By Kevin Falconer, general manager of Channel Data, an SI Group subsidiary.

Most Information Technology (IT) companies will agree it’s tougher to make ends meet today than it was just a year or two ago. Keeping afloat in turbulent financial times is a challenge many companies have to face.

At these times, it’s most often the creative thinkers who generate better sales figures than those whose thoughts are confined within the ‘box’ of conventional thinking.

So, if your company relies on sales for survival, it’s probably wise to examine how successful organisations set about marketing their products and services while establishing, maintaining and managing good customer relationships.

Today, profitable companies place significant emphasis on strategic planning. Strategic planning is, simplistically, a commitment to address and service markets with an eye on the future. It’s an ability to identify products and services that should be aggressively promoted in line with target marketplace developments and influences.

And it’s also an understanding of who are the most profitable customers within these market segments – and a clear view of who are the least profitable customers and how they could become more profitable.

The Challenge of Competition

If you believe that once someone has bought from you they’ll keep coming back for more unmotivated, you’re mistaken. With competition always presenting an attractive proposition to your customers and a challenge to your business, there is no time to relax or become complacent.

An awareness of the market’s changing needs - and what trends are becoming evident – is key to providing a value-added service that will also reassure your customers that they have made the best choice by dealing with you.

They need to be told, repeatedly, why your company should be chosen to resolve their problems now and well into the future. Otherwise your opposition will plant the seeds of doubt in their minds.

Optimally maintaining the customer-supplier relationship goes beyond marketing principles to include all business processes. For example, impersonal processes could be a threat to the success of a large corporation which, over time, might have lost the ‘personal touch’ that so often characterises the smaller operation.

Companies, regardless of size, increasingly depend on relationship strategies to create interaction between the organisation and its customers, promoting the ‘warm feelings’ that come from being more than a ‘faceless consumer’.

CRM: Important technology initiative

For many top companies, customer relationship management (CRM) strategies form part of important technology initiatives. In many cases ‘a CRM system’ refers not only to the computer system used to keep track of - and access - customer information but to the human resource infrastructure around it and underscoring it.

The goal is more effective communications between a company and its customers. To realise it, many organisations create cross-functional teams to map out the procedures needed to boost CRM programmes and pilot new computer processes that involve more facets of the company.

Central to the successful implementation of a CRM campaign is the quality and sophistication of the software involved, together with top management ‘buy-in’. Lack of executive commitment is cited as one of the major reasons for the failure of CRM projects, underpinned by the consequent lack of discipline needed.

Those trying to implement a CRM package without this level of support may find their projects still-born or hobbled. In many cases, management apathy, or waning interest, also minimises the level of funding necessary for success – and subsequent lack of return on investment (ROI).

Another contributor to the failure of CRM implementations is inaccurate data retrieval and mining. Much data collected by CRM systems is wasted because it is either irrelevant or not mined adequately in a search for the more subtle signs associated with customer dissatisfaction.

One of the criticisms levelled at many CRM programmes is the cost needed for implementation. But not all CRM systems are big-budget items. Neither are the activities that support them.

For instance, many analysts report that low-cost activities, such as discount coupons and other loyalty encouraging incentives are viewed in a positive light by customers. So too are focus groups which allow for a greater level of interaction between customers and management.

In an ideal world, a good, well executed CRM strategy will contribute immeasurably towards retaining the current customer base - and growing it in the future. In such an environment, members of the sales force will have immediate access to information about contacts and potential sales leads. They will be able to view, on-line, documentation and correspondence dealing with customer preferences as well as previous purchases and implementations.

A good CRM solution will increase the levels of business intelligence you have about your customers and help you address their needs before they arise. It will also help to simplify marketing, advertising and public relations processes and certainly go a long way towards making call centres more efficient.