Oracle Corporation is one of the largest and well-respected technology companies in the information technology industry, with more than $35 billion in annual revenue and nearly 400,000 customers (Oracle Corporation, 2011b); the company seeks to leverage their customer base to double revenue in the next three years. Eschewing an account management model, Oracle has consistently grown revenue through aggressive acquisitions and the implementation of a specialized sales model, to assure each acquired product line continues to grow and customers have access to needed expertise. With over 77 strategic acquisitions since 2005 (Oracle Corporation, 2011c), representing capability from applications to disk, Oracle now plays a prominent role in nearly every company in the world, yet many customers have expressed dissatisfaction with the specialized sales model, the lack of account management and the lack of a strategic engagement by Oracle (Oracle Corporation, 2011a). Conversely, the specialized sales model is perceived by many inside the company to be a barrier to explosive growth, particularly as overlapping product functionality results in turf wars between divisions, and competing solutions are sometimes proposed to customers. In addition, solutions comprised of the full stack of technology are rarely sold. As a result, North America Sales (NASA), the largest sales division, has invested in the development and rollout of the Customer Interaction Model (CIM), a pseudo account management approach that primarily uses existing roles to lead the cross-functional Oracle account teams, engage strategically with customers, and double account revenue in three years. However, the rollout of the CIM has only been partially effective meetin...
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RBC Financial Group uses a customer relationship management (CRM) strategy that provides a variety of services for a variety of clients. The strategy allows for individual customers to trust RBC and develop a personal relationship with each and every client. One major factor that allows CRM to operate effectively is the use of technologies and analytics to help classify each client’s financial situation. These customer profitability-based techniques allowed RBC to categorize their clients into A, B, and C groups so that the sales teams could optimize their efforts in catering to these different clients. This strategy holds the following strengths: optimizing sales efforts to different customers, easily accessible electronic sales leads, centralized and standardized financial decisions, and building personalized and sustainable customer relationships. There are a few weaknesses to the system though including the complexity in predicting future positions of companies despite the use of analytics as well as the complexity in creating consistency when using these
Reaching new people is the key to expanding a company’s image and success to heights no one could have imaged. Why does awareness play a big part in sponsorships? A study conducted by Hoek, Gendall, Jeffcoat, and Orsman found that sponsorship generated higher levels of awareness than did advertising (Shank 334). Seem rather inclusive that a sponsored event where consumers could be the...
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Many firms adopt CRM technologies because it is what their competitors are doing, without clarifying exactly what they hope to achieve from it. Many do not realise that they are already undertaking basic CRM practices, without the use of expensive systems such as Oracle or Siebel. Gummesson (2004) points out that the behaviour of the classical industrial salesman in many successful companies was the same that is advocated in relationship marketing, CRM and key account management such as working in the long term, not evaluating customers in terms of profit per year, aiming for the ‘share of the customer’ and not market share. IBM were doing this in the 1960’s, long before the term CRM was being used.
Computer Economics, a research and consulting firm, surveyed 209 IT organization worldwide regarding their IT investment plans. The leading trends “were identified as low risk/high reward based on their cost predictability and their positive return on investment for organizations within two years’ time.” CRM tops the list for 2014 (Mackie, 2014)
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