Elective – customer relationship management

Explain the modalities of marketing and customer relations if you are to

succeed as a marketing manager in a firm

Effective Customer Relationship 

Management (CRM) Implementations

CRM IS A WAY OF RUNNING THE BUSINESS

While the path described below is the perfect theoretical approach (avoiding the mistakes, of

course), and one that we like to see clients follow, real-life experience tells us the world doesn’t

always work that way.  The most typical approach to CRM has companies developing point

solutions, something that solves one particular problem, out of acute necessity.  However,

whether you use a consulting firm to help you implement the point solution or you go it alone,

you should be sure that the key questions around direction, integration, processes and people are

being asked.  Generally speaking, the questions are a lot more easily asked than answered, which

leads most companies back to the need for an overarching strategy and the realization that CRM

really is a way of running the business, not just the program du jour. Additionally, CRM is a way

to increase revenues and/or reduce costs. Not understanding the fact that this is a bottom line

strategy could lead you to make the wrong decisions in establishing your strategy.

 

THE RIGHT APPROACH FOR EFFECTIVE CRM

Everyone wants to be a CRM Hero — the desired outcome. No one wants to be a CRM Zero —

the career-limiting option.  Allow us to offer five words of advice: don’t start by picking

software. In addition, it would be prudent to watch for these classic mistakes:

Classic Mistake #1: Thinking that CRM is, at its heart, technology-based.  The best example of

this is the client who told us, “We need to get a CRM.”  That makes no sense, for it is not the

technology that makes you a hero, it is the recognition and belief by your organization that CRM

is a way to operate the company.  To accomplish this, the CRM Hero must demonstrate the

leadership necessary to develop a CRM strategy and get the rest of the company to come along

for the ride.  At the risk of stating the obvious, too many companies we’ve seen have adroitly

demonstrated that they have no clue where their CRM program is going – but, wow, look at all

that data!  Never mind that they will soon be another case study in failed expectations. However,

with a well-conceived strategy that highlights all aspects of the customer relationship, they

would be able to clearly articulate the specific changes, tools and techniques that must be

employed over time within their organization to deliver measurable results.

Classic Mistake #2: So I’ve made a strategy, let’s go get the software.  Not so fast. With clear

articulation comes the second step: communicating the strategy to the rest of the company and

your guests.  Not much new technology is needed for this step, either.  However, you are

guaranteed to fall short of your CRM goals without effective communication throughout the

company.  Meanwhile, the CRM Hero grows ever more frustrated that people don’t “get it.” 

Yet, people are the most vital, and the most frequently overlooked, part of the equation.  As

service providers, we all know that our frontline people have the power to make or break the

relationships we enjoy with our guests, but it is stunning to note that occasionally this basic truth

gets forgotten. If our people don’t understand the importance we are suddenly placing on

effective relations with our guests, those relations will be anything but effective.  

Which leads us  to….

Classic Mistake #3: OK, we’ve got everybody jazzed about this CRM thing; let’s get some

technology in here to help them.  Sounds great, but help them do what?  The same things they

did before you got them the technology?  While those things worked really well for you under

your old way of managing the business, remember that this is a new way of thinking you’re

trying to impart.  With new thinking must come new ways of working, which means you will

need to lead the way in helping your company look at things the same way your guests look at

things.  These guest-centric business processes are simple in concept, but much more difficult to

get your people to design.  Some companies have taken the radical step of inviting customers

into their process design meetings to be sure they’re taking a customer-centric approach.  

Classic Mistake #4: We know what we’re trying to do, everybody’s on board and our processes are

aligned with the desired guest experience – now all I need is a new POS system, a data warehouse, a

campaign management tool, new call center software for my reservations agents, a good PMS built on

the latest platform and a new yield management tool. It’s finally time for technology, but if you follow

this approach your systems integrators will be happy, though your IT shop won’t be when they have to

keep all of these balls in the air. Integration is the key – single points of data collection, techniques for

data cleansing and easy ways of getting the right information to the right people in a way that allows for

seamless, consistent, personalized service.

KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATIONS

  1. The Keep It Simple, Stupid (K.I.S.S.) Principle. There are a few home truths

about successful CRM implementations. The K.I.S.S. principle is highly applicable.

Over-complicating the process does one thing – it succeeds in extending the

duration, potentially causing budgetary overruns. In the words of Dr. Chekitan Dev,

associate professor of strategic marketing at Cornell University’s School of Hotel

Administration, “Do not draw up a long-winded program. It is important to have

quick hits that show short-term benefits – this will help to get people on board, since

they want to see results. Maintain the built-in potential to upgrade… a simple process

that grows organically will be the most successful, and yield the best results.” If you

must plan a gargantuan CRM program, “break it down into shorter-term, focused

projects with clearly defined business benefits and success metrics”1 . This brings us

to the second key to success. 

2. Actionable Measurements and Performance Metrics. It is important to ensure

that adequate emphasis is placed on establishing timely and actionable

measurements. It is crucial to be able to identify the bottom line impact on an

ongoing basis of the program that has been established.

3. Stakeholder Ownership. If you want to ensure a successful implementation, it is

important to ensure that all stakeholders are on board. It is not merely sufficient if

key players buy into the process. They must take ownership of, and be actively

engaged in the process. For a successful project it is important to have internal

champions. 

4. GIGO. Better known as “Garbage In – Garbage Out,” this is the test of

stakeholder ownership.  Realize that none of the exciting new capabilities are worth

anything without good data.  In our experience, legacy systems generally have errors

in roughly half of their customer records.  These could be as simple as an address

that reads “road” instead of “street,” or as complicated as multiple customer records

for the same customer, each with slight differences.  Yet you have countless

opportunities to capture good data in the course of a guest experience.  Part of your

business process work has to be to ensure effective capture and cleansing of

customer data.  Effective capture implies not sticking all of the good stuff in the

comments field, where it likely resides today, completely unread in the hustle and

bustle of the typical front desk.

5. Consider the Value of the Customer. Successful CRM is not about providing the

best service on the block; rather, the key to effective relations with your customers is

in providing appropriate service.  We all know that customers are not equal.  That’s

why loyalty programs were invented.  Yet far too frequently we see clients that

developed sophisticated segmentation capabilities and tiered loyalty programs who

have no means of differentiating the service they provide to these segments of

guests.  One resort client was excited about his newfound ability to execute real-time

marketing campaigns to fill short-term availabilities at the hugely popular property. 

Yet he had not considered the value associated with different customer segments and

was disappointed when the realization from these last-minute guests was not up to

the usual standards of the resort.  Simply put, this client was ignoring all of its

segmentation data and mass-marketing its limited capacity.  Thus, it is important to

provide appropriate service at every interaction based upon intelligent segmentation.

6. Help Your Employees Help Your Guests. All employees, at all properties,

should have the training and up-to-date information that allows them to provide

seamless, consistent, personalized service to the customer. According to Jens

Thraenhart, director Internet strategy, Fairmont Hotels and Resorts,  “A successful

CRM and customer retention strategy in the hotel industry is dependent on the

implementation at the property level. It is important to train front line employees to

capture information from many offline touch points, in combination with online data

capture. Training is vital to ensure consistency and cleanliness of guest information.”

This information should be immediately available to front desk receptionists, call

center agents, pit bosses, concierge and housekeeping staff, and so on, and should be

served up at the right time. 

This is where the true test of CRM solutions takes place.  There is nothing worse for your

relationships than raising expectations and then failing to meet them.  

Does the call center know about the e-mail campaign that marketing just sent out?  

Does the front desk recognize that the repeat guest standing before them remembers the

way to the elevator and doesn’t need a 60-second refresher course complete with maps?  

Does the reservations agent realize that the potential guest on the telephone has used the

onsite spa the past three times she has been at the property, and might just want to get

services booked in advance?  And doesn’t want to be transferred to the spa to start over

with names, dates and addresses?

Truly successful CRM implementations anticipate these kinds of issues and build the requisite

business processes, employee training and integrated systems necessary to meet or even exceed

growing expectations.

Continue the Relationship. Interaction with the customer does not begin when they arrive at the

front desk and end when they depart for the airport – it begins before their first visit and lasts a

lifetime.  Remember, a 2 percent increase in customer retention is equivalent to a 10 percent

reduction in costs (Caterer & Hotelkeeper, 1994).

It’s All about Technology – Not! Technology certainly plays an important role in the

implementation of a successful CRM project. However, it is not a silver bullet that will solve all

problems or open all doors. It is important to remember that all technology decisions are only

relevant in a business context. All the technology in the world is cool, but if your business

processes aren’t set up to effectively utilize these resources, your company will be added to the

statistics of failed CRM implementations. 

Conclusion

Implementing an effective CRM solution is not complex. Adequate planning, effective

communication, stakeholder involvement and mistake avoidance will ensure that your initiative

gets off the ground easily, and places you squarely in the exalted ranks of successful CRM

implementers.

The most important and valuable asset of an organization is manpower or

human resource. Development of human resource is needed by any organization if

it wants to succeed in the fast growing and fast changing business environment.

An organizations performs and resulting productively and directly proportional to

the quality and quantity of the human resource.

The process of human resource planning is one of the most crucial, complex and

containing managerial functions. Organizations can proper and progress only

through the creative efforts and competencies of their human resources.

So I have to plan a multi step process including various issues, such as.

1. Deciding objectives and goals

2. Estimating future organizational structure and manpower requirements.

3. Auditing human resources.

4. Planning job requirements and job descriptions.

5. Developing a human resource plan.

Human resources are utilized the optimum possible extent in order to achieve

individual and organizational goals. Human Resource Management is based on the

personal administration, Employee welfare and Functional areas.

These main areas can be broadly classified into following categories.

Personal Administration.

a. Recruitment Selection

b. Induction

c. Compensation

d. Discipline

e. Transfer and promotion

f. Merit rating and evaluation of employees

g. Administration

h. Personnel Training and Development Training

i. Personnel records and statistics.

j. Retirement

k. Statutory compliance

B. Employee welfare

a. Conditions of work environment

b. Employee’s health service

C. Functional Areas of Human Resource Management.

a. Organizational Planning and Development

b. Staffing and employment

c. Trading and Development

d. Wage and Salary Administration

e. Motivation and incentives.

f. Employee Service and benefits

g. Employee records

h. Labor and industrial Relations.

i. Personnel Research and Personnel Audit.

To formulate the effective HR Planning, It is important to have mixture and

perfective use of the human resource functions. Manpower planning involves

identifying staffing needs, analyzing the available personnel and determining what

additions and / or replacements are required to maintain a staff of the desired size

and quality. It can be defined as “a strategy for the acquisition, utilization,

improvement and preservation of an organization’s human resources”. HRP is a

process of identifying human resource requirements in terms of quality and

quantity.

Today the organizations are more dependent upon people. They are increasingly

involved in more complex technologies and are functioning in more complex

economic, social and political environments. As a result, the organizations face

shortage of the right kind of human resources. HRP enables to get the right type of

personnel in the organization.

Human resources are utilized to the optimum possible extent in order to achieve

individual and organizational goals. The objective of human resource planning is to

maintain and improve the organizations ability to achieve its goal by developing

strategies that will result in optimum contribution of human resources.

I have to give importance to the following areas while preparing or formulating an

effective HRP Process.

1. PERSONNEL REQUIREMENTS:

HRP involves forecasting of personnel requirements in organizations. After

deciding the objectives and goals the management must estimate the structure of

the organization at a given point in time. Several points are to be taken into mind

that; while estimating it. The eventualities, and contingencies of general economic

business cycles; expansion following enlargement and growth in business, changes

in management philosophies and leadership styles, the use of new mechanical

technology etc. are such areas. To carry on its work, each organization needs

personnel with the necessary qualifications, skills, knowledge, work experience

and aptitude for work. These are provided through effective manpower planning.

HRP helps management to anticipate personnel shortages and surpluses and

develop ways to avoid or correct problems before they become serious.

2. RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION

A proper forecasting of personnel requirements enables the organization to

determine proper sources of recruitment. The required personnel can be selected

either from internal or external sources.

The organization can also adopt a proper selection procedure depending upon the

needs of the jobs. Proper tests can be designed to select the right candidate for the

right job.

3. PLACEMENT OF PERSONNEL:

HRP facilitates proper placement of the employees in the organization. Placement

refers to fitting the right person at the right place of work. Proper placement

brings job satisfaction to the employees and enhances employees’ efficiency. The

selected personnel are placed at the right place of work. Persons are placed in

those departments or in those areas where there is shortage of personnel. If there

is a surplus, then that personnel can be shifted to some other areas or departments

as the case may be.

4. PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL:

HRP assists in performance appraisal of the employees in the organization. It

refers to find out the quality of performance of different employees in relation to

the requirements of each job. When related to the employees if there are

weaknesses then additional training or some other measures can be undertaken.

5. PROMOTIONS:

HRP ensures right promotion of the employees in the organization. Promotion

involves higher position, higher powers and higher pay. The organization would be

in a position to promote the right person depending upon the performance

appraisal reports.

6. TRAINING:

It involves imparting knowledge and skills, developing attitudes, skills and social

behavior of the employee.

HRP identifies the training needs of personnel Training & Development trainings

includes the training for

1. Apprentices

2. Workers

3. Foreman and supervisors

4. Junior Executives and

5. Management Staff.

7.TRANSFER:

HRP facilitates proper transfer of the employees in the organization. HRP has its

own way to transfer i.e. side-ways movement of the employees in the organization.

There may be a situation where there is surplus personnel in one department and

shortage in another department. This situation can be corrected by effecting

transfers at the right time.

8.CAREER DEVELOPMENT:

Career development refers to developing careers of the employees in the

organization. HRP is conducted taking into consideration the long range plans of

the organization. The plans are made known to members of the organization. The

employees can plan for their careers with in the organization once they come to

know the qualification and qualities that would be required to implement the long

range plans.

9. ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT:

It takes place when there are better results in the form of higher productivity or

efficiency. It also ensures the development of the organization. It avoids surplus or

shortage of personnel in the organization. The organization with qualified and able

personnel can easily solve the problems of low productivity absenteeism, inter

departmental conflicts, resistance to change etc.

10. MOTIVATION OF PERSONNEL:

HRP is concerned not only with the identification of the personnel in terms of

quality and quantity but it is also concerned with the improvement and motivation

of the human resources. The organization would make every possible effort to have

dedicated and committed personnel at all levels in the organization.

PROCESS OF HRP

The process of HRP begins with a review of organizational strategies and

objectives. Such review enables an organization to forecast personnel

requirements and the internal supply of personnel. It can be formulate with the

following steps.

HUMAN RESOURCES PLANNING PROCESS

COMPANY OBJECTIVES AND STRATEGIC PLANS (Market, forecast,

production objectives/process, capital/Fin plants)

Personnel requirements Make Personnel Supply

Forecast comparison Forecast

Estimating HR requirements Based on objectives and top Management Approval

Personnel Surplus Personnel shortage

Take action take action

a) Lay off a) Recruitment

b) Terminate b) Productivity

c) Voluntary Retirement etc c) Retraining

The long range could be 5 years, while 10 to 15 years span could be used for a

perspective plan. Long-range plans must be made on the basis of various trends in

the economy and in the labor market, and on long-term trends in the production.

Long-range plans are general rather than specific, flexible rather than rigid.

Nevertheless, a plan can be extremely useful in identifying factors and trends that

need to be reckoned with the early warning on possible problems. While

formulating the HRP process its important to know the period for which the plan

will apply, then the specific corporate objectives and strategies should be clear.

1. Review of Organizational Objectives:

The first step in HRP is to review the objectives of the organization. Proper review

of the objectives will enable the organization to make a proper list of the various

activities that would be required to achieve the objectives. To undertake the

activities, the organization can be determining the required work force in terms of

quality and quantity. A proper job analysis needed to be conducted at this stage.

2. Personnel requirements forecast:

Their needs to fine out the requirements of human resources undertake the various

activities. The human requirements forecast must be both in terms of quality ands

quantity.

3. Personnel supply forecast:

It is important to forecast availability of manpower. The required manpower may

be available with in the company, or they may be required from the labor market.

4.Make comparison:

Its necessary to make a comparison between personnel requirement and personnel

supply to find out whether the required personnel is available or not.

5. Personnel shortage/surplus

The comparison between personnel requirement and supply would indicate

whether there are any differences. It human resource requirements are equal to

human resource supply, then there are no differences and no action need to be

taken.

If a shortage is there efforts are made to meet it either by new recruitment or

promotion from within, or by developing the existing staff. If there is a surplus it is

to be decided how it will be dealt with. Management can be ensuring control of

labor costs by avoiding both shortage and surpluses of manpower through proper

manpower planning.

The comparison may reveal differences between the human resource requirements

and supply. The action will be taken as

1. If personnel Surplus:

1. Lay off

2. Voluntary requirements

3. Termination etc

2. If personnel shortage:

1. Hire

2. Promotion

3. Overtime

4. Training to improve quality

6. Motivating the man power:

Every organization should motivate their employees in such manner, which will be

help in the increase in productivity and quality of the organization. An important

aspect of human resource planning is to motivate the personnel by providing

monetary and non-monetary incentives.

7Monitoring Personnel Requirements

The organization needs to monitor the requirements of personnel. This is because

there is constant need for additional personnel, as some of the existing personnel

do leave the organization due to registration, retirement and so on.

After the review of organizational strategies and objectives in the above manner

based on the problems and need I'll easily formulate effective HRP process