1. CUSTOMER
RELATIONSHIP
MANAGEMENT
UNIT - 3
PRESENTED BY
K.BALASRI PRASAD
B.Sc(KU), M.B.A(OU), NET(UGC), (Ph.D)(MGU)

3. Unit – III: Planning for CRM
Steps in Planning
Building Customer Centricity
Setting CRM Objectives
Defining Data Requirements, Planning
Desired Outputs
Relevant issues while planning the Outputs
Elements of CRM plan
CRM Strategy: The Strategy Development
Process
Customer Strategy Grid

4. Steps in Planning for CRM
Identify the best customers, and the worst
Distribute value differently to different
customers
Compete on scope
Focus on strategic capabilities
Win through customer-centric innovation
Measure customer performance
Unlearn and relearn
Redefine the focus
The new competition

5. Building Customer Centricity
Client-centric, also known as customer-
centric, is a strategy and a culture of
doing business that focuses on
creating the best experience for
the customer, and by doing so builds
brand loyalty.
Client-centric businesses ensure that
the customer is at the center of a
business's philosophy, operations, or
ideas.
To successfully implement a customer-

6. To build a customer-centric culture, business
leaders should take six actions:
1. Operationalize customer empathy:
Customer empathy is the ability to
identify a customer’s emotional need,
understand the reasons behind that
need, and respond to it effectively and
appropriately.
Customer support specialists are
encouraged to research the people they’re
helping and create mini personas for them
to better understand how the customers

7. 2. Hire for customer orientation:
From the very first interaction with prospective
employees, organizations should make thinking
about customers and their needs a clear priority.
During the interview process, hiring managers are
required to ask every candidate, regardless of role, a
question to gauge their customer orientation.
This practice not only assesses candidates and
ensures that every new employee is aligned to
customer-centric thinking, but also sends a clear
message to everyone about the importance of
customer experience at the company.

8. 3. Democratize customer insights
For every employee to adopt a customer-centric
mindset, every employee must understand the
organization’s customers.
And at every all-employee meeting, leaders give an
update on the company’s customer experience
delivery.
4. Facilitate direct interaction with
customers:
Companies need to develop ways for employees to
interact with customers directly, even in “back
office” functions.
Every employee impacts the customer experience

9. 5. Link employee culture to customer
outcomes
The adage “You can’t manage what you don’t
measure” applies to customer centricity, too.
Managers will be motivated and equipped to cultivate a
customer-centric culture if they know if and how it
impacts results, so organizations should ensure they
establish and track the link between culture and
customer impact.
6. Tie compensation to the customer:
Organizations should reinforce a customer-centric
culture through their compensation program.
Only when customer-centric strategies are
supported and advanced by culture will a company

10. Setting CRM Objectives
Sales optimization
Retaining established customers
Improving customer satisfaction
Improved data quality and
transparency
Marketing optimization
Opening up new target markets
Building a customer database

11. Defining Data Requirements
Data requirements definition establishes the process
used to identify, prioritize, precisely formulate, and
validate the data needed to achieve business
objectives.
When documenting data requirements, data should
be referenced in business language, reusing
approved standard business terms if available.
If business terms have not yet been standardized
and approved for the data within scope, the data
requirements process provides the occasion to
develop them.
Organizations are much better served by ensuring
that selection of and specifications for data used
to satisfy business objectives, are prioritized,

12. Data requirements definition should follow
an organized and sequential discovery
and decomposition process.
Data requirements should be represented in
the logical design of the data store and
should reflect standardization across
projects.
The data requirements definition process
contributes to the creation and validation
of business terms and definitions, which
link to metadata, data standards, and the
business processes which manage and
process the data.

13. Support Requirements
 How proficient is your staff at picking up new applications
and new concepts?
 Unless they’re all early adapters, you’re probably going to
need some degree of help with on-boarding the product.
 Knowing what level of support your staff will need for your
CRM implementation to succeed long term is important.
Industry & Market Requirements
 Are you in an industry that collects unique forms of
customer data, or one in which customers negotiate a
specific, non-standard path to buying?
 If so, you should pay attention to CRM solutions tailored to
your industry.
Feature Requirements
 The traditional way to pick a CRM application was with lists of
features and start comparing different products in a kind of

14. Financial Requirements
Company should have several solutions in mind that
can fulfill the business requirement.
The next step is to decide which of these is most
affordable.
Look for hidden costs; the base cost is almost never
the extent of your expenditures with CRM.
Knowing the full cost of your CRM solution up front
and projected costs over the life of the software will
prevent you from being over budget.
Vendor Requirements
Once you have found the right CRM solution and partner,
pause to examine the partners track record.
Ask whether the CRM implementation was genuinely
transformative, and if so, what role the vendor had to

15. Relevant issues while planning the
Outputs
1. Lack of senior management sponsorship
 CRM initiative solely driven by IT team.
 Business users unclear or unconvinced on benefits of CRM.
 Management not willing to commit to enforce CRM
adoption.
 Underestimating Change Management demanded by CRM.
2. Expecting too much, too soon
 Trying to accomplish all CRM objectives in the initial launch.
 Under estimating end-user transition by giving them full-featured, complex
CRM system from get-go.

16. 3. Lack of scope clarity & budget overruns
 Not committing adequate time & budget to requirement
discovery.
 Underestimating integration effort.
 Not anticipating quantity & quality of data to be migrated to
the new CRM.
 Underestimating end-user resistance and training costs.
 Underestimating infrastructure costs. Underestimating
customization & implementation costs
4. Underestimating Change Management
 Active resistance due to perceived threat from CRM.
 Passive resistance to adoption due to inertia of changing
old habits.
 CRM interface slow or un-intuitive, making it cumbersome to
use.
 CRM viewed as ‘something that benefits management only’

17. 5. Changes in Key Stakeholders in Middle of Project
 Internal CRM champion(s) leaving the organization or
having change of role or department.
 Arrival of new IT Head or Business Head, who has a different
vision for CRM.
 Changes in key personnel from CRM vendor’s side that roll-
back the progress made on vendor’s understanding of
organizational objectives
6. Lack of Expertise of the CRM vendor
Vendor does not have enough experience with the
CRM product being implemented.
Vendor does not have technology or process
maturity of delivering CRM projects of similar scale.
Vendor not fully aware of the challenges in CRM
implementation and is ill-prepared to anticipate and

18. 7. Lack of CRM Product Fit
 Product cannot support multiple deployment options,
namely – On Cloud, On-Premise, Private Cloud, etc.
 Product not flexible enough to allow for deeper
customizations to enable fit with organization’s growing
and changing needs.
 Product not keeping pace with current CRM trends, such as
– Global, Social, Mobile, etc.
 Product not intuitive or user-friendly, thereby hindering user
adoption.
8. Integration Related Issues
Lack of adequate support from other vendors of
existing systems that need to be integrated with
CRM.
Data integrity issues and uncertainty over ‘single

19. 9. Infrastructure Related Issues
Inadequately sized hardware leading to poor CRM
performance for end users.
Underestimating the budget for setting up a true
High-Availability, secure CRM setup, leading to cost
overruns.
10. Impact on Existing Business
Processes
Considering CRM as just a technology, instead of
business transformation tool.
Inflexibility to change existing way of doing things,
giving up entrenched (bad) business practices and
adopting best practices that CRM enables.

20. 11. Difficulty in deploying a single CRM system
spanning multiple geographic regions due to
differences in business practices and the required
localization.
12. Artificial time pressures created due to end-of-
contract situations with existing vendors. The
urgency and impossible timelines can derail the
change management efforts required for
implementation & adoption of new CRM.
13. Change in business priorities mid way through
CRM implementation, e.g. reallocation of CRM
budget, shifted focus on mergers & acquisitions,
changes in regulatory environment, etc.
14. Complexities in information security due to
differing encryption standards, Government

21. Elements of CRM plan
CRM Comprises of several Components which are essential to the
organization. The components of CRM are:
1. People Management:
 Effective use of people in the right place at the right time is called
people management.
 It is very essential the job roles assigned to the employee are in
accordance to their skills and capabilities.
 At the initial stage, an effective people strategy is adopted and
followed by work force analysis.
 The analysis of work force includes the analysis of their skills and
development.
 Finally, the strategy which would be required for the development and
change is set down and implemented.
2. Lead Management:
 The benefits of lead management are directly available to the
sales, call center and marketing departments.
 The activities involved in lead management relate to market
campaign, making customized forms, mailing lists etc.

22. 3. Sales force automation:
 Sales force automation (SFA) is a software solution that
includes forecasting, tracking potential customers,
interaction with customers and processing sales.
 It helps in identifying revenue possibilities. SFA includes
opportunity management i.e. supporting sales methodologies
and provide interconnection with other functions to the
company.
4. Customer Service:
 Customer service is also an important CRM because CRM
focus on comparison of customer data, gathering
information related to their purchase patterns.
 CRM also provides this information to every department that
requires it. Therefore, sales, marketing and personnel
department are able to gain in their knowledge of the customer.
This enables the organization to provide suitable solution to
every customer. Thus, enhances the retention of customers and

23. 5. Marketing:
 It involves the promotional activities that are involved in
promoting a product.
 CRM facilitates in increasing the effectiveness of
marketing by studying the potential targeted
customers.
6. Work flow automation:
 Work flow process mainly includes the streamlining of
process which ultimately help in reducing cost.
 Work flow automation saves time and energy of several
people doing the same job again and again.
 It relieves work force from unnecessary tasks. It avoid
paper work.
 This process also includes the integration of people and
processes, so that they work in harmony achieving a

24. 7. Business Reporting:
 CRM plays an important role by providing reports on the
business.
 Business reporting simply means the ability to identify the
exact position of your company at any given point of time.
 It ensures accurate information. This component of CRM
helps in exporting these reports to different systems and
also helps in comparison of historical data.
8. Analytics:
 The data is studied so that information can be used to study
the market trends.
 Historical and current data help in the creation of charts and
diagrams which ultimately facilitates a complete trend study.
 Analytics is an essential and pivotal part of CRM because it
enables study of data which can be used further to make an
estimate of the business conditions at any given point of
time.

25. CRM process
CRM process can be defined as any group of
action that is instrumental in the
achievement of the output of an operational
system, in accordance with a specific
measure of effectiveness.
CRM is a process of acquiring, retaining and
partnering with selective customers for
creating superior value for the company and
the customer.
The need to set up a CRM process may arise
because of the growth in the business or for
the proper management of customers.

26. The CRM process involves the following
five steps:
Identifying Target Market and Value
proposition
↓
Defining Overall Strategy
↓
Deciding on Customer Handling
↓
Selection of a Software for Performance
Management
↓

27. https://www.cisin.com/coffee-
break/marketing/how-elements-and-
process-of-crm-help-in-growing-
business.html

28.  1) Identifying the target market and value
proposition:
 This is the first step in establishing a CRM process, for
effective results, the target market must be clearly
defined. The definition of target market will depend on
psychographics, demographics tastes and preferences
of the customers. These factors would include age,
sex, religion, interest, and perception of the customers.
Efforts should be made to offer a clear value
proposition. A value proposition is a promise of a value
which will be delivered by vendors. It is specifically
targeted towards potential customers. It is defined and
designed to convince customers that a particular
product or service will add more value than competitive
set of products.

29.  2: Defining The Overall CRM Strategy And Consider Costs.
 This step involves the selection of a customer relationship
strategy. The choice of strategy would be based on the type of
customer service to be offered by the business. It would also
include the decision relating to the type of relationship
management that would work better for the business and the
customers. There are various strategies available for a
customer relationship manager. The CRM process can be co-
created with the help of customers. The business can have a
dedicated online CRM community or may also involve the
handling of customers with hands on assistance i.e. the
traditional way of dealing with customers.
 3: The Way Of Handling Each Customer Type Should Be
Defined.
 This step involves the manner in which each type of customer is
to be handled throughout the CRM process. This can be done
with the help of customer profiles in priority from step 1 and the
customer service strategies in step 2.

30.  4. Selection of a CRM Software for The Measurement of
Performance.
 Every organization, whether big or small will install a CRM
SOFTWARE to measure the performance of its strategy. A CRM
software helps in reducing the complexity of the process. Each
software provides a definite solution. The best CRM software
solutions include SAAS (software as a service delivered online),
and innovations in Thai area improve regularly. This ensures
that there is no need of an in-house IT team and server space
which would have been expensive.
5. RE-ENGAGE CUSTOMERS. Customer engagement is a
complex and never-ending task. Customers should be regularly
engaged in the organizations products and services. This will
help in creating a reminder in the minds of customers. Re-
engaging of customers positively in the business is utmost
important and yields excellent results. Following are the three
most used forms of customer’s re-engagement in the CRM
PROCESS: -Customer satisfaction surveys -E-mails. -Social

31. Important Questions
1. Explain the steps in Planning of CRM?
2. Discuss the relevant issues while planning the
Outputs of CRM implementation?
3. Explain the Strategy Development Process of
CRM?