ARTICLE BY B C THIMMAIAH

1. 8 Page 8-11 © MAT Journals 2021. All Rights Reserved
e-ISSN: 2582-7804
Volume-2, Issue-2 (July-December, 2021)
Journal of
Sales, Service and Marketing Research
www.matjournals.com
Shifting Paradigms on Strategic Customer Relationship Management
Thimmaiah Bayavanda Chinnappa1
, N. Karunakaran2*
1
Assistant Professor, 2
Principal and Research Guide in Economics, People Institute of Management
Studies (PIMS), Munnad-Post, Chengala, Kasaragod, Kerala, India
*Corresponding Author: narankarun@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
Customer Relationship Management
systems must do more than just help
organizations, track their customer
interactions, they must also help them
effectively analyze this information, spot
trends and opportunities, and drive actions
to profitable outcomes. They then need to
be able to effectively enable their sales force
with information in order to keep them
focused on the hottest opportunities, the
best customers and key accounts.
Keywords: Customer, relationship,
management, strategic
INTRODUCTION
Nothing can impact the health of a
business more quickly than the effectiveness
of its sales force and its relations with its
customers. While most organizations today
recognize the value of customer relationship
management, many of the so called customer
relationship management systems in place are
nothing more than glorified contact
management applications. But if companies
hope to obtain maximum value from their
investment in CRM systems they need to focus
on the strategic role CRM can play in better
enabling companies to identify, select, acquire,
develop, and retain customers [1]. In addition,
this information needs to be integrated
throughout the organization. Tailored Strategic
CRM solutions provide a host of benefits,
including:
 Improved communication between
corporate and field sales.
 Support for identifying accounts for sales
campaigns.
 Drive greater opportunities by keeping
focused on major accounts.
 Identify profitability and cost of servicing
of key accounts.
 Turn information into knowledge through
a tested, structured process for assessing
account.
 Help successfully qualify and manage
opportunities.
 Use automated gap analysis tool to
quickly identify strengths and
weaknesses.
 Improved field sales force access to key
corporate and account data
supports team-based servicing of major
accounts.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Implications of strategic customer
relationship management are analyzed with
various reports and articles as reference.
RESULTS, ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
Strategic Customer Relationship
Management: Meaning: It is a complex set
of activities that together form a basis for a
sustainable and hard to imitate competitive
advantage; and shapes interaction between the
company and customers to allow
maximization of lifetime value of customers.
This also recognizes the difference between
customers with respect to economic value to
firm as well as their expectations from the firm
[2].
Importance of SCRM: A strategic CRM
approach involves collaboration between
company departments to facilitate an ongoing
real time customer information flow. Sales
management, technical support, and the
marketing department must share the
information they gather during the various
opportunities they engage customers. Strategic
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
anticipates rapid growth (or even steady
growth) scenarios effective and responsive

2. 9 Page 8-11 © MAT Journals 2021. All Rights Reserved
e-ISSN: 2582-7804
Volume-2, Issue-2 (July-December, 2021)
Journal of
Sales, Service and Marketing Research
www.matjournals.com
customer support gets lost [9]. CRM is
designed to coordinate multiple channels of
support for the customer in ensuring problems,
questions, and feedback are continuously
administered, when a customer needs help
quickly. Knowing customer profiles, history,
and preferences is a best business practice that
confirms for both the loyal and new customer
that their supplier cares about them [3]. And,
of course, the idea of customer care is at the
very heart of the concept of relationship
management.
SCRM Design: Strategic CRM must begin at
the sales force level, and sales force
automation within a sophisticated enterprise
resource planning software (ERP). A good
ERP CRM module will be designed around the
idea that communication is paramount, and the
connectivity necessary to ensure this must be
strong. The flow of CRM work, storage of
information, tools of communication, and ROI
of CRM are all features that must be
considered when looking to employ sales force
automation in a strategic CRM application.
Ultimately, both loyal and prospective
customer is essence of doing business in the
Information Age [4].
CRM has evolved from a simple
contact management sales tool to a core
element of virtually any business. In simple
terms, CRM is the combination of people,
process, and technology used together to
effectively service, sell, and market to a
company’s most profitable customers. But
with the adoption of business strategies built
around customer-centric values, traditional
customer-facing only CRM may be shorting
business of the complete picture of their
customers. CEOs and executives that fail to
take Next Generation Strategic CRM seriously
as a core business strategy for their company
may suffer consequences a lot worse than
many may think.
Customer Value Creation: Today’s business
approach to innovation, value-creation, and
strategy, are being driven by a new paradigm
of “co-creation” and “customer intimacy”.
Customers are becoming much more involved
with companies in helping design and improve
products, services, and business performance.
The consensus is that this is all good and has a
number of upsides (loyalty, better products,
more revenue, and so on). As a result, people
traditionally outside the “customer-facing”
organizations are becoming more involved in
the value-creation process and creating a more
intimate relationship with the customer.
Current SMS-based CRM solutions fall short
of managing the critical relationships and
interactions.
Surprisingly, very few research and
analysis groups have locked in on this
paradigm shift, continuing to address the CRM
market from the traditional sales, marketing,
and support perspective. Anecdotal reports and
studies many times fail to identify the newer
emerging next generation CRM solutions and
still focus on the prominent SMS-based CRM
solutions. Companies would be wise to do
their own research and analysis and not be
swayed by research recommendations alone
[5].
Next Generation Strategic CRM: CRM has
evolved from glorified contact management
tools used mostly by sales people to manage
activity within their accounts, to include
Customer Support, Opportunity Management,
and Campaign Management, among other
things. The adoption of CRM within business
can be likened to desktop computers. In the
beginning, like computers, the investment for
CRM was high but only a select few used it.
Now, as the value of using CRM has been
recognized and the cost to implement and
manage has dropped, virtually everyone in the
company is (or needs to be) connected in some
capacity [6]. As companies move away from
product-centric business models to more
customer centric models which operate on the
premise that every employee is customer
facing and every employee’s role is to generate
customer value, the meaning of CRM is also
changing.
Next Generation Strategic CRM is
about broadening the reach of customers into
all parts of the business, and broadening the
access of every employee into the customer’s
business and experiences. Next Generation
Strategic CRM encompasses all parts of the
business, from traditional sales, marketing, and
support, to engineering, manufacturing,
operations, to supply and sales channels, to the
customer [7]. Under the covers of the Next
Generation Strategic CRM is something of an
ERP “lite”. Once considered part of an
accounting or MRP solution, companies are
finding value in having these business
processes and the data they manage tied

3. 10 Page 8-11 © MAT Journals 2021. All Rights Reserved
e-ISSN: 2582-7804
Volume-2, Issue-2 (July-December, 2021)
Journal of
Sales, Service and Marketing Research
www.matjournals.com
directly back to the customer. Equally, internal
support can track support calls down to
specific items and transactions, and match
serial numbers for entitlement and SLA
requirements.
Sales and marketing can track sales
against specific items, develop trend and
behavior analysis on items purchased, launch
upgrade/up sell campaigns specific to buyers
of certain products or services [8]. Product
Management can monitor/support calls against
specific products and analyze customer
comments for improved product design and
quality. All of these out of same solution
without the need of re-entering, re-generating
and merging data and reports from disparate
systems or paying for expensive integration
services [9]. ERP, from the historical sense has
always been viewed as a massive undertaking
left only for the mega-giants who have
millions of dollars to throw at license,
integration and implementation services.
Despite having favorable merits in terms of
consolidating and automating certain
operations, it is subject to the belief that the
inflexibility inherent in its design forces
businesses around product-centric processes
and tends to alienate customers due to its
inability to handle special exceptions or unique
situations. And, its rigid structure and complex
integration and customization framework
prevents companies from quickly responding
to changes in business.
Next Generation Strategic CRM is not
ERP. It has however taken many of the best
principals of ERP, such as order management,
fulfillment, accounting, and MRP/Inventory
management, and converted them to light-
weight “good enough” implementations that
offer easy customization and flexibility
allowing companies to work in a more agile
and fluid business environment and quickly
respond to changes and unique situations as
they grow and expand. The fact is most
companies, large or small, do not need a full-
blown ERP solution or “best-of-breed”
applications in all parts of their business. Next
Generation Strategic CRM provides multiple
benefits to these companies by providing true
business-wide customer management and an
integrated business-wide operations platform
in a “good enough” model that satisfies most
business situations.
CONCLUSION
Next Generation Strategic CRM is a
new paradigm shift from traditional SMS-
based (Sales, Marketing, Support) CRM. Next
Generation Strategic CRM encompasses all
parts of the business, from traditional sales,
marketing, and support, to engineering,
manufacturing, operations, to supply and sales
channels, to the customer. Executives would
be wise to fully understand CRM from a core
business strategy. Those that view it as a
point-solution will never achieve the results
and benefits expected.
Companies currently reviewing,
anticipating or developing a Next Generation
Strategic CRM strategy should consider the
following:
1. Begin with the CEO. If the CEO is not the
driving catalyst for making CRM a core
strategy for the company; stop; without
the CEO’s support and strategic mandate
the effort is destined to fail.
2. Know Your Mission. What is it that you
are going to do? By when? For how
much? How will you measure success?
And, most importantly, by what scale?
3. You need to know the scale of the
implementation you are about to drive
and must manage expectations from the
very start.
4. Start with People First. Focus first on the
people, the stakeholders. Communicate
continually on the good, the bad, and the
ugly of the initiative. Without their input
and engagement it will be difficult to gain
full adoption.
5. Focus Process Second. Your business
processes should drive your CRM
solution methodology. Best practices are
useful for common processes, but be
flexible.
6. Your company’s uniqueness can override
or customize a best practice. Use the
80/20 rule and don’t get stuck in the
minutia.
7. Choose Technology Last. The last part of
the entire CRM implementation should be
the technology. Ironically, many
executives move right ahead with a “fire,
ready, aim” mentality, a backwards
approach of choosing the system first then
modifying process/people to follow the
system.

4. 11 Page 8-11 © MAT Journals 2021. All Rights Reserved
e-ISSN: 2582-7804
Volume-2, Issue-2 (July-December, 2021)
Journal of
Sales, Service and Marketing Research
www.matjournals.com
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