1. The Q312 BMI India Retail Report to mine extensive customer profile and
forecasts that total retail sales will transaction data to recommend exact,
grow from Rs22.5 trillion this year to focused and targeted coupons,
Rs28 trillion by 2016, a rise of nearly a promotions and campaigns across all
quarter. Little wonder then that channels,” explains Shijo Sunny
retailers are investing in technologies Thomas, of Fujitsu Consulting India.
like CRM to ensure that they retain “These are delivered through
and grow their customer base. integrated campaign execution tools
These are exciting times for retail that deliver personalised messages
CRM, with innovations and through email and mobile media.
breakthroughs delivering immense Promotions can also be delivered
potential to retailers as they seek to through proximity-based devices,
bring newexperiences to customers wherein stores broadcast promotions
while building stronger engagement to shoppers’ mobilephones within a
with their brands. defined location. Mobile furthers the
New technologies like clienteling, real- shopper experience by enabling stock
time engagement and customer ordering, product information,
lifecycle management are giving a augmented reality, mobile payments
positive boost to sales and marketing and coupons. Retailers have
initiatives. CRM has developed from a extensively implemented loyalty
simple process of keeping customers management in order to invite repeat
informed to its role today, which is custom.
centred on making customers feel “The next level of CRM applications
special — the foundation of the retail provides integrated loyalty
code. CRM applications equip retailers management, allowing shoppers to
to manage, engage, influence, earn and redeem loyalty points
motivate and analyse their customers uniformly across all channels.
across all channels profitably. “To do
this CRM technologies allow retailers

2. Social CRM technologies are also create and manage an end-to-end increase its impact exponentially,” he
playing a big role in capturing customer engagement programme adds.
customer feedback on product or . CRM applications at the most basic
brand experiences. The sheer volume level ensure that customer profile and
of data generated by social media transaction data is centralised and
interactions requires distillation by accurate. This helps retailers to
technologies that handle big data provide efficient and consistent
analytics. customer service while creating a
seamless customer experience. These
”Tablets and smartphones are great applications also help retailers to
clienteling tools to proactively engage derive trends and insights from
customers by offering them customer data, resulting in a better
personalized services while they are in understanding of habits and shopping
the store. “These can add an additional patterns. Retailers can then focus
"These solutions are a great way to
5-10 per cent to annual sales," asserts more attentively towards multiple
combine all your marketing and sales
Aneesh Reddy, cofounder of Capillary subsets of their customer population
activities and maximise revenue per
Technologies. “Many retail stores by creating a large pool of repeat
customer effectively," says Reddy.
across the world have implemented business.
“Retailers who use CRM have
this successfully by putting these
witnessed a five- to seven-per cent
instruments in the hands of their sales On a Cloud
growth in sales within the first six to 12
staff, allowing them to access a Cloud technology has enabled retailers
months of implementation. Using an
customer’s entire purchase history by to rapidly adopt CRM with minimal
integrated approach, retailers can
simply entering his or her information investment in infrastructure. Top-of-
identify and connect with customers
and then helping with known the-line products, such as SugarCRM,
over social platforms, make them their
preferences. In many restaurants, the offer subscription-based solutions on
brand ambassadors and incentivise
staff are using these devices to check public and private Clouds; the end
them for mentioning their brand in
what customer has ordered in the past users need nothing more than a web-
posts, sharing your posts or generating
and recommend dishes which will be browser to access the system. Cloud
likes.”
more appealing to them.” According to technology not only ensures data
The rich data information gained from
Shashi Saurav, of Sales Babu, “CRM security and built-in disaster-recovery
this can be used by analytics to
directly affects retail supply chain mechanisms, but it also allows for a
generate powerful insights that should
management [SCM] because a anytime-anywhere access to users
further help with personalised
competitive market requires a highly across the entire retail and distribution
advertising and better loyalty reward
disciplined supplier base. CRM has chain on a range of devices including
offers. Add a customer lifecycle model
changed the game when you focus on laptops, PCs, mobile phones and
to this data and you have a very potent
suppliers because SCM is based on tablets. One recent example of this
plan to reach out and influence your
sales order booking, which gives great technology is SoCoMoLo (Social Cloud
customers throughout the year. Reddy
clarity in product movement and also Mobile Location).
says that while a plain bulk campaign
makes a company focus on
can generate three per cent in sales, a
streamlining its secondary sales at
customer lifecycle based campaign has
retail stores, and dealer management.”
the potential to at least double this
figure. “And this is just the beginning;
One for Consumers
integrated CRM can add many other
With so many channels of engagement
customer engagement initiatives and
available, retailers are fast adopting
integrated CRM solutions to help them

3. “A Cloud-based CRM application, The value of CRM is easily measurable cross-selling opportunities; or possibly
integrated with POS systems, allows a by looking at each customer’s lifetime increasing new customer acquisition
retailer to make sure that a sale is value by taking into account all of his by 50 per cent by reaching out to a
consummated by offering real-time or her transactions. In addition to new target audience.
contextual offers and suggestions that lifetime value, customer capital can be You can evaluate the effectiveness of
take into account the customer’s prior measured by including activities such your CRM by measuring the additional
history and social media activity. as reviews and ratings, social media sales it generates. “To demonstrate
Another benefit in having a Cloud endorsements and recommendations, this, we use Test & Control
solution is that it allows the retailer to and this improves customer equity. methodology to measure the impact,"
expand in a much more cost-effective These factors form the basis of says Reddy. “In this process, a group of
manner," says Salil Godika of Happiest calculating ROI, and retailers can use customers with the same
Minds. Retailers can also look at them to set benchmarks in light of the characteristics are identified and split
integrating niche Cloud CRM CRM investments they have made. into two groups — a test group
applications to augment their core “Calculating the investment side of ROI containing most of them and a control
relationship management capabilities. is comparatively easy," says Indraneel group with the remainder. The test
For example, a retailer using its ERP Fuke, director of Bhea Technologies. group is exposed to communication
application’s CRM module can “One needs to factor in recurring designed using an integrated CRM
integrate it into niche CRM costs, such as software licences and approach, while the control group
applications for reviews and ratings, subscriptions, and onetime costs, like does not receive any targeted
social media integration and customer CRM implementation, hardware — communication and relies instead on
analytics. Cloud CRM solutions ensure which are zero for Cloudbased CRM — conventional methods of messaging,
that even small- and medium-sized and training costs.” However, like newspaper & TV ads, to influence
retailers harness the benefits of their calculating the return side of ROI their purchasing decisions. The
customer data at attractive and requires a little more effort. There purchasing behaviour of these groups
flexible pricing options. Platforms from needs to be clarity over the business are then evaluated for a defined
Cloud CRM providers, such as objectives a retailer sets out to achieve period on parameters like rate of
Salesforce, not only offer retailers fully through CRM — these objectives could response per campaign, frequency of
scalable Software-as-a-Service CRM, be set at increasing customer visits, average bill value and basket
but also a platform to develop its retention by 30 per cent through being size, and their contribution to total
custom CRM applications. more responsive to feedback; or sales. This test can be conducted
increasing the wallet share of existing across a number of clients, and we
Return on Investment customers by a quarter by identifying have seen an average increase of 5 per

4. cent in sales from the group exposed Loyalty Factor For Ranjit Satyanath, a senior
to integrated CRM.” Technology has added new channels of technology manager at Shoppers Stop:
customer interaction, and retailers “CRM is an integral part of our
leveraging new systems are finding business. We run a loyalty program
they can reach even distant customers called the First Citizens Club, and three
as a means to grow their business. “It quarters of our top-line revenues
is said that 70 per cent of buying come from its 2.5 million members”
decisions are made even before the Shoppers Stop developed the
first contact with the retailer through deployment of its bespoke CRM over
social media,” says Kranti Kiran its ERP system in-house. “This helps us
Avadhanula, director of CRM solution track the buying behaviour of our
management at SAP. “Companies that customers, and also helps us source
are able to better manage their brand products based on what the market
perception in social media are able to wants. Likewise, we also run
speed up their business growth. promotions based on what our
Retaining an existing customer is far consumers need, rather than doing
more economical than gaining new generic promotions. As a matter of
ones; thus, by running loyalty reward importance, our CRM product provides
programs, companies can defend their us with feedback from customers. “We
customer base and ensure repeat built a program whereby we give
business.” customers three times the loyalty
Spring Air uses CRM to build customer points for purchases made during the
loyalty and gain a complete view of its Diwali promotion period. This helped
customers, says Ashok Sharma, the customers build a large reservoir of
regional CEO of the sleep supplies points, and saw phenomenal success
retailer. “CRM helps is to manage last year; we see no reason why we
budgets, time bounds and target cannot repeat it this year.”
audiences for promotional activities In order to manage the relationship
that stimulate purchases. We also use with consumers, the company rolled
retail CRM to automate routine out a mobile app last year that is
operations, such as printing cards and designed to make promotions
letters, and send e-mails, and to create available to customers when they need
monitoring dashboards to ensure that it, rather than when the company
customer needs are being met. It can wants to communicate it to them.
define the most valuable customers,
forecast sales for different product
groups and analyse statistics.”

5. Harminder Sahni, managing director of retail major Globus, with a footprint of says Meheriar Patel, Globus Stores’s
Wazir Advisors, says: “Technology for 36 stores across the country, uses CRM CTO.
mobile devices is becoming developed with a partner for fuelling For Dinesh Kumar, director of
increasingly popular CRM. The mobile its loyalty program. The cards are Browntree Retail: “Our CRM approach
phone becomes the loyalty card, available in silver, gold and platinum has helped us build the trust of
meaning that customers don't need to categories and form a central customers in our brand as they are
carry another card in their pockets. All repository system for the company. aware that we listen to their queries,
transactions are conveyed through the “Around 60 per cent of our business and that any problems with regards to
mobile, and the retailer saves a lot of comes from our repeat clientele, and service or product will be addressed.
the costs for filling forms, card therefore loyalty is a big bet for us and CRM has made a significant
issuance and replacing old or lost we are constantly looking to innovate. contribution to our growth over the
cards. Also the service provider offers In fact we will be making an three years we have been in operation.
storage and management of data, and announcement soon about a new Providing products on request, solving
analytics, again saving a tremendous loyalty program that will enhance the issues in a given time frame and
amount of costs for the retailer. customer experience even more. responding to queries promptly has
Capillary is the market leader in this While I can’t disclose much now, we given us tremendous increase in
space and offers CRM services as will have features like a customer footfall.” CRM is certainly the
Software As A Service. A retailer pays a being able to check their points on a technology that is win-win, for
rental charge on a monthly basis for mobile device, and we are also retailers and customers alike.
each store using the service.” Fashion planning to introduce prepaid cards,”