Five Major Phases of a CRM project

1. Develop the CRM strategy, 2. build the CRM project

foundations, 3. specify needs and select partner, 4.
implement the project, 5. evaluate the performance

Develop a CRM strategy

CRM strategy is a high-level plan of action that aligns ppl,
processes and technology to achieve customer-related goals.

Subsets of developing a CRM strategy

Situation Analysis-sets out to describe, understand and
appraise the company's current customer strategy; "Where
are we now?" "Why are we here?", Commence CRM education-
make sure all stakeholder's have a clear understanding of
what CRM denotes. Develop CRM vision-A high-level
statement of how CRM will change your business as it relates
to customers, gives shape and direction to CRM strategy, Set
priorities, Establish goals and objectives-'goal' to refer to a
qualitative outcome, 'objective'- to refer to a measurable
outcome. Identify ppl, process and technology requirements,
Develop the business case-built around the costs and
benefits of the CRM implementation and answers the ? "Why
should we invest in this CRM project?" looks at costs and
revenues.

Build the CRM project foundations

Identify stakeholders- stakeholders include any party that
will be impacted by the change (ex. senior mgmt, users of
any new system, mktg staff, salesppl, customer service
agents, channel partners, customers and IT specialists),
Establish governance structures-need to be put in place to
ensure that project roles and responsibilities are properly
defined and allocated, Identify change mgmt needs, identify
project mgmt needs, Identify critical success factors-CSFs are
attributes and variables that can significantly impact business
outcomes. Develop risk mgmt plan

Specify needs and select partner

Process mapping and refinement, data review and gap
analysis, initial technology needs specification, and research
alternative solutions, write request for proposals (RFP), call
for proposals, revise technology needs identification,
assessment and partner selection

Process mapping and refinement

A business process is a set of activities performed by ppl
and/or technology in order to achieve a desired outcome.
Vertical:those that are located entirely w/i a business
function. ex. customer acquisitiong process might reside w/i
mktg dept. Horizontal: cross-functional. ex. new product
development processes span across sales, mktg, finanace
and R&D. Front-office (front stage): processes that customers
encounter. ex. handling process. Back-office (back stage):
processes are invisible to customers. ex. procurement
process. Primary processes ahev major cost implications for
companies or major revenue implications. ex. pick-up,
delivery and tracking. Secondary processes have minor
implications for costs or revenues, or customer experience.

Process mapping and refinement cont'd.

flowcharting: blueprinting and process mapping, a tool that
can be used to make processes visible, sets out steps in
performing process, may also identify ppl (or roles) that
contribute to the process, and the standards by which the
process is measured (time, accuracy). Software available to
generate flowcharts.

Data Review and Gap Analysis

Review data through different methods: Strategic CRM uses
customer-related data to identify which customers to target
for acquisition, retention and development, and what to offer
them. Operational CRM uses customer-related data in
everyday business. Collaborative CRM uses customer-related
data to enable channel partners to target their
communications more precisely. Gap analysis- the gap b/w
what is available and what is needed, 'need-to-know' and
'like-to-know'.

Implement Project
refine project plan, identify technology customization needs,
prototype design, test, modify and roll-out

Evaluate performance
project outcomes, business outcomes

Gartner: risks that threaten CRM project success

Mgmt that has little customer understanding or involvement,
rewards and incentives that are tied to old, non-customer
objectives, organizational culture that is not customer
focues, limited or no input from the customers, thinking that
technology is the solution, lack of specifically designed,
mutually reinforcing processes, poor-quality customer data
and info., little coordination b/w departmental initiatives and
projects, creation of the CRM team happening last, and the
team lacks business staff, no measures of monitoring of
benefits and lack of testing.

Three main classes of external data

Compiled list data: individual level data assembled by list
bureaux or list vendors, they build lists from a variety of
personal, household and business sources (local or council
tax records, questionnare response data, warranty card
registrations); Census data: obtained from govt census
records; Modelled data: generated by third parties from data
that they assemble from a variety of sources, you buy
processed data from these sources, not raw.

Desirable data attributes

STARTS; Data needs to be: SHAREABLE b/c users may require
access to the same data at the same time, TRANSPORTABLE
to go from storage location to user and available wherever
and whenever at any time, ACCURACY-data quality and
usage volumes need to be monitored to stay accurate,
RELEVANT data is pertinent for a given purpose, need to
know what decisions will be made and what info is needed to
enable them to be made well. TIMELY data that is available as
and when needed, SECURITY-is an important issue for most
companies, data abt customers is a major resource and a
source of comp. adv., firewalls

Data Warehouse
subject-oriented:the warehouse organizes data around the
essential subjects of the business rather than around
applications such as inventory mgmt. integrated: it is
consisitent in the way that data from several sources is
extracted and transformed. ex. coding M=male, F=female,
time-variant: data are organized by various time periods (ex.
months), non-volatile: data is not updated in real time, there
is periodic bulk uploading of transactional and other data
which makes it less subject to momentary change.

Data Mining
The application of descriptive and predictive analytics to
support the mktg, sales and service functions. higher
processing speeds, reduced storage costs and better
software packages have made it more attractive and
economical.

Ways data mining helps CRM

It can find ASSOCIATION b/w data, SEQUENTIAL PATTERNS
can help data miners look for 'if..then' in customer behavior.
CLASSIFYING customers into mutually exclusive groups.
CLUSTERING customers into groups. use defined range of
variable to perform the clustering procedure. MAKING
PREDICTIONS-ex. CRM practitioners use historic purchasing
behavior to predict future purchasing and customer ltv.