This week, I am at the SAP Insider Conference in Orlando. Although it took two days to get here from nearby Atlanta due to that crazy one inch of snow we had, it has certainly been well worth it. The SAP Insider Conference covers information and direction for several areas of the SAP Ecosystem, including Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Manufacturing.
Through the week, I have had the privilege of meeting some really great people from companies all over the world; Companies big and small, and focused on everything from steel production to feather beds. One of my observations this week was that, regardless of who I spoke to and what part of the conference they were here for, the focus was on the customer. I certainly am not surprised. Today’s economy has dealt our businesses some tough cards, and challenged us all to figure out new ways to keep our customers happy, and how to acquire more of them.
Certainly, those at the conference for CRM are here to learn more about how to strengthen the relationship with their customer. They are working on improving the efficiency of their sales cycle (both time and cost), obtaining better contact information leading to more accurate lead generation, improving the customer experience in the call center, and creating a memorable eCommerce customer experience. Dealers are being handled like customers when it comes to functionality and business requirements. They are no longer being forced to use older systems that they must conform to, but instead are being brought into the process of solution definition in order to create a strong “customer” experience.
But what I found most interesting are those in other areas of business. Those people that are here working to improve their areas of the business are starting to really appreciate that all aspects of the business tie into the relationship with the customer and the customer’s satisfaction with their organization. Manufacturing is looking harder at Customer Interaction/Call Center data from their call centers to prioritize tasks in the areas of design and quality control. Product Lifecycle Management is taking advantage of Campaign information and eCommerce activity to help determine more accurate customer buying behaviors. Several customers explained to me the efficiency gains and satisfaction improvements their organizations were enjoying as a result of moving the full order process into one of the several CRM channels freshly available within their companies.
It’s exciting to see companies of all sizes really starting to reap the benefits of CRM within their organizations as they work to manage their organizations with the best of disciplines. Forward thinking companies are spending the majority of their efforts and investments in today’s market exclusively on CRM. It might not always be called CRM but that’s what it is. Why? Because they know that today, more than any other time in the history of their company, they need to stay laser-focused on their customers, and make sure that their abilities to deal with their suppliers is dead last on the list of things to worry about.
They know…today more than ever before, it’s all about the Customer!
