Batch customization comes to enterprises
The rapid development and increasing popularity of network technology are changing our lives, as well as transforming the socio-economic model, shifting product production from mass production to mass customization. Mass production involves extensive use of assembly lines, detailed division of labor, and modern management to form a large-scale socialized manufacturing capability. This method is currently the mainstream model used by medium and large-sized enterprises. Mass production has freed people from decentralized handicraft workshops, entering an era of mechanization, electrification, and automation, greatly improving productivity. However, with social progress, modern society increasingly values respect for individuality and higher service quality, making mass-produced products seem monotonous, repetitive, and rigid. Under this production model, users have to adapt their needs to limited choices.
To better satisfy users while maintaining the low cost and high efficiency brought by mass production, people have made various attempts over a long period, including market segmentation, continuous absorption of user feedback, designing adjustable assembly lines, and applying automatic control technologies. But until today, these efforts have not achieved astonishing results. The main reason is that due to excessive differences, to make a product "perfectly suited for you," "custom-made for you," there must be continuous, rapid "one-to-one" information exchanges between users and enterprises. Before the advent of networks, this could only be a fantasy. With the development of networks and the expansion of e-commerce, batch customization characterized primarily by "tailor-made" products has rapidly developed and is being applied in more and more enterprises. Meanwhile, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a specialized software system serving this purpose.
CRM is one aspect of an enterprise's comprehensive electronic transformation
A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system generally consists of software modules such as marketing management, order management, telephone sales management, customer support management, and sales management, forming the leading part of an enterprise's ERP system. This system relies on the enterprise's ERP system, connects externally to the international internet, accepts user orders and service requests via telephone and network means, conducts front-end sales management, and interfaces with the sales management of the ERP system.
The development of CRM abroad has a history of more than a decade. Initially, automatic sales systems SFA (Sales Force Automation) and telephone computer integration CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) were widely adopted by foreign enterprises. Automatic sales systems can help manage sales quotas, calculate sales personnel commissions, predict profits, and coordinate sales activities; the integration of telephones and computers can provide 800-number telephone services, allowing users to quickly connect with professional telephone service personnel through automatic selection and interactive voice feedback, recording conversation data. In recent years, online ordering has become a hotspot, which requires enterprises to provide online instant quotations and online communication environments. Under such circumstances, CRM, as an integrated solution fusing customer information, has been proven to effectively improve the overall operational efficiency of companies.
The implementation of CRM brings impacts to enterprises
With the rapid development of CRM, many companies find that when user demands become the center of business processes, the "traditional" way of enterprise operations creates disharmony in many areas. These disharmonies hinder the full effectiveness of an integrated CRM. Since CRM directly begins from the "customer touchpoints," it changes the way enterprise management thinks, often becoming the first attempt for enterprises to move towards e-commerce. In such attempts, enterprises begin to feel extraordinary impacts.
The first impact comes from marketing. In the past, users could only passively listen to introductions. Advertising promotions conducted through mass media could establish unique product images, possibly becoming the hottest goods if successful. Enterprises didn't need to consider each customer's specific needs; they just had to maintain regular exposure on TV and newspapers to build and sustain their brand. After implementing CRM, however, one-on-one marketing targeting specified consumer groups becomes possible, with users often being proactive, resulting in lower costs and better effects.
The second impact comes from competitors. Northeast Airlines in the U.S. was once a fairly large airline, owning numerous routes and aircraft as fixed assets. However, in the 1980s, it had to declare bankruptcy. Its failure wasn't due to service quality or other reasons but because when other airlines started using computer information systems allowing travel agents across the country to real-time query, book tickets, and change flights, Northeast Airlines did not do so. Soon they found themselves unable to compete with other airlines in terms of price and service. Other airlines could promptly offer discounts to customers or notify them when changing flights, maintaining full passenger rates for each flight, while they still had to operate manually via expensive long-distance calls. By the time they decided to invest in a booking system, it was too late, and they eventually went bankrupt. Today, even well-performing enterprises face such strategic decisions. The current generation of teenagers naturally includes networks, wireless communications, etc., as channels for obtaining information. When they grow into the main consumer group in the near future, will they look down on merchants who do not provide online ordering? To adapt to such consumers and maintain an advantage in competition, investing in information systems is often not an embellishment but a necessary means to sustain enterprise survival.
The third conflict comes from technology, Shangyi CRM. The ever-changing technological means often leave enterprises dazzled, making it even harder to track and evaluate. It's very difficult to make decisions solely based on internal resources. Professional service companies naturally become the enterprises' inevitable recourse.
The last impact comes from within the enterprise. Whether it's a new type of online enterprise like Amazon or a traditional enterprise dedicated to network transformation like Ford, online customer requirements go beyond mere information exchange and ultimately must be implemented in products and services. This requires the enterprise process to match accelerated user information circulation in manufacturing, transportation, after-sales service, etc. Users communicating with enterprises via the internet and telephone are often less patient, demanding immediate replies to emails, timely queries of orders, and prompt updates and modifications. This requires the internal organizational management level of the enterprise to keep up.
The implementation of CRM brings greater impacts to Chinese enterprises
Chinese CRM will bring greater impacts to enterprises. For example, automated sales systems have not been popularized in China, and even larger-scale enterprises rely solely on verbal notes for sales management. The departure of a core salesperson can significantly alter the company's revenue forecast. There are many loopholes regarding how much discount each salesperson can offer, some salespeople secretly sharing rebates with clients without the company's knowledge, all reflecting the chaos and randomness of internal enterprise management. Some enterprises originated from the planned economy era, where marketing, public relations, and market segmentation are all new terms. How to analyze purchasing habits in customer data and adopt different marketing strategies for different customers—enterprises lack experience accumulation. Now implementing CRM requires Chinese enterprises to leapfrog over more than a decade of foreign development, achieving friendly and sustained multi-channel communication with customers based on manual operations, which is highly challenging.
Implementing CRM places customers at the core position. If an enterprise can well absorb and apply CRM concepts, it will see improvements in multiple aspects such as profit, customer loyalty, and customer satisfaction. This will also make enterprises more proactive in preparing for the future comprehensive electronic transformation and the arrival of the e-commerce era.