Future of CRM in India
Maturity of CRM adoptions in Indian SMEs
The other day, I needed
to rent a cab and I called a cab provider I used from time to time on my cell
phone. I was pleasantly surprised when the operator greeted me by my first name
and when I mentioned the pickup location, they knew the landmark for the pickup
and the booking was so easy that I may prefer to use this cab provider. This
experience made me think about the progress CRM applications have made over the
past decade in India.
CRM or Customer
Relationship Management solutions were pioneered in 90s and adopted widely in
the last decade promised to bridge the gap between companies and their
customers and deliver high sales and marketing values. However, most of the
promise of CRM was not delivered and almost 70% of CRM implementations were
never completed.
In India, Microsoft Dynamic CRM is still thought
of as tele-sales or a call center software. The CRM adoption is still in early
stages with financial institutions having the best use of the existing
technologies. The next best use is in the retail sector with various loyalty
programs in place. However, the most surprising is the lack of proper CRM tools
or lack of proper use of CRM in the telecom sector which has can potentially
take the best advantage of the CRM tools and technologies.
The adoption and
maturity of CRM solutions in India is still in early stages with a lot of
opportunities to improve customer experience. Organizations need to look at the
CRM with the right mindset so as to take steps in the right direction. There
are number of reasons for the lack of CRM implementations or the effective use
of CRM tools among Indian SME’s:
1.
Lack
of understanding of translating business processes into a usable system
2.
Prohibitive
costs of CRM solutions from well-known vendors
3.
Use
of CRM as a glorified address book by the sales team
4.
Teams
still tracking their contacts and leads and interactions in spreadsheets
5.
Sales
teams unable to setup proper follow up mechanisms to take relationship with
prospects and customers to next level of engagement
6.
Lack
of understanding on how to codify prospect and customer nurturing
7.
Sales
and service teams not using collaborative CRM solutions to properly screen and
prepare for the ‘moment of truth’ interaction with potential customer
Having a right CRM
solution partner and mapping the sales, marketing and services processes with
the right tool goes a long way in having a successful CRM implementation in
place.
Now see few interesting
numbers below:
1.
India
Total Population: 1.300,000,000
2.
People
in Metros: 35% or 455,000,000
3.
Average
people salaries in Metros: 10000 to 20000
4.
Total
Registered companies in India as 2009: 1,126, 000
5.
%
of companies having CRM in place: 15% or 168900 only
6.
Marketing
budget of companies for Marketing: 5% to 15%
An effective use of CRM can
save 15% of total sales and marketing cost, can increase the sales by 5%,
customer loyalty by 30% and can help to retain clients by 15%. These numbers
can help companies to increase their profitability manifold.
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