New from Gartner: 5 Low-cost CRM Strategies

After all, this is a period of recession - organizations want to cut costs and will be increasingly cautious about investing in any new venture. So, Gartner’s five low-cost CRM strategies will probably be accepted with open arms. I have not read the complete report, but the main points are below (the detail itself is mine, pardon the intrusion)..

1. Customer communities
   The inclusion is no surprise, engaging customers and building longer term relationships may not cost organizations much. At the low end of the spectrum, this may simply need people to manage the relationships in the social world. Of course this data should flow on to the CRM & Analytical systems for any intelligent deduction, but hey you cannot start everything at once! Setting up corporate accounts may not cost anything (for mostl of them, till date), but making sense out of this data and converting it into actionable items is worth considering for further investments.
2. Analytics
   Data, you have everywhere but does it answer questions like “what is happening with my customers?”, “where am i doing good/going wrong?”. This is where Analytics is going to be crucial. With a few new things coming up, people may start using Analytics better to start leveraging the data.
3. Segmentation
   I have to admit that this is a surprise for me; maybe I am not keeping up with the “trend”. Keeping track of the customer groups that deliver the highest value is an on-going process and better ways of segmentation will help organizations focus on what is important right now.
4. Process redesign
   Streamlining business processes may not need much investment, but certainly would need people buy-in. Any or all out-of-sync processes that may need frequent oiling for a smooth run could be targeted for improvement.
5. Organizational redesign
   For some reason I think this was just added as an after-thought, maybe it is just that 4 looks so incomplete :).. Scott Nelson, managing vice president at Gartner, who presented these strategies says organizations should use this time to move from being product-centric to being customer-centric.

Overall, this is a good framework to maintain a status-quo on significant investments in IT and at the same time take steps to improve customer experience. Nothing exceptionally new I am afraid, but what is left unsaid here is the roadmap to start achieving the objectives.

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