Customer Relationship management Software:
The onset of the 21st century has seen a huge peak in Online shopping as well as digital
marketing. This advance in technology has seen the replacement of the traditional brick and
mortar in-store shopping. The customers and vendors have also realised the hardships
associated with this and started thinking beyond the traditional hues.
The painstaking effort to walk up and down, comparing prices across stores, time and expense
involved in travelling for shopping have all factored to this switch in online shopping trends
for customers. A major leap in this technological advancement has been the evolution of a
common integrated platform for online sales, marketing, providing customer support and
facilitate communication between the customers and clients known as the CRM systems. CRM
helps in understanding and in gaining the pulse of the customers. The system helps in
consolidating various activities such as marketing, online shopping and providing customer
support through call centres. There are different CRM packages such as – Analytical CRM and
Operational CRMs. Westfield, Best Technology services and SP Screens are some of the
conglomerates that have adopted the use of CRM systems to boost profitability.
The traditional model of grocery stores included: •
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Sales: The store was partnered with several vendors who would supply groceries daily.
Further, the customers would come into the store, spend time picking the groceries and
the same would be billed, packed and dispatched. The entire process of analysing the
customer preferences (Customer- basket analysis) was done manually.
Marketing: Customer groups were targeted manually, and we were heavily reliant on
transactional and word of mouth marketing that involved personnel operating out of
various regions.
Customer Support: In case of complaints/ Disputes, customers were forced to revisit
the stores and sort out the issues.
Some of the major disadvantages associated with the above were:•
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High lead time
Comparing similar products (Competition)
The Online Grocery store business model is based on the three-sided network effects model
(customers, vendors, grocery platform). The following would be the advantages of
implementing CRM for the Grocery sales:
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Managing Customer data: With CRM, companies are now able to make informed
decisions with the customer information, history of previous purchases carried out by
customers, disputes or complaints registered by customers etc.
Managing the Sales Force: With the CRM system, storing customer and sales data is
much easier. The sales personnel would have access to customer preferences, tracking
deliveries, and purchase history of customers. The Procurement team would also be
able to compare prices of products available in the market and source the same from
the vendors who provide the best prices. The managers would be able to track the work
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each employee is involved in and hence plan activities in a better, maximising employee
productivity and engaging in work which is more essential and rewarding.
Marketing Management: CRM systems not only help in recording, organizing and
analysing large data sets pertaining to customer and sales campaign information, thus
creating synergies between the teams
Some of the special marketing tasks that CRM system enables are:
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Cross Selling: By leveraging information from customer past purchases, sales
personnel could offer complementary products to customers. For instance, if a customer
purchases bread he could go for either egg/jam. The data collected would help in
identifying preferences and enable the sales department to decide on the complementary
products to offer on purchase of bread.
Up-selling: By analysing the customer profiles and accessing the customer potentials,
higher priced products could be offered to customers. Eg: if an ordinary customer who
had been purchasing budget groceries is seen to be consuming higher range products,
he could be offered signature products and organic products which are slightly more
expensive.
Bundling: Customers may be offered a combination of products at better rates based
on basket analysis. For instance, tomatoes, onions and potatoes are bundled together
and offered at a lower rate than would cost the customer if brought together.
Service Support: Data regarding customer transactions, feedbacks, payment and
delivery information would be stored by CRM systems and would help provide call
centre personnel to provide better support to customers.
However, not all ERP/CRM implementations are successful. Some of the real work examples
of failed ERP implementations are that of the Foxmeyer Drug Co in USA which was victimised
to a failed ERP implementation and went bankrupt.
Maintaining the implementation poses to be a challenge which may lead to a decline and cause
adverse effects if not handled properly. The below factors would also have to be weighed before
deciding the go/no-go for an ERP implementation.
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Change management
Top Management support.
Controlling costs –Costs incurred in training staff, hiring an implementation team,
consultants to solve problems faced, change management team and getting users
acquainted to the new process and interfaces.
Switching costs for Vendors
Implementation Project planning
CRM is a great tool and helps customers to increase their efficiency, profits and earn better
customer satisfaction. CRM can be implemented as a standalone system or could be a part of
an integrated ERP system. The former brings in centralisation by integrating everything in one
place and helps in integration between various departments of the firm to devise the best
strategies and make important business decisions. CRM systems are also scalable, provide
remote access of data, helps in making estimates and tracking progress, have faster conversion
rates and simplifies marketing and sales. It also ensures data integrity and prevents fraud as
well as provides a better customer experience. However, these factors should be weighed
against the costs involved in implementation, risk involved in failures of CRM project
implementation, additional overheads for training, hiring, changes in organisational structure
and security threats. Thus, if the CRM software implementation suits the business a suitable
vendor must be chosen, and transition must be made as seamless as possible.