Challenges of Developing and Managing Effective CRM

Statement of the Problem

In recent years, it emerged that customer relationship management is key to the successful day to day running of every organization and all businesses are continuously making effort to overcome the challenges that are associated with Customer relationship management (CRM) in their organizational sectors. The past decade has seen a shift from the need to manage transactions to that of managing relationships to promote productivity and profit.  The Customer relationship management (CRM) is a technology for managing all company’s relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers with the simple goal of improving business relationships. To date, CRM system helps companies achieve connection to customers, streamline processes, and improve profitability. It also incorporates an overall business strategy with input from sales, marketing, and customer service, thereby identifying all potential touchpoints that occur during the customer journey.In the attempts to improve the possible challenges related to CRM, the industries have to think about new strategies and policies to handle their production and customers to optimize their customer loyalty and revenues. More so, the industries need to acquire, adopt, and follow certain developed measures togain and retain customers with greater precision and improved results in both intra- and inter organizational sector.

Purpose of the Study

This research attempts to study the challenges associated with developing effective customer relationship management in the global economy pertaining to customers inthe globalorganizational sectors.The attempts being made by various stakeholders in the above sectors to customer loyalty and customer retain ship in the emerging busy and tight global market conditions of today.One of the goals for this research is to educate supply chain professionals and everyone within the organization how efficient CRM can facilitate lean manufacturing and create  better symmetry between customer demands and available plant capacity. Importantly, manufacturing is a constant balance of utilizing available capacity to meet the demands of its customers. CRM tools will allow supply chain professionals to better understand how these limited resources can be used to not only meet the needs of the customer but exceed those needs.

Notably, over the years, there have been several articles and researches that have attempted to explore the correlation between CRM and successful manufacturing. Also, several articles argue that the reasons many organizations fail to achieve success aredue to their failure to adequately utilize CRM or have refused to pursue the numerous benefits of CRM. Some of these benefits include; the ability of CRM system to coordinates customer data and ensures conflicts do not arise. A CRM system also helps in closing faster deals by facilitating quicker and more efficient responses to customer leads and information. More so, with effective CRM, customers get more convinced to turn their inquiries into purchases once they are responded to promptly. Good knowledge of customers, segmentation, customers’ retention, better and speedier communication and good protection of data privacy are all some of the benefits that can be improved in an organization to make customer relationships better for retention

Significance of the Study

This research is associated with the numerous benefits that organizations can derive from properly executed CRM. CRM emphasis the direct relationship between CRM dimensions and organization performance perspectives.  This study will describe meaningful implications of building  extensive and effective CRM dimensions in every business as they face higher levels of competition and grow profits to better survive in today’s business environment. Although the concept of CRM in relation to marketing is quite easy to understand by businesses, the implementation part could prove difficult, due to many factors that need to be addressed during the implementation phase(Ghaziana, Hossainib, &Farsijani, 2016). Some of the critical issues in the implementation of CRM in organizations will be discussed in this study.Educating and keeping organizations informed on the challenges of developing and managing effective CRM in manufacturing is crucial to businesses hence the need for this study. Importantly, in CRM, maintaining real-time contact with the customers is key in reducing the time gap between customers query and the response by the organization.Savita, Umang,&Anirban (2011)have argued thatCRM is the way of better analysis of customers’ requirement to deliver relevant products or services to the customer and efforts should be made to reduce the time gap levels to zero at least in communicating with the customers for effective relationship. The other issue is related to motivating customers to switch over from low-value products to high-value products. Often incentives are provided to the customers whenever they switch to high- value products as a good CRM strategy.

The manufacturing.net and Manufacturing Business Technology research state that 41.1 % of manufacturing firms are presently utilizing the CRM system or are in the process of implementing the system in their organization (Al-Weshah, Al-Manasrah, & Al-Qatawneh, 2019). It means that a significant number of manufacturing firms have realized the importance of CRM systems in their organizations. Additionally, 70% of the company that is using the CRM system or are in the process of using I have revenues that are greater than one billion dollars. Also, 60% of these businesses have revenues that range from 50 million dollars to one billion dollars. In general, manufacturing companies require a strategy and deliverables to successfully implement and use the CRM system. But the application of this system is not easy and that is why these companies face numerous challenges.

The primary challenge facing the implementation of CRM is cost, When the implementation of CRM is done in a rush and without robust planning, it can be a costly affair (Peppers, & Rogers, 2016). Therefore, businesses are advised to decide why their businesses required a CRM before implementing it since this provides a clear picture of the type of CRM system needed and the execution techniques needed. With the necessary information, the business will be able to develop a budget instead of simply imitating the competitors’ CRM strategies and working to implement a type of CRM that is not effective for the business (Peppers, & Rogers, 2016). To avoid incurring unnecessary costs, there is a need for business to discuss its IT resources, software, and hardware needed, the CRM providers, and total costs of ownerships of different types of CRM so that the process of acquiring a CRM can be streamlined and ultimately help reduce costs.

Some businesses fail to define clear objectives that they intend to attain with a successful CRM implementation (Peppers, & Rogers, 2016). Other businesses have the objectives but have not made them measurable metrics and their failure to do so makes it challenging to evaluate the return on investment or core advantages of the system. Also, objectives help determine the functionalities that a business wants from the system. Some of the functionalities that a business would expect from the systems include increased sales, improved quality of customer service, and enhanced marketing activities. Further, the CRM system can address some challenges that the business is facing when it comes to customer management (Peppers, & Rogers, 2016). Therefore, it is vital to have a clear idea of the objectives and important functionalities needed in the system since this is what will ensure the successful implementation of the CRM system.

Training and development of employees are needed (Matiş, &Ilieş, 2014). During the implementation of CRM is any company, there must be a broadand extensive training done, and the potential users of the training must be trained from the early stages of the implementation process. Experts encourage companies to involve the users of the company right from the decision-making process and to pick key employees from every department to be trained extensively about the system (Matiş, &Ilieş, 2014). However, the depth of training is time-consuming and very costly, and some companies ignore the training altogether since they are not sure they will get the return on investment. Also, training only key personnel from each department means that they must educate other employees from their department and yet these employees are not experts in CRM systems. The lack of proper training of employees leads to poor implementation of the CRM system and ultimately poor results. Further, there is the challenge of poor integration of the CRM system with other business management solutions such as the ERP and payroll. It is usually advisable for a business to plan for the integration needs of the CRM system in advance to prevent CRM implementation overkill and information surplus on personnel (Matiş, &Ilieş, 2014). For instance, a company can decide to dedicate one of the phases of implementation of the system for integration needs to guarantee the wide adoption of the CRM system in the company. But, a majority of the businesses think that the system will integrate seamlessly in other business management solutions after its implementation and this has proven to be challenging when the system doesn’t integrate since it makes the implementation seem useless.

Lack of communication channels is one reason why some manufacturing firms have not successfully implemented the CRM system. Usually, the CRM implementation and development decisions are done by the top management due to the budget and the process alterations that will occur after the implementation of the CRM (Migdadi, 2020). The management is required to communicate with all organizational employees and the support of the development and implementation procedure. However, due to a lack of effective communication channels, there is a lack of efficient communication, ultimately giving rise to insecurities and encouraging mental barriers in the minds of the employees. During the implementation process, lack of communication means that the implementation team will be unable to update any significant changes on the go, and they have to constantly rely on the management to go what they ought to do (Migdadi, 2020). Thus, in this case, instead of CRM eliminating the problems that it is supposed to eliminate, it gives rise to new problems hence giving the CRM development and implementation team double work. Further, what these manufacturing companies require is CRM software that is developed with a communication management module that will ensure the effective delivery of consumer services. For instance, if a consumer calls to inquire about the quality of a certain product and the customer service member who had spoken to the consumer is unavailable, instead of leaving the question unaddressed, the team customer service employee who has no prior knowledge of the previous discussion and rapidly pull out notes like emails and phone call records (Migdadi, 2020). Therefore, with a lack of communication, it will be unable to effective implementation such as a system.

Moreover, there is the challenge of cross-organizational participation. The development and implementation of CRM is a company-wide program that involves the participation of all organizational members across all departments (Soltani, &Navimipour, 2016). Usually, CRM programs are developed and implemented by cross-organization teams that have a representative from each functional department. The teams are meant to enhance cooperation and communication but purring into practice is challenging. Research shows only one of six companies have successfully installed the CRM software primarily because of confusion in the organization. It is difficult to bring all departments and employees on board with CRM despite companies making it clear that it is for the long-term success of the organization. Some employees, particularly in the sales and marketing department reject the system, thinking that the system will make their jobs redundant (Soltani, &Navimipour, 2016). Other employees are just not willing to accept change and they don’t cooperate with the management and other personnel in the implementation of the system. Further, there is the challenge of stigma. A common misconception among manufacturing firms during the implementation and development of CRM is that the software system is technology-driven or that it is simply a technology. But this is not true since CRM is supported by a technological infrastructure that comprises software solutions utilized in the collection, evaluation, and interpretation of consumer data (Soltani, &Navimipour, 2016). Also, these technological aspects alone cannot make a company successful since CRM requires a clear and effective strategy with cross-organizational integration for it to be successful. CRM is only effective when a company has goals, metrics, and constant measurement of performance with consumers.

Additionally, CRM trends are becoming a challenge for the implementation and development of CRM in manufacturing companies (Cvijović, Kostić-Stanković, &Reljić, 2017). One of the trends is that of marketing being bout influence. Consumers are getting smarter each day and the smarter they get, the more demanding they get hence the many challenges that CRM professionals experience. The CRM professionals are forced to have their systems continuously address the demands of the consumers. Also, in the future, marketing will have to adapt to new customer purchasing tendencies meaning that flash sales and discount-based marketing are slowly being faced out. Consumers understand that if they wait, they get steep discounts since, in most cases, the patient consumers pay half the original price. Thus, consumers have learned to adjust their purchasing to adjust their buying to align with times the steepest discounts are available (Cvijović, Kostić-Stanković, &Reljić, 2017). Therefore, the companies have to make their CRM systems to influence consumers instead of offering them outdated incentives like discounts and flash sales if they want to maintain their productivity and sustainability.

Also, the search in CRM applications is currently clunky and fails to perform adequately (Cvijović, Kostić-Stanković, &Reljić, 2017). A majority of the present CRM systems cannot search for text notes and this is a significant limitation since if the salesforce of a manufacturing company tries to type notes in the automation tool, they will not be searchable. Therefore, many of these companies usually discourage their employees from taking notes hence they keep missing out on vital information that can be costly (Cvijović, Kostić-Stanković, &Reljić, 2017). Further, the inadequacy of the search engine means that the quality of CRM system is limited and that there has to be a change to upgrade CRM functions so that they can properly function.in the current world, information sharing is vital, and social media plats and blogs have better search tool features than CRM. Therefore, it is challenging to integrate CRM, which this platform meaning that manufacturing systems are missing out on vital information.

Despite the above issues, CRM is still without a doubt, the best way that an organization can show how much it values its customers and guarantee that there is high-quality customer service. CRM has a critical role in making sure that customer service, marketing, and sales departments in a company work together for the benefit of the consumers (Gaur, &Afaq, 2020). Additionally, in recent years, CRM software has continuously proved its significance for many companies across industries due to its ability to manage various aspects of business-like customer relations, service management, marketing, and sales. But the failure of successful implementation of CRM cannot be ignored since companies incur expenses that cannot be recovered and the future revenues of the company are negatively impacted.

Effective leadership is what ties the entire process together. Developing and implementing a CRM system without proper leadership can be likened to taking an aircraft that has no pilot (Gaur, &Afaq, 2020). It is because CEOs and executives of organizations are the ones who offer the insight ad direction required to steer their businesses towards successful development and implementation of the CRM system. Leaders are the ones who offer the ERP vendors the precise requirements of the manufacturing firm and supervise the implementation effectively. When the task of execution or any other vital process is handled by the employees, the implementation is not expected to be smooth since these employees not only possess insufficient business knowledge but they might also not be authorized to access significant information, particularly about sales and finances (Gaur, &Afaq, 2020). Thus, the role of a company executive is not just limited to the selection of CRM software.  The company leader must oversee the whole development and execution process and afterward motivate and help the employees to use the CRM software to enhance the productivity and sustainability of the company.

Literature Review

Manufacturing is the backbone of any nation’s economy since they make an important difference in the GDP, employment, and export and import of a country. Over the past decades, the manufacturing sector has significantly evolved, and technology plays the principal faction as a catalyst for change (Aljawarneh, & Al-Omari, 2018). But despite the advancements and the ability to manufacture companies to leverage business management solutions prompted by technology such as CRM, there have been significant challenges that manufacturing companies have faced. Manufacturers try to resolve these challenges so that they can enjoy the benefits of applying CRM. One of the benefits of CRM is efficient lead management. With CRM, Manufacturing companies will be able to grantee effective lead management since there will be automated routing by consolidated leads from social media platforms, company websites, and email and this information will be automatically given to the distributors so that they can fulfill the needs of consumers. Because of CRM, there will be a constant flow of data between the direct sales of the company and partner sales team that are aiding the company with ensuring faster ales. CRM will enable sales manufacturers to access data important to satisfying the consumer even when they are out of office since the manufacturer has the tools to handle the various ways in which data is gotten, such as the handling of sales email in an efficient and organized manner (Aljawarneh, & Al-Omari, 2018). The second significance of CRM is that it makes sure that manufacturers have detailed reports for making their marketing efforts easy. CRM provides manufacturing companies with information that enables them to make effective marketing strategies that guarantee the success of the business. With real-time analytics and insights on every marketing aspect, the sales team can track early indication of anything that is negatively impacting the sales so that the mistake can be rectified on time.

Additionally, there is an improved consumer experience with the implementation of CRM. The CRM system enables manufacturers to effectively connect with different consumers and offer them a convenient way of placing their inquiries, seeking for solutions, obtain updates on the company products, and request for new products (Ge, Wang, Sun, Fu, & Sun, 2020). For the contractors, they can track, update, and accept the work given to them and even communicate through CRM. The manufacturer can collect all this information from the consumers and contracts and store it in the CRM database. Further, CRM enhances collaboration with distributors and dealers. CRM gives manufacturers the capability to be in control, consistent, and predict their distribution channel (Ge, Wang, Sun, Fu, & Sun, 2020). The CRM manufacturing solution permits one to evaluate and collect information from the entire distribution network which permits the manufacturer to recognize the gaps and gauge the performance of the distribution network. The insights got to provide the manufacturers with the knowledge that enables them to communicate clearly and provide guidance and tools that enable them to succeed. The collaboration abilities of CRM aid in the education of consumers and allow the manufacturers to respond to the distributors’ inquiries quickly. Therefore, the definition and automation of procedures have enhanced collaboration with distributors in real-time.

To ensure that manufacturing companies enjoy the benefits of a good CRM system, they must ensure that CRM implementation and development is a success (Purbowo, &Suryadi, 2017, September). For CRM to be adopted successfully there must be adequate support from senior objectives. A CRM project involves the top management since they inspire and build credibility and more importantly, they drive opinions and culture in the companies. The early involvement of the top leaders sends a positive ripple effect throughout the entire companies and guarantees the success of a CRM project. additionally, a good project manager is vital for a CRM project’s successsince the managers are the most vital persons who run the project and influence how it develops.it is the project manager who will ensure that necessary steps are taken on time and that the goals of the CRM project meant (Purbowo, &Suryadi, 2017, September). A project manager doesn’t necessarily have to have studied management. Instead, he must be a committed individual with contagious enthusiasm and a good eye for details. Further, during the implementation procedure for CRM, manufacturing companies must set up internal usage guidelines. Experts say that a CRM system I only as good as the data put in it and that is why it is vital to set common usage guidelines. For instance, there must be guidelines on how to include company data or register a sale. All employees must register all their sales in their CRM system to ensure that the sales manager has the correct sales report. Finally, sufficient training on how to utilize the CRM system must be provided.

Conclusion

The manufacturing business has never been harder or more multifaceted. Manufacturers are currently faced with stiff competition from overseas and domestic rivals and they must ensure that every aspect of their organization is running as seamlessly as possible. One of the major areas that manufacturing companies have been competing on is the efficient management of projects and workflows. Surveys are done on over 400 manufacturing firms by Tech Validate and Insightly shows that manufacturers face various project management and sales challenges as they are in the process of attaining the ultimate efficiency. Some of the issues are difficulty in the management of suppliers and consumers, difficulty in the organization of information, and difficulty in collaborating among the employees. These issues seriously undermine the manufacturing business and one of the best ways to solve these challenges is through customer relationship management solutions. Research shows that CRM solution aids manufacturers in various acritical ways and that is why despite the challenges, manufacturers seek to implement CRM.

CRM implementation enhances the overall efficiency of manufacturing firms through various ways such is readily providing information to companies hence ensuring meetings are shorter and administrative work is less burdensome and freeing time for employees so that they can focus on innovation and the actual manufacturing job. Further, CRM ensures augmented productivity for better sales. With customer data and sales data readily available and organized in a single place, the sales cycle of manufacturing companies becomes short, meaning that the sales team becomes more effective. Also, with CRM implementation, manufacturing companies have happier customers. Complete and easily obtainable customer data means that the customer care teams and sales team can provide individualized attention to every consumer hence the happy customers. Happy consumers tend to be loyal to a company.

Moreover, with the implementation of CRM, manufacturing companies can easily calculate their return on investment. For any manufacturing company, the implementation of a technology that enables easy calculation of return on investment is vital since many techniques can show the level of return on investment. The lack of techniques for calculating the return on investment is the reason why many manufacturing companies only show their return on investment yearly. Finally, the manufacturing business is tough and the last thing manufacturing firms need is internal inefficiencies that will reduce their competitiveness. Therefore, the implementation of a CRM solution helps manufacturers to optimize their internal procedures, workflows, and consumer interactions, hence enhancing their competitive advantage. Also, the significance of CRM systems is the primary reason why manufacturing firms continuously seek to address the challenges of effectively developing and managing CRM systems.

An increased number of organizations have realized the remunerations of having a customer management strategy and developing and effecting CRM systems. But, the main challenge lies in the successful development and management of a CRM system within an organization (Peppers, & Rogers, 2016). It is because an introduction of a CRM structure needs a alteration in approach to consumer management at the structural level. Therefore, CRM doesn’t concern just one department like marketing, sales, and IT. Further, many manufacturing organizations have heard stories of how failed CRM experiments have been expensive for other manufacturing organizations and that is why they are afraid of committing to developed and implementing a CRM strategy themselves (Peppers, & Rogers, 2016). Generally, the fear of failure has been a major stumbling block for the implementation of any IT system in a manufacturing company and CRM is no exception. Thus, there is a need for organizations to overcome this fears thorough evaluation of the benefits of successfully developing and implementing a CRM system and all the possible challenges they might have to overcome to guarantee that new CRM system brigs the best possible optimum return on investing without adversely impacting the current business procedures and with minimal risk.

Most common during the implementation process is when the CRM product doesn’t fit in the organization (Matiş, &Ilieş, 2014). Sometimes, the CRM product developed is not flexible enough to be customized to fit in an organization’s growth and varying needs hence meaning that the company has lost the costs it used to develop the system since it is inapplicable. Likewise, sometimes, the CRM system is not conversant with the present trends like the mobile CRM and the social CRM and this means that it is not suitable for the future since it doesn’t factor in the future needs of the company and manufacturing sector (Matiş, &Ilieş, 2014). When a CRM product doesn’t fit in, it is expensive for a company since it incurs losses without and doesn’t get the return on investment that it had hoped for. Therefore, there is a need for a company to ensure that a CRM product fists not only for the present business but for also a company’s developing and changing needs.

Additionally, some manufacturing companies lack integration capabilities and this means that a CRM system will not work effectively since it will not be integrated with existing IT systems such as ERP, e-commerce ad marketing automation. In some instances, there is a lack of support from employees who are in charge of the existing systems while developing and implementing the CRM, and that is why some manufacturing firms find the integration process a huge burden that it is time-consuming and expensive without any visible results (Migdadi, 2020). The lack of planning about integration needs from the development stage is what makes the implementation of CRM unsuccessful. Furthermore, one of the most ignored aspects during CRM development and application is the hypothesis that once the software is in place, people will start using it and make good utilization of it as much as probable. But this is not the case since user acceptance is vital for CRM realization and many manufacturing organizations don’t have a suitable strategy in advance to preparation and development of employees. It is significant to have all-inclusive training packages to offer an understanding of the end-users of the systems and enable the employees to navigate the complex systems (Migdadi, 2020). Apart from usability, employees have to be educated about the need to make the CRM system apart from their everyday schedule and be encouraged to use it to augment their effectiveness.

Also, in some instances, manufacturing companies use CRM vendors and these vendors lack expertise. If the vendor doesn’t have sufficient understanding of the CRM system or they may have never assumed such CRM projects that are related to that of the manufacturing company, it may outcome in unseen obstacles that are challenging to overcome once the implementation procedure is underway (Soltani, &Navimipour, 2016). Similarly, the CRM vendor can be ill-prepared with the possible development and implementation challenges hence resulting in loss of valuable time and resources. The problem is usually a result of manufacturing companies not evaluating the capabilities of the vendors and thoroughly assessing their credentials before entering into any contract with them. Another challenge is the lack of business insight because of the lack of clear objectives for the CRM project. Insights are drawn from available data after thorough consumer research and with no adequate action taken on the insights, the development and implementation of CRM software will most be a failure (Soltani, &Navimipour, 2016). The CRM system put in place will be unable to effectively address consumer issues, exploit opportunities, and close more sales.

Cultural shift in manufacturing companies since many things companies have rigid cultures (Gaur, &Afaq, 2020). Also, when CRM was first introduced in the manufacturing sector, it was seen as a technology meant for marketing. But, various companies failed to optimize their CRM solutions hence the certainty that CRM functions finest as a company-wide arrangement. Therefore, manufacturing companies that select to accept CRM need to alter their product or manufacture orientation and become customer-centric companies but, it is difficult to get all functional departments and workers to agree that their jobs have one primary focus because in most cases, employees are resistant to change.