‘Anyone’ Relationship Management
My previous post (Investing in Customers, during Recession) discussed how successful companies tend to invest in customers during an economic downturn. While this is a proven strategy, the execution of it is often plagued with practical limitations of the ever-shrinking discretionary budget spends and similar such roadblocks that are characteristics of a cautionary, recession-hit landscape.
However, several tactics employed by companies, driven by the demands of a recessionary economy are emerging as genuine CRM trends, with reasonable longevity to survive being called a fad.
The common theme of most of these ‘recession-nourished’ trends is the need to stretch the CRM dollar, thereby increasing the ROI on CRM initiatives. Often, due to upper management directive and at times due to an instinctive response to turbulent times, companies have been actively trying to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of CRM initiatives. Fine tuning existing CRM processes and using already available CRM infrastructure to derive more business benefits, is commonly observed during a recessionary economy. A company focusing on ‘sales lead conversion effectiveness’ as opposed to ‘sales lead generation adeptness’ is a common example of the change of tactics in the CRM space, being influenced by an economic downturn.
Anyone relationship Management ( to borrow from the Microsoft’s CRM platform solution, xRM ) is considered the natural evolution of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and PRM (Partner Relationship Management). It stems from the realization that managing relationships with Partners, Field Sales Representatives and Employees needn’t be greatly different from each other. The basic tenets of Relationship management remain the same! ( I suppose, it isn’t true for human relationships, though 
)
The reason ‘Anyone relationship Management’ is discussed as a prominent ‘recession-nourished’ trend is the fact that the streamlining and resource savings, such solutions promise is no longer considered a bonus, but rather is treated as an essential condition for any CRM initiative to earn a budget approval.
Infosys has been proactively assisting clients in identifying and implementing such initiatives. An example from one of our clients is recounted here.
One of our clients, wanted to create an internet portal with confidential, Sales related information for their Sales representatives around the world, the cost of the project was prohibitive for the sales department though.
Now, the client had implemented an Oracle iStore e-commerce solution (Oracle iStore incidentally is listed in the ‘Leader’ quadrant by Gartner) to enable purchase of accessories by their customers and compliments their conventional Sales channels. The Infosys team suggested that the same CRM solution aimed at the web customers, could be leveraged and extended to the ‘internal customers’ too. A specialty iStore site was setup, to engage the Sales Representatives similar to the end-customers. Certain end-customer specific functionalities like discussion forums, shopping carts and ability to create Quotes fitted the Sales Representatives ‘like a glove’, as per our client’s assertion.
The twin benefits of ‘stretching the CRM dollar’ and establishing a cohesive relationship management model, was well received and it even spawned two additional initiatives for specialty iStore sites at engaging two additional sets of stake-holders. As our client realized, using an existing CRM solution to manage relationships with other stakeholders, like partners, vendors and employees remarkably improves the efficiency of CRM solutions and increases the return on CRM investments.
An increased ROI! …well, if that doesn’t catch the attention of your project sponsor, then nothing else will!
