Many companies sell to organisations as well as to individuals. Even if a company only deals with other organisations, those organisations are comprised of individuals. Such individuals may be associated with more than one company and may have more than one address. In addition an individual and/or organisation may have multiple relationships (e.g. author, supplier, creditor, lecturer, educational institution, customer and representative of an organisation that is also a customer) with your company.
IP1’s core ERP database manages this using an ‘entity’ file rather than having separate files or authors, suppliers, prospects, customers (company) and customers (individual). This ‘entity’ file holds all individuals and organisations with whom your company has a relationship and these are identified and defined by their relationships with your company and with each other. An entity can be one or more of the following: an author, individual customer, employee of a customer, lecturer/teacher, educational institution, supplier or prospect.
Contact details, personal details, communication history, etc can be kept at an individual and/or organisation level. Each organisation can have multiple individual contacts, each individual can be associated with multiple organisations and both can have multiple relationships with your company.
In order to provide maximum flexibility in using CRM a number of user-definable classifications that can be used for access, reporting, etc. have been created. These include demographic definitions, profiles, customer/prospect interests, customer/prospect groupings, turnover, size, territory, status, type and many more.
The Academic Adoptions is integrated into the CRM system, with the management of institutions as customers, teachers and lecturers as contacts. Thus the functionality of CRM also includes:
- Managing the sales cycle of an Adoptions campaign
- Managing the relationship of teachers/lecturers/schools through CRM
- Managing activities and sampling through CRM
- Provide visibility of opportunities and leads for marketing campaigns
Core CRM features
Customer / Contact Management
- Consolidation of the many independent lists and databases of customers and contact details for departmental specific use. Therefore an enterprise wide customer and prospect database has been created within IP1.
- Centralised management of contacts through integrated file structure
- Centralised address database
- Multiple contact types
- Manage academic institutions as customers
- Manage lecturers/teachers as contacts
- Relationship Management of Teachers/Lecturers/Schools
- Contact UDFs
- Contact Interests
- Duplicate Contact Maintenance
- Import/Export function for Contacts
- Provide better service to customers by tracking all correspondence
- Web Enhancements
- Web Authentication for integration between customers and IP1
Activity Management
- Activity handling and tracking
- Activity Type (phone, letter by type, meeting, complaint, etc)
- Activity Group, Number, Summary, Status & Priority
- Action Date, Time & User
- Duration
- Follow Up Date & Response Direct Mail
- Customer communication history
- Work scheduler
- Seminars via EBP
- Tracking of Sales Opportunities
- Lead Management
- Letter/Email Generation for Incidents/Issue
- Template maintenance
Academic Adoptions
- Curriculum & Interests
- Competitions ISBNs
- Sample management
- Opportunities
Campaign Management
- Adoptions Campaign
- Direct Mail
- Campaign lists
- Call lists
- Sample process
- Identify Opportunities and leads
Customer Service
- Customer self-service (via e-Commerce)
- Complaint/Query resolution
- Problem management and resolution
- Order & delivery information
- Account Status
- Price & Availability
- Customer Discounts
- Order capture and information
- Product information
- ROI analysis
- Track sales opportunities and Sales Rep activities
