SigmaWay Blog

Big data has been big news in the travel industry for a few years now. It offers the chance for travel companies to increase the number of sales and improve the travel experience of customers. While big data is a vast, complex challenge for many organizations, it is one of the key factors driving the evolution of the travel industry today and for the foreseeable future. Airlines, hotels, cruise companies, travel management, railways and travel agencies have an opportunity to improve their business and the customer experience by effectively handling the big data at their fingertips. That's not to say it is easy to collect, identify and analyze all of the bits of disparate data types that comprise big data. Travel companies can make better decisions based on the data aggregated from their customers to personalize services like travel booking to make them easier to navigate. For many years, CRM systems have allowed companies to create relevant, targeted marketing campaigns. Big data, however, uses customer information to create a truly personalized service. It allows travel websites to recommend a specific hotel to a specific user based on their previous holidays, requirements and preferences.

Read more at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/centurylink/2014/04/30/how-big-data-is-transforming-the-travel-industry/

The dependence of organizations on software have increased over the decade, so reducing bandwidth and maximizing data through software integration for optimal process has also become necessary. Thus CRM and telephony are the most widely used tools today. The phone/CRM scenarios are: 

No integration:  if one enters the name and phone number of the person in the CRM software and then call the person by phone then the conversation gets automatically recorded and can be used for future review purpose.

Partial integration: if the phone system is partially integrated with the CRM then one call within the CRM platform and the phone calls get automatically logged.

Full integration: it is applicable for both incoming and outgoing calls. When a call comes the number is searched in the CRM database and then for a new number a CRM lead is offered. And for old number the call gets diverted to the responsible staff who identifies the call records and details.

Options available for phone and CRM integrations are: 

Trough CRM software with integrated telephony such as Bitrix24 which is free and TalkDesk does not require any set up.

Otherwise the existing CRM can be used if it is of Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics and readymade integration with IP telephony providers such as RingCentral or RingDNA can be used. Read more at:  http://www.business2community.com/customer-experience/telephony-crm-match-made-heaven-0946844#!bwfcpF

Every business big or small requires using CRM. This includes being organized in tasks, events, meetings, emails, notes, data etc, enhancing communication between team members, better reports, metrics and analytics, customer status and need updates, communication record and history, tracking and scheduling, and availability of centralised data for easy access and data protection.

Information needs to be available to sales personnel outside the office as well which brings in the need for mobile CRM. It allows employees’ to access information anywhere improving sales performance and team information collaboration. Collection and recording of information is made easier with mobile CRM, easy updates on source cuts the waiting time of the sales personnel in getting back to the office and then updating through CRM.

read more at:  http://www.whatech.com/crm/blog/25523-smbs-do-i-really-need-a-mobile-crm

Relying on very basic customer information such as demographics to influence marketing campaigns and limited internal sources and fragmented marketing systems limits sending personalized mails to customers. For companies having multiple marketing agencies and technology partners demographics cannot alone give a complete view of audiences as it leaves other important information. Customer relationship management programs relies on basic data which excludes customer nuances and encourages the mentality that marketers own and drive customer conversation which is no longer true. Due to CRM programs customers put little effort in knowing their customers. On the other hand using resources which contains a vast array of information about the customers enables a better interaction between customers and the brand. Customer Managed Relationship is the better option over CRM these days. To achieve a personal connection with customers, marketers should follow three key rules, namely communication, consistency and trust. Witty comments, 24/7 service or multichannel experience, sending similar number of mails in similar language and color schemes in all channels, personal messages, giving consumers what they expect might do the trick.

Engaging with different channels to get a better understanding of customers and targeting customers specifically using CMR is important. Brands should use CMR based marketing strategy to consider customers purchase behavior and social engagement. Further brands can create rich, useful content to guide customers into repeat purchases. Customers now want to tell brands how to engage with them using necessary technology instead of brands driving into a conversation with customers. Thus all marketers have to listen and adapt.

Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/marketing/crm-dead-now-0947236#!bibims

A global provider of SaaS based mobile life sciences customer relationship management solutions brings in new enhancement to its product StayinFront Touch RX(R) which can run both on iPad and Windows 8 tablet devices. This is very helpful since it provides better access to critical information and data resources which makes the work simpler and maximizes the impact while working with reps in field. It also enables access of sales territories, analytics and reports, track call activities streamline Time off Territory requests and execute field coaching reports. Viewing and tracking information and progress has become easier. They have more access to detailed information with better targeting and enhanced calendar which improves reps’ ability to more effectively manage and sell in their territories and eliminates the need to toggle between systems to see all scheduled appointments.

Stayin Front is a provider of full suite of mobile, cloud based field force effectiveness and CRM for consumer goods and life science organizations. Vast number of countries use it to make their work easier and to improve their business. Read more at: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/newest-release-of-stayinfront-crm-for-life-sciences-delivers-a-single-mobile-device-system-for-reps-and-managers-2014-07-14 

Nintex , the world leader in workflow software, announced its integration with Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the two market-leaders among CRM platforms. Nintex is the first workflow company which enabled business users to connect critical ECM and CRM systems through the cloud, and allowed customers to quickly and easily automate processes between departments in a customer-driven environment. With the new integrations, users can accelerate a variety of processes which involves frequent interactions between customer-facing teams and internal business operations. Nintex’s integration with Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM lets organizations:

• Drive business processes in SharePoint in response to events in CRM so work flows better between previously siloed systems

• Automate the process of creating, updating, retrieving, and querying records in Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics using simple drag-and-drop workflow actions

• Post status updates, links and polls to Salesforce Chatter or Microsoft Yammer, and progress workflows based on user responses in social channels

To know more, go to: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nintex-announces-integration-with-salesforcecom-and-microsoft-dynamics-crm-2014-07-14

Customer relationship management deals with all types of interaction between a company and a customer, whether it is sales or service-related. Customer relationship management is generally used to explain the relationship between business houses and customers. CRM systems are also used to manage business contacts, clients, contract wins and sales leads. Technology Advancement have changed consumer buying behavior, and today there are many alternatives in which a company can get in touch with its customers and collect data about them. Technology and the Internet have changed the way companies approach customer relationship strategies. There are various benefits of CRM strategy like it helps  understanding the customer, retaining customers through delivery of better customer experience, attracting new customers, win new clients and contracts, increased profitability, decrease customer management and helps the companies to know what the customers and the general market want. To know more about CRM go to:http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/CRM.html

While CRM applications officially gather terabytes of helpful client data for organizations, significant deeper insights are also en route because of a creating new pattern of predictive analytics capabilities being integrated into CRM. The huge draw is that organizations will have the capacity to utilize existing CRM information to tremendously enhance basic one-on-one associations with clients. An alternate key profit is that it will help organizations create extra deals when clients reach them by breaking down approaching client information progressively. 

It's the same thought with CRM that incorporates add-on or implicit predictive analytics when a potential client arrives at your company's Web webpage to make a purchase. In the event that a client is offered this item at this cost at this point, would they say they are likely to purchase it? One can make a targeted offer to a client focused around what they are looking for. The probability that they acknowledge that offer will figure out whether you can augment client maintenance, deals and benefits. 

As these sorts of predictive analytics features are presented, organizations will need to evaluate their methodologies to joining the right parts into their own particular foundations. That will take research, detailed inquiries and discussions with teams from marketing, IT and other departments, as well as market research and more. It's not something one will be able to jump into with little thought. One ought to know his objectives before he make the first strides so he can attain sufficient payback from his investments of time and resources. To read the full article visit: http://www.cio.com/article/2371968/customer-relationship-management/how-predictive-analytics-will-improve-crm.html

CRM (customer relationship management) analytics comprises all programming that analyzes data about an enterprise's customers and presents it so that better and quicker business decisions can be made. CRM analytics can be considered a form of online analytical processing (OLAP) and may employ data mining. As web sites have added a new and often faster way to interact with customers, the opportunity and the need to turn data collected about customers into useful information has become generally apparent. As a result, a number of software companies have developed products that do customer data analysis. According to an article in InfoWorld CRM can provide customer segmentation groupings, profitability analysis, personalization, event monitoring, what-if scenarios and predictive modelling. One of the major challenges implicit in CRM analytics is how to integrate the analytical software with existing legacy systems as well as with other new systems. To know about CRM analytics go to: http:http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/definition/CRM-analytics

Few years ago, Internet marketing in India would have meant designing On-Premise solutions for activities such as CRM or ERP. Products and tools from global software vendors were available, but integration and customization often meant huge expenditure. Today, with the SaaS delivery model, software and related data are centrally hosted on the cloud and can be accessed through a Web browser, resulting in better operations with significantly less expenditure. Migrating to a SaaS model makes sense for an e-commerce company, but it is also relevant for a company which deals in the age-old business like auto loans. A principal reason for such industry-wide demand of SaaS is its ability to make decisions faster. Sunil Padmanabhan, research director for Gartner in India had said recently that "SaaS is extremely real in India and there is a large critical mass in adoption”.

To read more, visit reputed journalist Rajiv Rao’s article by clicking on the following link:

http://www.zdnet.com/in/reaching-for-the-cloud-indias-saas-journey-7000023820/