Question

You are a CRM consultant hired by LACK'S furniture Inc. Although they are successful,... DIRECTIONS: You are a CRM consultant hired by LACK'S furniture Inc. Although they are successful, they lack a CRM system to integrate there individual departments and stores.

Five Satges:

1. Develop the CRM strategy

2. Build the CRM project foundations

3. Needs specification and partner selection

4. Project implementation

5. Performance evaluation

Select two of the five phases. Explain the importance of these two phases and the importance of implementing them

Go online and research the causes of CRM failure. Identify at LEAST three causes of CRM implementation failure. Use them to recommend to LACK'S the importance of these elements of CRM implementation

CRITERIA: No less than 400 words word count.

Answer 1

I ) CRM IMPLEMENTATION PHASES:

In 5 phases of CRM Implementation am going to discuss about first 2 phases.

1. DEVELOP CRM STRATEGY
2. BUILD CRM PROJECT FOUNDATIONS

1. DEVELOP CRM STRATEGY:

Developing CRM strategy is most important in CRM implementation. Without a proper plan or development of CRM strategy. It is most important to understand the organisations current CRM strategy. To understand the current strategy research about three important areas to be analysed.

• Customer segments
  • Analysis about customer segment and detailed study is very important like,
    • Who is our segment customers?
    • What the company is going to offer for customers?
    • Customer satisfaction level and their preferences.
    • Customer acquisition and retention strategy.
    • Promotional strategy to promote our products to customers.

The above said areas research and understanding these situations is very important in the first phase.

• Company's Market offerings
  • Type of produts the company is going to offer.
  • branding strategy and competent strategy.
  • Customer perception and attitude towards our business.
  • Pricing strategy and margin.
  • Competitor comparetive analysis.

All these areas are also very important to plan for CRM strategy development.

• Channels of company's products:
  • Type of channel to distribute the products.
  • Importance of different channels of distribution.
  • Channel partners and their margins.

To understand the company's customer strategy the analysis is most important at first phase itself.

After these analysis to make understand of what CRM strategy is very essential. To educate about the CRM strategy to stake holders and clearly define about CRM to find the opportunities in the work place. This also helpful in increase the participation of employees in the work place.

Developing CRM vision and setting priorities is another important aspects in implementation of CRM phases. Not only the visions are important but also the goals and objectives from the priorities phases to get clear idea. After setting goals and objectives, to achieve these objectives to identify 3 components are essential:

1. People
2. Process
3. Technology requirements.

2. BUILD CRM PROJECT FOUNDATION:

In this phase to identify stake holders, to identify the needs of change management in organisation, To understand the organisational culture, to identify and understand project management needs and to identify and analyse about success factor are very essential.

II) THREE CAUSES OF CRM IMPLEMENTATION FAILURE:

1. Lack of focus - This is very reason for the failure of CRM strategy implementation. LACK's has to focus on its plan and the CRM strategy or software, understand its vision, policies and objectives.
2. Lack of commitment - In the organisation the stakeholder should participate enthusiastically to get benefit of CRM strategy or software.
3. Approach of CRM technology - CRM is not only the technology but also it is an ongoing strategy to get greater benefit of CRM strategy.

LACK"S FURNITURE INC', has to understand these 3 major reasons of failure of CRM and concentrate on these issues to get effective benefit.