Infrastructure Development for e-system

Customer Relationship management is not only a competitive advantage but also requirement for survival in business industry because Wu and Wu (2005) have suggested CRM  is replacement of traditional ‘four PS’ of marketing – product, price, place and promotion (p. 1). Further more CRM is one of major portion of functional enterprise system which provides customer care as well as forging long-term relationships with customers is the key to stability in an increasing dynamic market, therefore Customer Relationship Management is vital area that we have to believe as hart of the management involvement with IS/IT.

 Customer relationship management is an enterprise wide effort to acquire and retain profitable customers. It adds value to both customers and company by building long term and sustainable customer relationship. Customer relationship management is an approach that recognize that customer are the core of business and that the company’s success depend on effectively managing relationship with them. Turban (2008, p. 331) has suggested that three types of applications such as Customer- facing application, Customer-touching application, Customer-centric intelligence application as tools used by CRM applications.

 With the era of technology business started using web browser, the internet, and other electronic touch point such as email, POS terminal, call canters, and directs sales. As a result of electronic business the electronic CRM is introduce to mange customer relationship. CRM applications depend of services-oriented architecture  to ensure that customer data is truly ready for business(Kobielus, 2008, p. 1). 

 Selecting a manager for CRM in first place with responsibilities for IS/IT is not a simple task because Wu and Wu (2008, p. 1) have state that 60% of web-based CRM software installations are failures. Wu, Chen & Chang (2007) has suggested carrying a critical IS activities out involves the use of a number of different skills and knowledge and also IS professional activities were significantly different among the management levels, but not significantly different for various industry  types (p. 1).  Further more Lerogue,  Newton & Blanton (2005) have suggested that technical and managerial skills are the most important in affecting organizational success. Turban (2006, p. 334) has mentioned major issues relating to CRM failures as follows:

 Failure to identify and focus on specific business problem.

• Lack of non IT senior management sponsorship.
• Poor user acceptance
• Trying to automate a poorly defined process.

 Successful CRM managers should able do the following to avoid failures when implementing CRM.

• Determine how the organization responds to customers by conducting survey.
• Carefully consider the four components of CRM: sales, service, marketing and channel/partner management.
• Use defined metrics for measure accomplishment of CRM with both quality and quantity.
• Evaluate up to what extent CRM software can vis-à-vis the organization objectives which is going to be implement.
• Determine on a strategy: refining existing CRM processes, or reengineering the CRM.
• Specially evaluate frontline agents, field service, and sales people and all levels in the organization.
• Prioritize the organizations requirements according to the category such as must, desired, or not so important.
•   Select most suitable CRM software to the organizations.

All above mentions facts illustrate that CRM involves relatively comprehensive and complicated business process and activities while coordinating marketing, selling and service activities across intra-organizational and inter-organizational boundaries thus to fulfil this role the manager must be able to show skills and knowledge as follows:

Firstly he or she must have B.S. degree in marketing or business and certificate in customer relationship management and master’s in business administration will be added qualification because the role of CRM manger is more closely to business process rather than technical initiatives but it does not mean that CRM manger no need to have technical knowledge. Secondly CRM manager must have knowledge of working with interaction software, advanced reporting software such as or Crystal report or Oracle, database and knowledge of Microsoft office application like Excel, Access and PowerPoint. Thirdly CRM manager must have skills such as data analysis skills, excellent communication skills, team working skills, time management skills, project/programme management skills, self motivation skills and leadership skills. This marketing, business and technological knowledge together with those skills helps to develop strategies to achieve repeat sales, generate customer satisfaction, to organize promotional activities for customers, communicate with variety of internal departments, to analyse customer activities and communication, to learn from existing customer trends and searching for areas of improvement.