How Leading Companies Achieve Profitability through Accelerating Customer Relationships

Abstract

Leading companies around the world have implemented strategies for understanding their relationships with their customers, suppliers, partners, stakeholders, stockholders, and channels. In the Electronic Commerce world that is fast emerging, marketshare and product awareness may be tantamount to potential success, but world-class companies have clearly delineated themselves through profitability management. This requires a short and long-term process of managerial enlightenment and action through a customer centric knowledge system. To achieve high profitability in the future, firms will be focused on customer acquisition, customer profitability, customer retention, customer service/satisfaction, and customer individual requirements fulfillment. This session will discuss the strategies and methods utilized by leading firms whose profitability and stockprice have accelerated in these dynamic times of competition and high customer expectations.

of Customer Relationship Management is on the bot-The most powerful effect as a technology issue, when in tom line. Unfortunately, many people see CRM fact it is about economics - profits and business effectiveness. The right technol-of course, but only to serve the ultimate end of developing a more ogy is essential, as The Rolling Stones might have effective business. Otherwise it can wind up, use1ess information, supposed to try put, “telling me more and more, about some my imagination” and contributing litde to the bottom line. CRM must provide an-swers to real businessproblems. The power of information technology is such that it can go on indefinitely documenting such selfevident bits of demographics cor-re1ated to behavior, as the fact that few senior citizens buy rap music, when what the company needs to know is why it is losing customers to competitors. The of CRM begins with identifying opportunities that can be achieved -proper use even hiring Art Linkletter for endorsement purposes isn’t going to sell rap music to seniors - and then developing realistic offerings, communications, interactions, and sales orders. Decades ago, department store magnate John Wannamaker made the oft-echoed observation that half the money he spent on advertising was he didn’t know which half. That can be said of many business initia-wasted, but tives, but with modern parallel analytical databases and CRM, it is fmally becom-to know which “half’ is the winner and which the loser. These tech-ing possible nologies and a new set of marketing and discovery processes can bring companies much eloser to ”one-to-one marketing.“