B2B Integration : A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce

112 B2B Integration — A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce
CRM should focus primarily on process and methodology, not
technology, though technology is quickly becoming the enabler for
methodology.
Some of the traditional business processes which CRM products
facilitate include sales, marketing, call center and helpdesk activities.
The benefits generated from a successful CRM implementation include:
• More effective customer acquisition and retention;
• Comprehensive view of all customer interactions through all access
channels;
• Optimization of each customer interaction for increased business
opportunities;
• Anytime, anywhere access to customer and enterprise information;
• Effective use of employee resources;
• Increased responsiveness to customers; and
• Greater operational efficiency across the entire enterprise.
The growth of CRM is still going strong. The Aberdeen Group
estimates that the CRM market generated $7.8 billion in revenue from
software packages, software-vendor licenses, integration services and
peripheral and hardware sales for 1999, with CRM software sales
making up $3.8 billion of that total. It is estimated that this market will
grow to $9.4 billion by 2002, with CRM sales software and customerservice
software growing the fastest. Another study released by IDC
estimates that the customer relationship management services market
will rise to $148.0 billion in 2005 from 61.0 billion in 2001, representing
a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25.0 percent and "far
exceeding" the overall IT services market.
At the same time, Meta Group estimates that between 55% and 75%
of CRM implementations will fail to meet their objectives. Like ERP,
CRM impacts an organization at many levels. If not planned for and
executed properly, a CRM implementation can have catastrophic
consequences on a company's bottom-line.
CRM and data warehouses
An integral component of CRM is a data warehouse which allows
companies to gather and use an ever-growing data repository about