Customer Relationship Management: Partner relationship management Archives

September 8, 2011

CRM Essentials for Group-Buying Sites

Social commerce is being talked about as a game changer for organizations in the near future. The adoption will be quicker for those operating in B2C domain. Social Commerce in itself is an umbrella under which many sub-models can be defined. One such model that is gaining popularirty are the emergence of Group buying sites like Groupon, Snapdeal.com and others.

This business model has seen lot of growth in recent times. Be it the incessant amount of funding for start-ups or the craze among customers, this concept has caught the eyes of all alike. Being a customer for few of them, somehow I couldn't resist myself in analyzing the model from CRM standpoint. Thanks to my passion with stuffs that brings value to customers :).

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Posted by Nishith Gupta at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

August 21, 2009

Strategic Partner Management - Does PRM deliver?

Partners determine and influence the fortune and fall of an organization greatly and more so with the current economic scenario , where the typical 4 Ps of Marketing face a tough battle in the crowded marketplace. The Partners or resellers are the face of the organization to the end customers. The advantage and contribution from channel partners is clear from the statistics that indicate many industry segments drawing more than 40 percent of revenue through the partner channel. The high-technology industry, for example, sells as much as 60 to 70 percent of products through indirect channels; for financial services, the figure is 80 percent; and for automotive, the figure is 90 percent.

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Posted by Khanchana at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

July 7, 2009

White labeling products - Solutions to some common challenges

In my previous post,” The white labeling business and importance of CRM”, I was trying to find the CRM impacts because of white label products. Continuing the topic in this post, I would like to highlight some of the technical solution to introduce white labeling (communication) products into market and also sustain the business from a proof of concept work and related white paper that which I drafted along with other colleagues.

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Posted by Raja Sekhar Ravi at 3:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

May 17, 2009

The white labeling business and importance of CRM

White labeling of products/services is not a new business and is in every sector. However there is a big difference from products to services industry. White labeling of services involves integration of IT systems on both sides of Retail Service Provider (RSP) and Wholesale Service Provider (WSP).

This is throughout customer life cycle starting from marketing the services as retailer branded products, fulfilling and assuring of the sold products under RSP's brand in the WSP's IT systems as well as RSPs systems. The example situations where white labeling is used is British Telecom's internet services are being sold by Royal Mail, Vodafone, O2 etc. Similarly in India, local cable operators and internet service providers sell the products/services in their brand name.

Traditionally we are aware that the CRM systems used for product catalogue, marketing, sales and order capture as a part of customer data and relationship functionality. In some cases CRM tools go to the extent of service assurance (recording customer problems and tracking the SLAs).

I tried to think about few important areas in CRM that gets impacted by this latest business model. These include

1) Wholesale Product Catalogue Management - Creating and maintaing these new wholesale product catalogues for Retail Service Providers and ensuring the synchronisation of these product/services between RSPs and WSP systems.
2) PartnerRelationship Management with these RSPs who can make our services penetrate in remote areas and in areas where the presence is less. Handling these partners is an impacted area.
3) Product fulfillment of RSP Customers When RSPs sell the white label products in their brand, the corresponding product on WSP needs to be fulfilled/provided and track that order to closure, this impacts the CRM system and related integration on WSP side. Also B2B integration with the RSP systems.
4) Assurance to RSP Customers Ensuring that if a customer problem arises because of the systems (not only IT) on wholesale service providers side identifying those situations and providing solutions to the customer and also informing the RSP about the progress of resolution is WSPs another important area.

These are a few that came into my mind. Can we think of a few more areas that gets impacted and how can we accomodate this new business model? Can we think of a small framework to address this latest business model? Waiting to see your inputs.

Posted by Raja Sekhar Ravi at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

May 8, 2009

Faulty CRM and Anniversary blues

Tomorrow is my marriage anniversary and here I am, 750 miles away from my wife, secure in the thought, that, thanks to the sophisticated systems of online retailers I can wow her with a nice bouquet of roses in a jiffy. Well I logged in very early in the morning to one of India’s most reputed online retailers and spotted that lovely bouquet which would make my wife swoon, and quickly transferred it to my shopping cart, and then, clicked on "proceed" and was connected to my bank, after feeding in the account details and pressing confirm I got the approval instantaneously.

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Posted by Shreedeep Panicker at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)