The Essay On CRM's Significance In PKF Int'l Company.

Structure of the organization

The business proposal is on the significance of a customer relationship management system in one of the organization by the name PKF International Company, the organization is a consulting organization that offers consulting services on tax, assurance and advisory to their clients around the globe (Choudhury and Harrigan, 2014). The management analyzed their day to day operations based on the capability of customer service, the revenue that the organizational is capable of returning to the organization and also the outcomes they are to achieve in future and the management has come to the point of needing a customer relationship management, the customer relationship management (CRM) will be integrated with the accounting system which will take their services to a notch higher (Choudhury and Harrigan, 2014). The CRM will give the organization a competitive advantage and effectiveness on cost. The system will save on cost, time and also motivate employees to work because the system provides tools which enhance the activities of an organization (Goodhue, Wixom and Watson, 2009). Customer relationship management is the strongest and yet an efficient approach when it comes to maintaining and creating relationship with the customers (Riivari, 2009). The customer relationship management is not only pure to the business but it is ideate to the personal bonding within the individuals. The development to this kind of bonding could drive the business to new levels of success. When both the emotional linkage and the personal has been constructed, it becomes easy for organization to identify on to the actual needs of the clients and help to serve them better (Pedron, Picoto, Dhillon and Caldeira, 2016). It is a belief that when the strategies are sosphicated in the implementing of the customer relationship management, they tend to become more strong and fruitful in any business. Most organization dedicate the best tools in order to maintain CRM system in their workplace.

The following is the PKF organization structures. How departments are distributed with various services and the heads of different departments as well as the top management of the organization.

Problem statement

Every organization experiences the problem of losing customers. Reasons for a customer to turnover are wrong product pricing, poor store atmosphere, lack of product and service knowledge, and terrible customer service which leads to customer turnover from that organization (Chuang & Lin, 2013). A weak relationship is one of the core reasons why customer turnover from an organization (Krasnikov, Jayachandran and Kumar, 2009).  If an organization receives no loyalty from customers this means that they have a weak relationship with them.  Organizations should make customers feel better and in return the customers will remain loyal (Khodakarami and Chan, 2014). Defection rate of customers to an organization is a bad sign and weak relationship as a result the organization should find a solution to it. The tool to decrease the defection rate of customers in a firm is customer relationship management (CRM) (Choudhury and Harrigan, 2014). CRM can help the company to identify, acquire, satisfy and retain all existing profitable customers from the customer base.

Problem statement

The problem of losing customers is brought to attention because the losing of customer means that the profit of the organization will decrease (Hammer, 2015). In other words, company’s profit will increase if the customer defection rate is decreased.

The sales will be done through an online system in the sense that for qualifications of bids customers or clients will login to the system and check for updates concerning the qualifications, the tracking of a job will also be done online if there are currently any jobs which are to be done. The system will be able to produce proposals, reports and also plan for meetings (Stein, Smith and Lancioni, 2013).

Customers will be added to the system and track or follow up will be made through the online system.

Submission of RFPs, EOI, and PREQUELS will be done through the customer relationship management system.

Support would be web/email interactions, order entry, statements and invoices, credit and collections, web self-service, live-chat, problem resolution, customer implementation, and field support (Pedron, Picoto, Dillon and Caldeira, 2016). The system will maximize profits, revenue, and customer satisfaction. The system will provide marketing reporting, analysis, trends, graphs, and summary. Finance reports will be accurately by the system.

1. 1.    To ensure and increase customer satisfaction.
2.    To integrates business functions and processes, and networks which are externally,
3.    To expand the customer base.
4.    To enhance sales and support teams.
5.    To find ways in which cost effectiveness can be improved.

Here it essential to give reasons for the new system, the core function of a CRM system is to develop a good relationship with customers effectively establishing an effective CRM, the management aims to the company’s revenue as well as the profit by providing the highest satisfaction to customers which include sales, marketing, and technical support which are termed as customer processes (Stein, Smith and Lancioni, 2013). If the CRM system is of poor function of processes, then it prevents the organization from making growth, on the other hand, an effective CRM system comprises of all the activities including customer services and design of the product and automating as well as tracking communications with customers (Becker, Greve  and Albers, 2009). For organizations to improve their relationship, they need to build an effective CRM system. The operations of the system are used by those in the sales team and the top management of the organization (Stein, Smith and Lancioni, 2013). The management should also incorporate a good and effective process of communication with employees of the organization to motivate them.

Techniques and methods would be used in selecting during the implementation the CRM system. Responses from all stakeholders would be gathered to come up with an effective system because they are the people who can improve the satisfaction of the customers through giving their opinions during the development of the system (Pedron, Picoto, Dhillon and Caldeira, 2016). The issues the organization is facing is due to a poor way of managing customers processes. A CRM system which is ineffective creates constraints in handling the operations of the business properly and also provides a poor communication process which results to no motivation, and hence performance is hampered and this results in building a CRM system to enhance their business.

Proposed solution

During CRM system implementation or rather build up, the top management of the organization would focus on training its staff and the information technology infrastructure. The new system for it operate fully it will need training of all the stakeholders of the organization (Hammer, 2015). The times allocated to train all stakeholders will depend on the role each holds in the organization (Javadi and Azmoon, 2011). Because the sales team are to interact more with the CRM system, they will require a day to get trained, and the top management would also require a full day to get training because through the CRM system they will be able to make decisions that would ensure the smooth running of the organization. The training would be conducted severally to ensure stakeholders of the company are conversant with the system.

They will need a network infrastructure setting up routers and switches to facilitate the communication process in the organization. The Inventory control system as well as the invoicing system will be integrated into the CRM system (Laudon and Laudon, 2016). To ensure that the tool will be the most essential during laying out solutions they need to store all information including clients and organization information in a central place in the CRM system which helps all stakeholders to communicate and provide quality services to customers to ensure customer satisfaction is achieved.

The system is like an investment as a result and requires capital inform of money to build the CRM system, Information technology infrastructure, and network infrastructure (Hammer, 2015). The new system is expected to reduce the issues present in the organization and help in increasing the organization revenue as well as profit maximization without forgetting ensuring customer satisfaction is achieved (Kumar, 2009). The total cost is divided into one-off cost, non-expense one off cost and the cost incurred monthly.

The estimated cost for implementing the customer relationship management system is as follows in the table below.

Just as the name suggest that it’s a non-expense that is it does not involve any expenditure it terms of money, this the cost that includes time that would be used in implementing the customer relationship management system and includes time that would be used to train the staff and make them conversant of the system and the time that would be used to enter data into the new system to ensure data is stored in a controlled environment that is centered.

Research aim and objectives

This is the cost involved when user is using the system and we approximate $40 per user, so the total monthly cost for the admin staffs will be $40 multiplied by fifteen admin which will result to $600 monthly.

The benefits that the CRM system will offer to the organization is that there will be an increase in the productivity and performance of staff, the company’s revenue and the profit would be maximized by the tool from customers in the base (Pedron, Picoto,  Dhillon and Caldeira, 2016). The decision-making process will be fast because reports will be produced faster and with accurate data to enable the management to make concrete decisions for the organization. Customer satisfaction will be increased because the system itself creates a good relationship between the customer and organization by providing improved communication, support to the customers and reliable feedback. Lastly, the CRM tool will enhance the ability to provide services.

The customer relationship management is a strategy which is a long term investment which will help to maximize the organization profit and increase the revenues by margins. The main focus is to increase and improve customer satisfaction through creating a concrete customer relationship which helps the organization to have a competitive advantage over other organizations because what makes clients or rather customers stay loyal to the organization is the relationship you create with them and how you ensure their satisfaction is met (Pedron, Picoto, Dhillon, and Caldeira, 2016). When customers are satisfied with the final products and services the organization provides to them, they tend to purchase more from the organization.

The new customer relationship management system will increase the cost at the start which is only for a short period and this because at the start a lot of cost is incurred because it is at the start where the customer relationship management system will be purchased, the information technology infrastructure as well as the network infrastructure (Trainor, Andzulis, Rapp and Agnihotri, 2014.). But in the long run, the system will enhance cost effectively and their expenditure will be minimized which in turn maximizes the revenue and this is because after installation of the system, the information technology and network infrastructure the remaining cost that can be incurred is maintenance which is less costly and results to cost saving in the organization hence profit maximization is realized.

Customers will always want to purchase products and services from that firm that minds and cares about their desires and needs, and the best way a firm can build loyalty with customers is to get all the information about their customers and use this information to provide for each customer’s preferences (Trainor, Andzulis, Rapp and Agnihotri, 2014). The CRM system gives employees of a firm to access customer’s data, enabling every person in contact with the customer’s information enabling them to be customer agents. CRM systems enable companies and organizations to create strategies which in turn focus the firm on dedicating and serving customers well and also the system increases earnings faster because they know and understand their customers well because it is even simple and easier to sell more products and services to an existing customer than to find a new customer and sell to them (Javadi, and Azmoon, 2011). Another advantage of the system is that the system allows keeping track of trends and preferences of their customers and this results to many client referrals because if a customer is satisfied with an organization that means they will influence their friends and become customers of that firm.

CRM definitions

Conclusion

The organization is confronting issues due to not having a CRM system to enhance business processes which lead to low levels of satisfaction to the customers hence they cannot acquire the competitive advantage over their competitors to providing services.

It is recommended that a CRM system be incorporated with enhanced information technology infrastructure and network infrastructure, all staff should be trained well to enhance their productivity is increased, also ensure all the organizational information is entered and stored centrally in servers where the employees can access the information with ease, to incorporate software as a service so as to ensure a solution which is based on the software. Then all the staff should be motivated in accepting the new system and engage themselves with the Customer relationship management system.

References

Becker, J.U., Greve, G. and Albers, S., 2009. The impact of technological and organizational implementation of CRM on customer acquisition, maintenance, and retention. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 26(3), pp.207-215.

Bull, C., 2009. Strategic issues in customer relationship management (CRM) implementation. Business process management Journal, 9(5), pp.592-602.

Riivari, J., 2009. Mobile banking: A powerful new marketing and CRM tool for financial services companies all over Europe. Journal of Financial Services Marketing, 10(1), pp.11-20.

Choudhury, M.M. and Harrigan, P., 2014. CRM to social CRM: the integration of new technologies into customer relationship management. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 22(2), pp.149-176.

Chuang, S. H., & Lin, H. N. (2013). The roles of infrastructure capability and customer orientation in enhancing customer-information quality in CRM systems: Empirical evidence from Taiwan. International Journal of Information Management, 33(2), 271-281. 

Hammer, M., 2015. What is business process management?. In Handbook on Business Process Management 1 (pp. 3-16). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Javadi, M.H.M. and Azmoon, Z., 2011. Ranking branches of System Group company in Terms of acceptance preparation of electronic Customer Relationship Management using AHP method. Procedia Computer Science, 3, pp.1243-1248. 

Khodakarami, F. and Chan, Y.E., 2014. Exploring the role of customer relationship management (CRM) systems in customer knowledge creation. Information & Management, 51(1), pp.27-42. 

Kim, H.J., Lee, T., Lee, S.G. and Chun, J., 2009, January. Automated data warehousing for rule-based CRM systems. In Proceedings of the 14th Australasian database conference-Volume 17 (pp. 67-73). Australian Computer Society, Inc. 

Krasnikov, A., Jayachandran, S. and Kumar, V., 2009. The impact of customer relationship management implementation on cost and profit efficiencies: evidence from the US commercial banking industry. Journal of marketing, 73(6), pp.61-76. 

Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P., 2016. Management information system. Pearson Education India. 

Pedron, C.D., Picoto, W.N., Dhillon, G. and Caldeira, M., 2016. Value-focused objectives for CRM system adoption. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 116(3), pp.526-545. 

Stein, A.D., Smith, M.F. and Lancioni, R.A., 2013. The development and diffusion of customer relationship management (CRM) intelligence in business-to-business environments. Industrial Marketing Management, 42(6), pp.855-861. 

Trainor, K.J., Andzulis, J.M., Rapp, A. and Agnihotri, R., 2014. Social media technology usage and customer relationship performance: A capabilities-based examination of social CRM. Journal of Business Research, 67(6), pp.1201-1208. 

Triki, A. and Zouaoui, F., 2011. Customer knowledge management competencies role in the CRM implementation project. Journal of organizational knowledge management, 2011, p.11.