nr 414 zeszyty naukowe uniwersytetu szczecińskiego 2005

ACQUIRINGDifferentiation:- innovation- convenienceENHANCINGBundling:- cost reduction- client serviceKEEPINGAdaptability:- listen- new productsFigure 3. The three main phases of the CRM.Source: „E-business…”, Apogeo, 1999.All the CRM phases are correlated. This approach, moreover, forces the enterprise to modify theprocesses of client interaction, since the traditional organizational and functional frameworks tend toshare in closed departments the different activities of service function and customer care. Thisfragmentation, indeed, prevents the information to spread thoroughly within the organization, oftencreating obstacles to the relationship consolidation; and consequentially, the personalized service hasto face several difficulties, thus damaging the strictly relationship building.To avoid fragmentation, the enterprises with a high competitiveness margin have employed theirresources in the aim of achieving a CRM approach as more focused on clients as possible. The directconsequence of this strategy has been the growing trend towards an activity management carried out asan analytic integrated process (figure 4) that, crosswise, goes through any functional department.By intervening on these activities within CRM processes, enterprises can create a more efficientcommunication and they can improve the results for whole activity groups; having, in this way,a CRM framework composed by several procedural competences.The CRM as a Enterprise PhilosophySynthetically, the CRM is an ensemble of organizational and technological mechanismsconstituted in the aim of muffling the market instability through the best knowledge of environmentalvariables and, in particular, the market variables in order to anticipate the customer needs and makeproduction activity more stable and programmable.Moreover, it must be stressed that the CRM is not a new technology but a relative new businessstrategy: technology is just the mean through which the CRM operates on the inside and outside ofenterprises.Furthermore, effective databases together with good application software are the main elementsin planning a CRM activity, which, integrating other marketing tools, strengthens the brand policy,thus creating strong defence barriers to competition and recession times.CRM, therefore, is the new strategy implemented by enterprises in the aim of optimizing profitsthrough client satisfaction, involving processes, technologies and people.By considering these assumptions, it is easily understandable how enterprises will improve theirbusiness activity with the increasing penetration of CRM philosophies and the concomitant rise inpromoting the experiential and continuous-based relationships as the key to long-term profitability.19