Software+Engineering+-+Customer+Relationship+Management

Student: Brent Cappello TEM 194 media type="custom" key="14477608"
 * =What is a CRM? =

The acronym CRM stands for **Customer Relationship Management**, CRM's typically are software systems that use the principles of relationship marketing to interact with the company’s customers, clients and prospects. A CRM is a cross between software/IT departments and marketing/communication/sales departments. CRM’s are used to automate and integrate multiple business processes from customer service to sales. The fundamental idea of a CRM is to keep existing clients happy and to warm new prospects into long-term relationships. Customer management is a business approach that seeks to create, develop and enhance relationships with targeted customers in order to improve customer value and business profitability.

What makes a good modern CRM?
A good CRM has the ability to satisfy a multitude of business needs including: Collect leads, build an e-mail/contact list, organize your lists, market to the list, process orders, follow-up with prospects and customers, sell online, sell offline, fulfill orders and products, provide billing options, send mass e-mails, send direct e-mails, send fax broadcasts, send voice broadcasts, cross sell products, upsell products, track affiliate sales teams, track referrals, track support issues, track inventory, monitor marketing ROI, manage sales team, manage sales opportunities, organize tasks and appointments.

The technology sections within the master CRM software application that are typically needed to satisfy the required business needs are as follows: Contact management database, e-mail system, affiliate program, sales system, team manager, calendar system, in-depth reporting and analysis and any more elements depending on the individual business needs.

Software Engineering plus Marketing/Sales Knowledge
Developing a successful CRM that can be integrated into multiple businesses is no simple task. It takes a team of people who understand both the business process and the development process. If you break a CRM down into its four critical parts we can create a circle cycle that starts with marketing and ends in support. Today CRM's must integrate the latest technology and marketing strategies available. They must integrate with social APIs, mobile platforms and fit across many channels of the business. A simple breakdown below shows you the must have components of any basic CRM.

**Marketing:**

 * Run Marketing Campaigns
 * Generate Sales Leads
 * Build a Prospect Database

**Sales:**

 * Assign Sales Leads
 * Qualified Sales Leads
 * Convert Sales Leads
 * Track Sales and Business Opportunities

**Orders:**

 * Deliver Purchased Products
 * Produce Sales Invoices

**Support:**

 * Manage Support Cases
 * Conduct Support Trainings
 * Provide Product Service
 * Managed Knowledge Base

Methodologies for developing CRM software
The current model used by many CRM developers is the waterfall model. This is a sequential design process in which development flows downwards through a multitude of phases. It starts with requirements and steps down to design, steps to implementation, then to verification and finally to maintenance. Since CRM's are typically large-scale software systems they take a huge amount of planning and massive development. One reason the waterfall model is often used when developing CRM's is because of the heavy documentation needed to model business needs and process. The waterfall model typically provides a structured approach that progresses linearly through easily understandable phases and milestones. However many new CRM development teams are pushing the limits and trying much more agile techniques that take advantage of open source code and deep API integrations. Other areas of development include object oriented, spiral model and top-down approaches.

History
In the 1950s marketing frameworks were developed to exploit market demand through the 4P's, product, price, promotion and place were used to describe different levers that if pulled appropriately could lead to increased demand for companies offer. This created an objective approach to marketing that can optimize expenditure through the marketing mix in order to maximize sales.

In the early 1990s [|Philip Kotler, a professor at Northwestern University] proposed a new method of organizational performance based on relationships. This would take the traditional marketing approach based on the 4P's and reposition it to all the players within the company's environment. This focus on relationship marketing would first put emphasis on customer retention and extending the lifetime value of the customer.

The CRM builds on these principles of relationship marketing by using new market demands, new technologies and building customer relationships to a new and complex level.

CRM Industry
There are many hundreds of software vendors who develop CRM's both publicly and privately for many different corporations. A CRM can be used from a soloprenuer to the world's largest company. Applications range from free and open source to multimillion dollar custom installs.

[[image:CRM-Logos.png align="right"]]CRM Vendors: // (Handbook of CRM pg28) //

 * Integrated CRM and ERP Suite (e.g. Intentia, Oracle, SAP)
 * CRM Suite (e.g. E.piphany, Siebel)
 * CRM Framework (e.g. Chordiant)
 * CRM Best of Breed (e.g.Avaya, NCR Teradata, Broadvision)
 * Build it Yourself (e.g. IBM, Oracle, Sun).

CRM service providers and consultants:

 * Corporate strategy (e.g. McKinsey, Bain)
 * CRM strategy (e.g. Peppers & Rogers,Vectia, Detica, Sophron)
 * Change management, organization design, training,HR,etc. (e.g.Accenture)
 * Business transformation (e.g. IBM, PwC )
 * Infrastructure build, systems integrators (e.g. Logica, Siemens, Unisys)
 * Infrastructure outsourcing (e.g. EDS, CSC)
 * Business insight, analytics, research, etc. (e.g. SAS, dunnhumby)
 * Business process outsourcing (e.g. Acxiom).

Web based CRMs

 * Infusionsoft
 * Salesforce.com
 * NetSuite
 * [|SugarCRM]

**SAAS/Cloud**
More and more CRM developers are building cloud (SaaS) applications to cut down on the cost of integration while also offering continual upgrades at little to no cost to the customer. By removing the costs of physical hardware, software installs, and in-house consulting, many more companies are able to integrate CRM's into their business.

**Meta-Analysis/Predictive Theory**
New developments including forecasting sales and market reactions based on Internet relationship databases and web commentary are quickly catching the eye of CRM development teams. The web bot data is collected is crunched and used to provide more information to the company relating to its existing customers and prospects needs.

**Social Scraping**
Social media is creating more opportunity for data collection of prospects needs, wants and desires. CRM's are able to collect and analyze web data to offer more critical analysis of each potential prospect.

ASU TEM Focus for CRM Software Engineering
The area focus of software engineering with an emphasis on customer relationship management would need to be split between engineering courses and business courses. It would be important to understand both the process of developing the software and the methodology of why you're developing the software. Understanding the development process and the reasoning behind the process will successfully educate future CRM developers.

__//**These are the recommend courses for an emphasis in CRM development...**//__

 * SER 200 -** Overview of the foundations of software engineering, with particular orientation toward software development lifecycle processes (SDLP).

Project based. //Pre-requisite: EGR 102 with C or better; Co-requisites: SER 200; 221//
 * SER 215 -** Software engineering; personal software processes for individual professionalism; time and defect estimation, yield, and productivity Software tools.

//Pre-requisites: EGR 102 (or CST 200 or SER 102); MAT 243; Credit is allowed for only CST 420 or SER 321//
 * SER 321 -** Design and implementation of distributed software components; process and memory management underlying software applications; sockets, protocols, threads, XML, serialization, reflection, security, and events.

**MKT 402 (** **Consumer Behavior** **) -** Applies behavioral concepts in the analysis of consumer behavior and the use of behavioral analysis in marketing strategy formulation. //Pre-requisites: W.P. Carey BS or BA student or non-business student with a minimum 2.5 ASU cum GPA and minimum 2.5 ASU business GPA and 56 earned hours; must have completed MKT 352 with a grade of C or better.//

//Pre-requisites: W.P. Carey BS or BA student, or non-business student with minimum 2.5 ASU cumulative GPA, and 56 earned hours; must have completed MKT 302 or MKT 303 with a grade of C or better.//
 * MKT 410 (Marketing and Business Performance) -** Constructive investigation of selling processes, their application in business and consumer contexts, and management of the sales function.

//Pre-requisites: W. P. Carey BS or BA student; MKT 302 or MKT 303 with a grade of C or better.//
 * MKT 494( Content Strategy and Marketing) - ** Covers topics of immediate or special interest to a faculty member and students.

Brent Cappello's CRM Presentation
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//Clara Shih, **DestinationCRM.com** (2009) Sales and Social Media: No One’s social (Yet) [|http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/Editorial/Magazine-Features/Sales-and-Social-Media-No-One%e2%80%99s-Social-(Yet)-54767.aspx]//

//**Handbook of CRM** – 2005, Adrian Payne//

//**Infusionsoft Corporate** About - []//

//**CRM-Resources** - []//

//**PC World 2010** - Cloud CRM to Work - []// ||