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Aviva Ireland Life Cover campaigns 23rd March 2010 mplSystems implements order to claims management facility for Aviva Ireland. More >> mplSystems' Winter Newsletter #2 out now 9th February 2010 Case studies, new products, partner news and More >> Studio Moderna Contract Win 9th December 2009 Significant contract win for a strategic 5 year solution with Studio Moderna's European operations. More >> Announcing iPhoenix 20th September 2009 mplSystems announces collaboration with Anodas Software (Zylog) at Call Centre Expo 2009. More >> iMobile - the intelligent way to stay connected 20th April 2009 mplSystems provides mobile data solution as an integrated part of its intelligentContact™ portfolio. More >>
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Lean or traditional CRM 15 October 2007
How many times have you heard the acronym CRM mentioned in meetings, conversations and emails in the last week? Yet, the longer you have worked in the industry, the more difficult you will find it to define what CRM actually is. Although the term CRM has thousands of translations, the concept of making and maintaining relationships with good customers is one of the cornerstones of commerce that has been in place for thousands of years. It is a fundamental feature of business which seems to be independent of culture, geography or generation. Over the past 10 years, the real changes have been directed at the way companies record their customer information and the software applications that make it available to its employees. This has led to a huge software market characterised by the purchase of Siebel by Oracle in 2005 for $5.85 Billion. From all the talk about CRM, it was the software industry that focussed the market and, to many, this became the most prominent definition of CRM. That is, a collection of electronic forms designed to perform different sales, service and marketing functions supported by a customer centric database. CRM software provided part of the answer for multi-disciplinary businesses to communicate more clearly with their customers. Current and traditional CRM software design focuses sales and service functions rather than a dynamic “process centric” view of business operations. This traditional approach makes it difficult for contact centre advisors to navigate efficiently through even simple transactions. The advisor could choose from service requests, contacts, accounts, activities, products, contracts, plans, sale opportunities, marketing campaigns, leads, events, auctions, quotes, orders, appointments, suppliers, forecasts, pipeline and so on - the language of the CRM vendor and not the customer or the business. A process centric approach Although CRM software provides companies with the ability to communicate holistically with the customer, it does not create a great customer experience. Customers want a quick and reliable service that fulfils their expectations. This is where a process centric approach to customer interaction management is required. In this model, the advisor first establishes the process that is required to fulfil the customer need. This may be done from experience or by employing a process search facility at the desktop. Once the process is identified, the call centre advisor is guided through the steps necessary to complete the interaction. These should be achieved by using dynamic applications that adapt to the conversation taking place, fulfilling the needs of the business, the customer and the advisor on a single screen and, therefore, removing the need for lengthy and error-prone navigations. The intelligent desktop The dynamic application, or intelligent desktop, will combine information automatically from various 'back-end’ systems and the CRM database in real time. The real key though is the data presented is tailored directly to the customer and advisors needs without the fiendish complexity and hundreds of “tabs” of typical solutions – the lean process centric architecture. For companies who have already invested heavily in CRM and customer centric database applications, this process centric approach to customer interaction will quickly improve return on investment. It is a fast and efficient way to increase productivity in the contact centre, reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction. The CRM software becomes another building block of the Service Orientated Architecture rather than just an agent interaction tool. For companies starting on the CRM journey, the process centric approach will provide a great deal of focus for the project. Thinking carefully about the customer experience for each transaction, the ability to build and change it easily will lead to greater return on investment. Companies who just go for a static 360 degree view approach will probably waste money in their approach, building applications that are too complex to operate and do not actually improve the customer experience. At mplSystems, the process centric approach is part of our intelligentContact Engineering methodology, backed up by our highly flexible intelligentDesktop applications development and workflow environment. Working in partnership with Microsoft CRM, mplSystems is the perfect partner to any CRM implementation team. Press contact: Amanda Byart
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