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Wrigley Company has the reputation of providing quality products to its customers for a long time. It is a widely known for its popular chewing gum in the global market. In the past five years, Wrigley has revamped its aging, disparate IT systems and processes. To make it possible, it has chosen SAP. According to company sources, the new SAP CRM solution helped the company to streamline its operation to a great extent.

With the candy prices in the US decreasing, the company moved into new confectionery categories. Hence, it required more promotional and seasonal trade attention. Wrigley preferred to keep trade spending lower than average. It invested in a large field force and strong consumer marketing.

It is not enough for a CRM software to be feature-packed; it is also important for the software to facilitate ease of use and offer a "complete" solution for an organization’s needs. Gartner has focused on both these facets in its just published analysis of the CRM market place in North America and Europe. The report places global management consulting and outsourcing company Accenture at the top of the heap.

According to Gartner, Accenture has kept its focus on helping clients upgrade their market and customer strategies. Finanzen quotes Woody Driggs, Accenture managing partner, CRM:

CRM can be a powerful growth engine when companies use it to put the customer at the center of everything they do. The winners will be those organizations that consistently leverage every customer interaction, across every customer channel to reinforce their brand image and to drive customer loyalty.

TeaLeaf CX, the new product off the blocks from TeaLeaf, is being promoted by the company as presenting a "clear and consistent view of the customer across the enterprise." Let’s see what exactly this means for the client.

TeaLeaf CX supports Web 2.0 applications and can identify roadblocks in the business processes. With its Business Impact Analysis reports, the software makes it easier to counter application problems. Together with TeaLeaf RealiTea 4.5, the customer is able to seamlessly use key eBusiness services. For the company, this adds to higher customer retention and loyalty.

In a significant development, CRM vendor RightNow Technologies, Inc. has acquired Salesnet, Inc. Salesnet, Inc. is an on-demand software firm, which has focused on sales and workflow automation. The integration between the Salesnet applications and RightNow applications will be completed within a few months. According to the terms of the acquisition, Salesnet’s corporate office in Boston will become RightNow’s Boston office. It will manage development, sales and marketing operations.

More Information: Read Here

With the acquisition, RightNow adds 26 employees and a dozen offshore development contractors with experience in sales automation products to mid-market and enterprise customers.

A CRM unit is expected to integrate the customer view and lead to a consistent and profitable service. However, this comes at a cost. The cost is not merely of deploying a CRM solution, but also of devoting a team to work on the implementation of the CRM project. SMEs are more often than not crunched for resources, and it might not always work out to follow the global trend of adopting a CRM solution. On the other side of the spectrum, large companies sometimes have the luxury of employing different solutions for different business processes, such as one for financials, one for HR, or one for inventory.

So what does an SME do?

One good option is to employ a single solution that is able to talk the language of integration for all its business processes. At the same time, the solution must be easy on the pocket, and the cost of integration should be minimal.

SMEs face the same challenges as large companies, and a cost-effective CRM solution can help them enhance the customer experience and retain customer loyalty. The key is in selecting the right CRM solution, and then in implementing the program effectively.

AME Info has more on the cost implications of a CRM implementation.

In 1999, the popular chewing gum brand Wrigley decided to go in for a facelift in its IT processes and systems, and five years later the company succeeded in deploying SAP R/3 systems across all units.

However, not willing to rush into full-scale implementation, the company went into a phased introduction. The first phase in the years 2004-05 saw the deployment of web-based dashboards and sales reporting tools. The second phase, which will run into 2007, will focus on event marketing and analytics. The company is, however, taking care to strike a balance between a user-friendly approach and a rich functional experience of the system.

For further details on the CRM implementation, click here.

Weboffice, a vendor of Web-based accounting and business products for small and mid-sized U.S. businesses, has gone ahead with a deal for customer and sales support from Entellium. Founded in 2000, Entellium is a proven provider of customer support for SMBs, and its affordable price of $60 per user was a deciding factor in the deal. Weboffice has a strategy of managing the customer and sales needs of its network of franchise locations with the help of Entellium tools.

As TMCnet reports, Weboffice is not the only big deal bagged by Entellium in the recent past:

Last September Allied Home Mortgage Capital Corp. decided to move to a standardized hosted CRM vendor, deploying 2,000 seats of out-of-the-box hosted CRM applications from Entellium. It expected deployment to be completed by the end of the year and plans to add another 3,000 seats down the road under the three-year deal.

As far as customer information is concerned, every minute detail is confidential. Today, every organization has a mind boggling repository of information which can be accessed by employees. Unless and until this information is secure, there is every possibility of their confidentiality being compromised. This is where the effectiveness of ID management comes into play.

For this, a foolproof ID management technology has to be in place. Other wise it will be impossible, especially for large organizations to cope with thousands of records. One of the main issues affecting ID management is governance. They have to go hand in hand. Else it will be difficult to ensure compliance.

Luckily, organizations are realizing the importance of ID management and going all out for it.

According to market analyst IDC, spending on ID management and access systems will rise to $950m by 2009 from $550m in 2005.

For further details…read

Oracle completed its acquisition of Siebel in January this year, and the expected results are starting to show. In a recent bid, Oracle has offered CRM OnDemand, the new release of the hosted offering from the former Siebel Systems Inc. The new release has updated customization capabilities, improved sales and service features, and enhancements targeting the life sciences and financial services industries.

Bruce Hipkiss, vice president of sales at Specialty Sales and Marketing Inc., is "most interested in the customization feature when the company started using a beta release of the new hosted version last month."

Click here for more on the article. 

Following the launch of its Dynamics CRM 3.0 a few months back, Microsoft is now making a move to tie up with channel partners CDC to take the software to China. Microsoft is looking to deliver CRM, ERP, and supply chain management applications in China. This is seen in market circles as a move to take advantage of China’s "hugely dynamic economy.” As CIO reports:

The company is releasing the software in 22 languages, including simplified Chinese but not traditional Chinese, according to Claus Minet of Microsoft Business Solutions in Beijing. Simplified Chinese is used primarily on the Chinese mainland and in Singapore, with traditional Chinese used in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other Chinese communities worldwide.