Customer Relationship Management Update

After years of cost cutting and downsizing in an unstable marketplace, the enterprise agenda is changing. Seeing a stronger global economy, executives over the last few years have again focused on growth. According to the 2004 IBM Global CEO survey, 80 percent of CEOs at the world's major companies said their primary business objective has shifted from cost-cutting to revenue growth.

A key driver of growth across all industries is customer loyalty—which is why the idea of a customer-centric enterprise (CCE) has become so compelling. The CCE builds on loyalty by digging deeper into customer relationships, understanding what customers need, and maximizing those relationships by providing it. The goal is to retain the customer in an ongoing relationship that results in greater wallet share.

Leaders or Laggards?
Most enterprises today are built around departmental and organizational silos that don't present a single face to the customer. Instead, there are many inconsistent, disconnected, and inefficient processes that use different infrastructures, have different contact methods, and don't share data. These processes break at departmental boundaries and do not provide an optimal customer experience. Instead they are focused on the specific goals of a given department, which may conflict with the goals of the company and its customers. In the end, people working in such processes may not even collect the data necessary develop insights about customer satisfaction and retention.

But enterprises and research institutions alike are realizing the importance of putting customers first. Research from the Harvard Business School found that "companies that put customers in the center are six times more likely to achieve growth goals." A study conducted by the consulting firm Accenture shows that 40 percent of growth and 38 percent of shareholder value is derived from customer loyalty. And a 2005 loyalty report from the Peppers & Rogers Group indicates that fostering customer loyalty improves corporate results, and that "loyalty leaders generate operating margins of 13 percent versus the 2 percent generated by loyalty laggards."

The Next-Generation CCE
One way to meet the challenges of a strengthening economy, including increased competition and regulation, is to focus on becoming a true CCE that empowers employees with customer data and insight through end-to-end business processes. In a CCE, employees make the right decision for the company and for the customer at any customer moment of truth.

The key is being able to speak with "one voice" to customers by ensuring that current customer intelligence is built into every facet of the enterprise. Even the smallest, most isolated corner of the enterprise should know what processes to use, how to access customer data, how to recognize the warning signs of an unsatisfied customer, and what to do about it. According to Gartner, "customer-centric strategies should view the customer from a total lifecycle perspective, rather than a sales, service, or marketing perspective that leaves the rest of the company out. All areas of the company play a part: Those that do not serve a customer should serve another part of the organization that does."

Fortunately, the CCE evolution involves principles that are largely already in place in most organizations:

• Customer experience (CRM)—a seamless, unified experience for all customer interactions across all customer-facing organizations
• Business processes (BPM)—extending customer understanding throughout the enterprise, allowing all functional areas to make informed, customer-based decisions
• Analytics (BI)—transforming customer data into actionable information and getting the right information to the right person at the right time
• Real-time intelligence—a single, up-to-the-minute, enterprisewide view of the customer that can help organizations be flexible and respond to rapid change

A Sensible Solution
Oracle CRM solutions can help companies become more agile by bringing the voice of the customer into all aspects of the business and putting the entire organization on the same page. Regardless of where companies currently stand, Oracle can be a trusted advisor in helping them move toward becoming a CCE by tying all applications together in a sensible solution that protects investments, extends CRM implementations, and evolves to meet new demands.

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