There is a high degree of complexity associated
with these efforts and a naturally high cost of integration across an
organization and its end-to-end network. As a result, current views of the potential
values are tempered by a need to bring focus to immediate process improvement
and bottom line returns. Nevertheless, when executed as part of a deployment
of strategies, with enhanced processes and enabling technology applications that
are used to acquire, develop, and retain an organization�s best customers, CRM
becomes a powerful tool for increasing revenue and profit.
In essence, a contemporary CRM operating model will serve to improve the
characteristics and performance of a customer-intimate organization. The inherent
characteristics for customer-intimate organizations will include:
Creation of the best business solutions for the key customers
Introduction of customized products and services to meet these customers�
unique needs
Presentation of a unique range of superior services, so customers can
get the most value from the products delivered
Establishment of the most flexible and responsive system of supply and
delivery possible with current technology
The operating model benchmarks will include:
Management systems geared toward creating superior results for carefully
selected strategic customers
A culture that embraces specific rather than general customer solutions
and thrives on deep and lasting relationships
Deep customer knowledge and breakthrough insights about the customer�s
underlying processes
Decision making delegated to employees close to the customer (Treacy
and Wiersema, 1995)
Reaching these conditions requires a lot of concerted effort and nurturing
a cultural imperative that is often hard for firms accustomed to working within
an internal-only focus. CRM has its roots in the idea that as a firm�s supply
chain moves toward maturity, it becomes more effective at both internal and
external processing; that is, it improves its ability to process within its four
walls, and then extends its learning, with the help of useful business allies, to
constructing a network of delivery that has superior features from the viewpoint
of the most important customers and consumers. Such an accomplishment meansWithin
the intelligent value chain, business allies are working together from
a right-to-left perspective. They begin with what it takes to have a competitively
advantaged value network in the eyes of the most important end customers or
consumers, and then they work backwards toward what the upstream side of
the value chain should be doing across the enterprise processes to achieve the
desired superior conditions. Together, the linked parties are working to find the
best solutions and practices for all of the key process steps. Beginning with
improved forecasting and moving through the necessary linked processes, the
network partners apply their best resources to find greater results with product
development and introduction, the ultimate distribution efficiency, the best
methods for product replenishment, jointly developed marketing strategies, and
the best possible order fulfillment system. Along the way, they work
collaboratively to find the best enterprise processes and become extremely
effective at any point of handoff between supply chain constituents. In short,
they are working in concert to develop business in a manner that greatly satisfies
the key customers and enhances profitability for all of the contributing allies.
Two requirements must be met as this intelligent value chain is constructed
and nurtured. First, each participant or major constituent of what becomes the
network of delivery must have attained a high level of capability in the supply
chain maturity model (level 3 or beyond), an important element of which will
be the ability to use BPM and its enabling business language, BPML, to enter
and access parts of disparate databases so valuable knowledge can be extracted
without compromising the security of the various systems. Second, the enabling
technology applications must be selected collaboratively and be functioning
successfully across the end-to-end network processing. That means the collaborating
business allies are working in concert, with each making valuable contributions
toward finding the enhanced state in which ASCM and CRM converge
to create the desired differentiation in the eyes of the most coveted
customers. They are doing this with the help of enabling BPM technology and
superior systems across the end-to-end processing linking them into an intelligent
value network.
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