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338 Chapter 12 • Customer Relationship Management

the efficiency of CRM delivery and support processes. They are often embedded in campaign
management and customer help desks. They are integrated with the corporate databases to
provide a single and consistent view of the customer from anywhere in the organization.

ANALYTICAL CRM Analytical CRM systems provide tools for collection and analysis of data
gathered during the operational process to help create a better relationship and experience with
clients or end users. They store and value add customer knowledge for better understanding of
customer needs and behavior. Analytical CRMs utilize sophisticated data warehousing, OLAP,
and data mining software for planning, monitoring, and analyzing business activities and to
support business intelligence needs.

COLLABORATIVE CRM Collaborative CRM systems deal with the interaction points between
the organization and the customer. These outlets are referred to as channels. Common channels
are the telephone, e-mail, Internet, and fax, among other forms of communication to facilitate
open and effective communication with the variety of customers with a multitude of preferences.
CRMs today integrate these channels via an integrated CRM portal that provides a gateway for
customers to access information and to interact electronically with the company.

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP PROCESSES
CRM’s role is to balance the corporate needs with successful fulfillment of customer needs.
CRM needs a tight integration with business processes that involve customers. In addition,
customer processes are hard to model because they rely on the underlying supply of knowledge
on products, markets, and customers. Thus, a CRM cannot automate all the customer relation-
ships, and it is often considered a knowledge-intensive process. Nonetheless, a good CRM
should provide support for the following functions: 8

•capture and maintain of customer needs, motivations, and behaviors over the lifetime of
the relationship
•facilitate the use of customer experiences for continuous improvement of this relationship
•integrate marketing, sales, and customer support activities measuring and evaluating the
process of knowledge acquisition and sharing
Research in the support of customer relationships processes has shown that these processes
can be categorized into three areas: delivery processes, support processes, and analysis
processes.

CRM Delivery Processes
The delivery processes focus on direct contact with the customer to support the sequence of
activities to solve a specific problem (e.g., buying a car). Campaign management, sales manage-
ment, service management, and complaint management are the key customer delivery processes
that need CRM support.

8 Geib, M., Reichold, A., Kolbe, L., and Brenner, W. (2005). Architecture for CRM Approaches in Financial Services.
Proceedings of the Thirty-Eighth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Track 8, 240b.