Customer Resource Management System (CRM)

Introduction 

In the era of relationship-focused businesses strategies, organizations are developing permanent connections with internal and external shareholders to promote their loyalty and satisfaction (Sofi & Hakim, 2018) . In today’s competitive business world, businesses must maintain collaborative interactions with internal and external shareholders (Jaber & Simkin, 2017) . At the core of Customer Relationship Management (CMS) is the ability of an organization to gain an in-depth understanding of their customers. CRM is a business strategy employed by organizations to understand the changing preferences of consumers (Jaber & Simkin, 2017) . CRM software was built from the perspective of the consumer, focusing not only on how to leverage insights from customer data but also on building relationships with the customer. CRM encompasses result-oriented communication between an organization and its customers (Jaber & Simkin, 2017) . This is mainly done with the objective of improving customer acquisitions, customer retention, and maintain a meaningful relationship between the firm and its customers. Today, the extent to which organizations are determined to build, improve, and maintain customer relationships defines their market competitiveness (Rezaei, Paydar & Safaei, 2020) . Therefore for firms to develop and maintain solid customer relationships, they must implement a customer relationship management system across the organization. 

In today’s competitive business environments, organizations are trying their best to remain competitive, increasing customer satisfaction and market share, reducing costs, and creating value-added processes in their supply chains (Jaber & Simkin, 2017) . Most of these activities are focused on reducing costs and increasing efficiency (Sofi & Hakim, 2018) . However, organizations recognized that reducing costs and ensuring efficiency in the production and supply chain processes were not sufficient due to technological advancements, the diversity of consumers’ needs, and a competitive business environment (Rezaei, Paydar & Safaei, 2020) . The top management must deploy relationship management approaches to advance the interest of the organization (Jaber & Simkin, 2017) . These approaches are focused on attracting customers and maintaining the existing consumer base by building meaningful interactions with both new and existing customers (Sofi & Hakim, 2018) . The development of a healthy relationship with customers improves customer enjoyment and repurchase intentions, thereby boosting the performance of the business (Rezaei, Paydar & Safaei, 2020) . 

According to Sofi and Hakim (2018), the primary purpose of relationship management in organizations is to procure long-term value to consumers in order to increase their loyalty and satisfaction. The accomplishment in these efforts is mainly attributed to the marketing department of an organization that strives to build deep, meaningful relationships with consumers (Rezaei, Paydar & Safaei, 2020) . CRM also constitutes varied aspects of e-commerce and traditional communication system with suppliers. These systems play a vital role in the implementation of a supply chain strategy (Jaber & Simkin, 2017) . When CRM systems are incorporated into a firm’s supply chain, it improves the performance of suppliers while interacting with customers (Sofi & Hakim, 2018) . This results in improved quality and increases the speed of response to the needs of the customer (Rezaei, Paydar & Safaei, 2020) . The integration of CRM into sales and marketing strategies, supply chain management, and the coordination of customer communication results in the improvement of meaningful connections through the delivery of the best possible value (Sofi & Hakim, 2018) . Thus, the adoption of a CRM is concentrated on recognizing and fulfilling the individual requirements of consumers, promoting the promise of the organization to this process, and enhancing customer loyalty and satisfaction (Jaber & Simkin, 2017) . 

CRM entails the combination of organizational practices and technology that are targeted at understating and improving the requirements of consumers to develop appropriate products and services. Rezaei, Paydar, and Safaei (2020) categorizes CRM software into two distinct categories – customer relationship management planning and customer interaction systems (Rezaei, Paydar & Safaei, 2020) . Customer relationship planning entails relationship optimization, customer analysis, and campaign management, while a customer interaction systems entails the web, telesales, and call centers (Sofi & Hakim, 2018) . Attaining competency in both dimensions helps an organization achieve the desired effects of customer satisfaction and loyalty (Jaber & Simkin, 2017) . 

Customer Relationship Management System – Hardware Requirements 

Customer relationship management systems can be integrated both on-premise and hosted in the cloud. 

On-premise CRM Server Hardware Requirements 

Quad-core x64 3.0 CPU or greater. 

16GB Memory. 

100Gb Free Hard Disk Space (40Gb minimum). 

Relational Database Management Server requirements 

Quad-core x64 3.0 CPU or higher. 

16GB Memory (64Gb recommended). 

Hard Drive: Raid 10 or SAS Raid 5 Hard Disk Array. 

Endorsed Operating Systems 

Microsoft Windows Server 2012-2019 (Datacenter or standard) x64. 

Windows 10 (Enterprise and Pro editions) x64. 

Linux (Red Hat Enterprise Linux, ClearOS, CentOS, Ubuntu, Fedora). 

Client Workstations 

2.0 of higher x86 and x64 dual-core processors. 

Trusted Platform Module 2.0. 

4GB Memory (8GB recommended). 

80GB Hard Disk Space 

Recommended Screen Resolution (1024x768). 

Supported Operating Systems 

Windows 7 SP1 (x64 and x86) (Rezaei, Paydar & Safaei, 2020) . 

Windows 8 and 8.1 (x64 and x86) (Rezaei, Paydar & Safaei, 2020) . 

Windows 10 (x64 and x86) (Rezaei, Paydar & Safaei, 2020) . 

Supported Browsers 

Mozilla Firefox (most recent release). 

Google Chrome (most recent release). 

Apple Safari (most recent release). 

Microsoft Edge (most recent release). 

Internet Explorer 110 and 11 (most recent release) 

Supported Email Systems 

POP 3 Compliant Email Systems with RFC 1939 support. 

SMTP Compatible Transport Service with RFC 2821 and 2822 support. 

Microsoft Exchange Online. 

Microsoft Exchange Server, 2010, 2013, 2016, and 2019. 

The above hardware requirements should also be replicated in cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure, AWS (Amazon Web Services), Google Cloud, and IBM Cloud. These requirements should be independent and running on separate systems to achieve full performance (Chen & Wu, 2014) . 

Components of CRM Software 

Contact Management: A successful CRM strategy must have a contact management module (Sofi & Hakim, 2018) . Contact management allows organizations to maintain effective and long-lasting relationships as well as provide a thorough analysis into the needs of consumers and how to streamline the processes or to acquire them (Chen & Wu, 2014) . Contact management also allows organizations to gather vital customer data and improve marketing strategies when introducing new products. This module helps in the personalization of customer contacts, making them feel taken care of and important (Sofi & Hakim, 2018) . This is a vital factor in customer satisfaction (Chen & Wu, 2014) . 

Inputs to the system include full names, date of birth, email address, location, products, and services sold or requested, address of the customer, social security number, and phone number. 

Lead Management: Leads are the lifeline of an organization, and without them, there would be no revenue, and businesses will be forced to close (Chen & Wu, 2014) . Leads management is a feature that allows an organization to group customers based on their demographics and psychological characteristics. This gives an organization the ability to forward effective leads to the sales department promptly (Sofi & Hakim, 2018) . Lead management improves the productivity and efficiency of sales teams by focusing on the right customers at the right time. 

The CRM software captures leads from activities such as email marketing campaigns, television, print, and radio advertisements, cold calling, and sales pitches (Jaber & Simkin, 2016) . Other lead generation activities include content management strategies, sign up forms on websites and during conferences, content marketing, scanning of business cards, social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn (Chen & Wu, 2014) . 

Reports and Dashboards: Business intelligence tools, reporting, and dashboards are some of the most rewarding features in CRM software (Jaber & Simkin, 2016) . They provide organizations with engaging and highly customized reports that help in collaboration and improved decision-making. Automating reporting through dashboards enables organizations to create accurate and detailed reports that provide a thorough analysis and deep dive into customer data (Jaber & Simkin, 2016) . Through dashboards, organizations can run reports on how many satisfied customers it has, how much revenue is the company generating over a specific period, what are customers purchase cycles, and how many sales representatives are closing the largest deals (Chen & Wu, 2014) . Dashboards allow organizations to build different reports that provide value to multiple sections of the business. Dashboards capture data through charts, gauges, and graphs. 

Analytics: Analytics is one of the most valuable features of a CRM application. Through analytics, organizations can discover useful customer insights that the organization can act upon (Jaber & Simkin, 2016) . Analytics systems make CRM application intelligent as they can comprehend customer data and empower the organization to make data-driven activities. Due to the everchanging business landscape and unpredictable customer needs, businesses have been forced to adapt faster to the changing needs of the customer, or they will be driven out of the market (Chen & Wu, 2014) . 

Through analytics, an organization can learn which customers are interested in purchasing its products, thus design social media and marketing campaigns based on their tastes and preferences (Jaber & Simkin, 2016) . Sales insights provide an organization with customer data such as buying behavior, demographics, and preferences that help the organization drive sales by identifying leads with the highest probability of being converted into deals (Chen & Wu, 2014) . 

Workflows: The workflow module in CRM enables organizations to automate their sales processes. Processes such as data collection, marketing campaigns, and data analysis can be automated to facilitate optimization (Jaber & Simkin, 2016) . Workflows also allow reporting and analytics so that organizations can identify areas with challenges in order to improve them. Through sales process automation, sales managers can set up triggers to receive automatic notifications on status change related to the account or when high-quality leads have been entered into the systems (Jaber & Simkin, 2016) . Thus, workflows enable the automation of processes and tasks in CRM that an organization may be handled manually. Automation helps organizations provide a consistent and superior customer experience. Workflows also enable an organization to develop standard response procedures and ensure that they are followed (Chen & Wu, 2014) . 

References 

Chen, J., & Wu, S. (2014). The impact of customer relationship management and internal marketing on business performance: a comparison of lodging industries. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 27(1-2), 17-33. doi: 10.1080/14783363.2014.935567 

Jaber, F., & Simkin, L. (2016). Unpicking antecedents of CRM adoption: a two-stage model. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 25(5-6), 475-494. doi: 10.1080/0965254x.2016.1149212 

Jaber, F., & Simkin, L. (2017). Understanding customer relationship management (CRM) adoption in an Arab Middle Eastern context. Behaviour & Information Technology, 36(10), 1020-1036. doi: 10.1080/0144929x.2017.1332098 

Rezaei, E., Paydar, M., & Safaei, A. (2020). Customer relationship management and new product development in designing a robust supply chain. RAIRO - Operations Research, 54(2), 369-391. doi: 10.1051/ro/2018107 

Sofi, M., & Hakim, I. (2018). Customer Relationship Management as Tool to Enhance Competitive Effectiveness: Model Revisited. FIIB Business Review, 7(3), 201-215. doi: 10.1177/2319714518798410