it in the long time.
To achieve this objective, you require the help of a software solution to be able to access all the relevant information wherever and whenever you need it.
This topic described the content of CRM and explained how CRM affects the business processes of a company. It also described the requirements the enterprise organization is expected to fulfill as a result of this.
1.1.3 Basic component of CRM
Describes the areas that SAP supports with software-based solutions to help companies interact effectively with their customers.
Customers expected to be provided with reasonable-priced, high-quality solutions tailored to their specific requirements, which are available wherever and whenever they are need.
To be able to meet these customer requirements, inter-company value-chain networks are becoming more and more important.
New technologies, such as the Internet and E-mail, are accelerating corporate business processes enormously.
When used in conjunction with more traditional channels (such as fax, telephone, and visits to customers), these technologies also provide a mount of leveraging targeted interaction to identify, distinguish and satisfy customer requirements, there by retaining customers for the long term.
Modern software products such as SAP CRM offer various solutions to help companies interact efficiently with their customers.
These include solutions for Multi Channel Customers Interaction, which support customer interaction using different communications channels such as the phone and the internet.
Solutions for supporting the entire sales cycle - know as Complete Sales Cycles. These solutions support the full spectrum of activities from the customer inquiry, order creation through to successful execution of the sales order and after sales service.
Solutions that gear your marketing activities to the needs of the customer - know as One-to-One-Marketing.
Solutions for Total Customer Care. These provide extensive support for all sales, marketing and service processes with a view to focus on the needs and requirements of the customer more effectively and retaining customer loyalty.
Solutions for building value-chain networks, also called Value Chain Integration. These networks can also be set up between different companies, for example, as part of a joint product development project.
All of these components of CRM have one common goal: to enable a company and its customers to learn from each other and build on each other's knowledge. This means that customers can satisfy their personal requirements, while the company can increase its overall value.
This topic introduced you to the basic components of CRM, the CRM solutions offered by SAP and the goals these solutions aim to fulfill.
1.1.4 Customer Interation in CRM
Describes the types of customer interaction supported by CMM and the interaction channels used for these. It also explains how information and products are supplied through these channels and how the channels are structured in CRM.
One of the goals of CMM is to conduct business with customers by offering them products and services. The aim here is to find out exactly what the customer needs and to rapidly find a high quality, reasonably priced product that fulfills these needs.
In today's information society, companies usually communicate with their customers through personal contact (face-to-face), by phone in the Contact Center or through the internet.
Face-to-face interaction with a customer traditionally involves a sales person or a service representative meeting with the customer directly. They have a detailed knowledge of the business deals they have concluded with their customers in the past.
This is also true of employees in Financial Accounting or in other areas. Each of these areas has its own view of the same customer and the associated information. There is no shared information base. As a result, valuable information on and about the customer is lost.
A CRM system helps give all employees full access to up-to-date information on a customer wherever and whenever they need it. Technically speaking, this is made possible using laptops and mobile devices, such as handhelds on WAP cellular phones.
Using CRM, a sales representative can enter an order on site at the customer's premises and find ou the relevant price immediately, if the sales representative is linked to the ERP system (by modem, for example), he can also provide the customer with the expected delivery date and transfer the order to the system where it is then executed.
In addition to this, the sales representative can enter a new appointment with the customer in his electronic calendar and create an activity journal for the meeting he has just had. The sales representative's mobile device is synchronized with the CRM system thereby creating a shared information base, which is available to all the areas of the enterprise.
The Contact Center (CC), also know as the Customer Interaction Center (CIC) provides a multi-layered, integrated platform for handling business processes interactively, and enables the Call Center to provide an optimum level of customer service.
A customer often has a series of phone numbers, for the different services he requires. For example, customers need one number to contact the customer service department and another to purchase spare parts. This also applies to e-mail addresses. Each area carries out its business with the individual customer independently of the others.
For this reason, a Customer Interaction Center is usually set up in CRM. All the incoming messages from a particular customer are entered here before being transferred electronically to the persons responsible, who then enter their activities and results in the same system.
The agent in the CIC and all of the areas involved in this process enter their information in a common CRM system and, where appropricate, in the OLTP system. The result is a central point of information throughout the company.
In the age of the internet, it is now much easier and much faster for buyers and sellers to find, buy or sell the required product at the required conditions.
There are two basic methods of using the internet to buy and sell: B2C Business to Customer and B2B Business to Business.
With B2C, the customer creates an order on the interaction being necessary. This form of business is characterized by multi-media-capable product catalogs, use-friendly product configurations, direct Available to Promise checks, personalized offerings and integrated handling of payments.
With B2B, purchasing products and services on the internet involves not only creating a purchase order in your own ERP system, but also creating an order in the vendor's ERP system. No further interaction is then required.
With Internet Sales in the form of Self Service (B2C) or using shopping baskets or order (B2B), all information is transferred to ERP system through the CRM system. The availability and delivery options for the required product are then reported back from the ERP system.
This topic described the types of customer interaction supported by CRM and the channels used for these. It also explained how information and products are supplied through these channnels and how the channels are structured in CRM.