CRM and Customer Life Cycle

CRM and Customer Life Cycle
By Bruce Zhang

Customer Relationship Management or CRM is a combination of enterprise strategies, business processes and information technologies used to learn more about customers' needs and behaviors in order to develop stronger relationships with them. CRM software systems automate many customer-related business tasks.

CRM applications are traditionally developed as client-server software which incurs higher initial cost of ownership. The proliferation of the Internet and the Web has fueled the rapid growth of Web-based CRM or online CRM applications. Web CRM systems are widely deployed for web based call center, contact management, trouble ticket, personal information manager and scheduling.

The life cycle of CRM consists of three phases - customer acquisition, customer relationship enhancements and customer retention. CRM software streamlines CRM activities at each phase of customer relationship management.

Customer Acquisition

Contact management module and direct marketing module of CRM allow companies to effectively promote and market their products and services to prospects. Those modules help speed up the acquiring processes and reduce the cost of acquiring new customers.

Customer Relationship Enhancements

CRM helps companies better understand existing customers' needs and behaviors and enhance the profitability from existing customers by cross-selling. They can customize their products and services to individual customers' needs and preferences.

Customer Retention

Customer service module of CRM system gives the organizations the edge in customer support and call center services. They can increase customer satisfaction while reducing the cost of support. Customer retention is critical to the overall profitability of an organization. A customer you spend hundreds of dollars and months to acquire may leave you in seconds as a result of poor customer services.

Copyright 2005, Bruce Zhang

Bruce Zhang has over 10 years experiences in developing and implementing ecommerce and ebusiness systems in various industries. He has created a news aggregator http://www.sysoptima.com/newsbot/crm.php that automatically extracts CRM news and new articles from over 50 sources daily to help corporate executives, IT professionals and consultants to keep up with the latest development in enterprise software market. The website offers a knowledge base for understanding CRM software from a systems perspective.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bruce_Zhang

Enterprise Resource Planning Overview

Enterprise Resource Planning Overview
By Vamseedhar Sane

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) Overview covers What is
ERP, Brief history of ERP, Why is it necessary, Market
Leaders and the future of ERP.

What is ERP?

Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP is an industry term for
integrated, multi-module application software packages that
are designed to serve and support multiple business
functions. An ERP system can include software for
manufacturing, order entry, accounts receivable and payable,
general ledger, purchasing, warehousing, transportation and
human resources. Evolving out of the manufacturing industry,
ERP implies the use of packaged software rather than
proprietary software written by or for one customer. ERP
modules may be able to interface with an organization's own
software with varying degrees of effort, and, depending on
the software, ERP modules may be alterable via the vendor's
proprietary tools as well as proprietary or standard
programming languages.

Brief History of ERP

The focus of manufacturing systems in the 1960's was on
Inventory control. Most of the software packages then
(usually customized) were designed to handle inventory based
on traditional inventory concepts. In the 1970's the focus
shifted to MRP (Material Requirement Planning) systems that
translated the Master Schedule built for the end items into
time-phased net requirements for the sub-assemblies,
components and raw materials planning and procurement.

In the 1980's the concept of MRP-II (Manufacturing Resources
Planning) evolved which was an extension of MRP to shop
floor and Distribution management activities. In the early
1990's, MRP-II was further extended to cover areas like
Engineering, Finance, Human Resources, Projects Management
etc i.e. the complete gamut of activities within any
business enterprise. Hence, the term ERP (Enterprise
Resource Planning) was coined.

Why is it Necessary?

By becoming the integrated information solution across the
entire organization, ERP systems allow companies to better
understand their business. With ERP software, companies can
standardize business processes and more easily enact best
practices. By creating more efficient processes, companies
can concentrate their efforts on serving their customers and
maximizing profit.

Market Leaders

The top five ERP vendors, SAP, Oracle Corporation,
Peoplesoft, Inc. (now Oracle Corp.), JD Edwards & Company,
and Baan International, account for 64 percent of total ERP
market revenue. These vendors continue to play a major role
in shaping the landscape of new target markets, with
expanded product functionality, and higher penetration
rates. SAP dominates the $6.7 billion ERP applications
market in Europe with 39% market share. Oracle and
PeopleSoft come second and third respectively, followed by
SAGE Group and Microsoft Business Solutions.

The Future of ERP

Industry analysts expect that every major manufacturing
company will buy the software, which ranges in cost -- with
maintenance and training -- from hundreds of thousands of
dollars for a small company to millions for a large company.
AMR Research of Boston says consolidation among the major
players will continue and intensify. ERP vendors are
expected to put more effort into e-commerce, CRM and SCM
initiatives, with leaders redirecting between 50% and 75% of
their R&D budget to these projects.

According to Gartner research group, the rapid evolution of
ERP has already lead to a new corporate must-have, ERP II,
which is supposed to help businesses gain more competitive
edge in the future. The major difference is that ERP II
involves collaborative commerce, which enables business
partners from multiple companies to exchange information
posted on eCommerce exchanges.

In the next tutorial we will talk about popular ERP Products
and the Modules and Application related to them.

For more visualization of this article along with the screen shots and more visit with step by step instructions, http://www.exforsys.com/content/category/17/260/342/

Exforsys is a community of developers specializing in C, C++, C#, Java, J2EE, .NET, PeopleSoft, SAP, Siebel, Oracle Apps., Data warehousing, Oracle/SQL Server/DB2 and Testing. Please visit http://www.exforsys.com for more tutorials, for IT Interview questions visit http://www.geekinterview.com, for articles and resources visit http://www.itquestionbank.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Vamseedhar_Sane

Career in SAP

Introduction to ERP

ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning systems integrate all data and processes of an organization into a unified system. A typical ERP system will use multiple components of computer software and hardware to achieve this integration. A key ingredient of most ERP systems is the use of a unified database to store data for the various system modules.

Enterprise Resource Planning is a term originally derived from manufacturing resource planning (MRP II) that followed material requirements planning (MRP). MRP evolved into ERP when "routings" became major part of the software architecture and a company's capacity planning activity also became a part of the standard software activity. ERP systems typically handle the manufacturing, logistics, distribution, inventory, shipping, invoicing, and accounting for a company. Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP software can aid in the control of many business activities, like sales, marketing, delivery, billing, production, inventory management, quality management, and human resources management.

About SAP

SAP is the largest ERP solution provider in the world. SAP the company was founded in Germany in 1972 by five ex-IBM engineers. SAP stands for Systeme, Andwendungen, Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung which - translated to English - means Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing. Being incorporated in Germany, the full name of the parent company is SAP AG. It is located in Walldorf, Germany which is close to the beautiful town of Heidelberg. SAP has subsidiaries in over 50 countries around the world from Argentina to Venezuela (and pretty much everything in between). SAP America (with responsibility for North America, South America and Australia - go figure!) is located just outside Philadelphia, PA

The original five founders have been so successful that they have multiplied many times over such that SAP AG is now the third largest software maker in the world, with over 17,500 customers (including more than half of the world's 500 top companies). SAP employs over 27,000 people worldwide today.

Modules in SAP

Basically you can enter in either SAP Functional or in Technical depending upon your interests & knowledge. SAP Fuctional includes following Modules-

FICO or Financial Accounting & controlling :- For learning this module you need do have a sound knowledge of finance, Accounting,Taxes,Product costing,activity based costing etc.

HR or human resources - needs knowledge of employment,payroll,training,career management etc.

MM Materials Management- need understanding of supply chain management, purchase activities,inventory management etc.

PP Production Planning- needs a sound knowledge of production activies,capacity planning, master production scheduling etc.

SD Sales and Distribution- require knowledge of marketing & sales,quotations,pricing,estimation,shipping etc.

SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW)- it includes Business Intelligence, analytical, reporting and Data Warehousing

there are many other modules like plant maintenance(PM), Project systems (PS), Asset management(AM) etc which require expertise of their domain knowledge.

SAP Technical includes ABAP Programming:-

ABAP or Advanced Business Application Programming is a high level programming language & is currently positioned as the language for programming SAP's Web application server,part of its netweaver platform for building business applications. Its syntax is somewhat similar to COBOL.

People with good knowledge of programming (c & c++ will do) & 1 year experience in IT Industry can go for learning ABAP Module.

For more information on above mentioned modules please visit http://www.sapbrain.com/

Where do I get SAP Education

There are many institutes providing SAP education in India. But I would recommend to do the course only from the authorized ones from SAP AG .As far as I know there are only two companies in india which are authorized SAP education & Training partners of SAP AG Germany. Those are siemens & Genovate. Genovate provides SAP education in mumbai while siemens does in rest of india.

Cost of SAP Education

The cost of doing Sap course from authorized education centers are very high ranging from 2-3 lacs , but you get a direct certification from SAP AG GERMANY. Also some banks provide education loans. But still if you dont want to invest so much money you can go for local training institutes whose fees are much lesser but without certification. but this you can do provided you have good work experience in your domain or module because at the time of job what counts is knowledge.

Lucrative career

Even if the cost of SAP education is high it provides the most lucrative career compared to many other fields. There is a High demand of sap professionals not only in india but also in the global market. In todays scenario the salaries that they get are comparable with those of MBAs. Some people are even shifting to SAP after doing there MBA.

Sites for SAP Information & SAP forums

I have posted most of sap sites on my blog site at http://www.myfavouriteurls.blogspot.com/. If you are serious about SAP Career ,I recommend you to visit these sites & join sap forums since you get a lot of information about sap career on such sites and forums.

Wish u all the best!!

Please feel free to email me(or post here) your queries/or any valuable information on SAP .

SaNdesH:-)

email id- sandeshk10@yahoo.co.in