Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Similarly, CRM enables even the customer to experience that they are dealing with the different
functions of the same enterprise rather than independent departments that force them to run from
pillar to post when trying to meet their demands.
2.1.4 CRM Fundamentally Models a Process-Oriented Enterprise
As organizational and environmental conditions become more complex, globalized, and competi-
tive, processes provide a framework for dealing effectively with the issues of performance improve-
ment, capability development, and adaptation to the changing environment. Process modeling
permits the true nature of the characteristic structure and dynamics of the business.
Conventional systems primarily store only snapshots of customer interactions in terms of dis-
crete groups of data at predefined or configured instants of time, along a business process within an
organization.
This predominating data-oriented view of the enterprise as implemented by traditional IT
systems is a most unnatural and alien way of looking at any area of human activity
. The stability of the
data models, as canonized in the conventional IT paradigm, might have been advantageous for the
systems personnel, but for the same reason, it would have been unusable (and unacceptable) to
the business stakeholders within the organizations. Traditional systems could never really resolve this
simple dichotomy of the fact that systems based on leveraging the unchanging data models, although
easy to maintain, can never describe the essentially dynamic nature of businesses. This is the post-
modern version of C. P. Snow's
Two Cultures
, which he had initially mooted to talk meaningfully
about the worlds of humanities and sciences in the middle of the last century. Business processes
are the most important portions of the reality that had been ignored by the traditional information
systems. The traditional IT process modeling techniques, methodologies, and environments are a
misnomer, for they truly model only the procedures for operating on the data associated at various
points of the business subprocesses—which themselves are never mirrored within the system.
CRM packages recognized the fundamental error that was perpetuated all these past decades.
Although many CRM packages still carry the legacy of the data-oriented view, the parallel view
of business process and business rules is gaining prominence rapidly. This is the reason for the
rapidly maturing groupware and workflow subsystems within the core architecture of current
CRM systems.
2.1.5 CRM Enables the Real-Time Enterprise
The real-time responsiveness of the enterprise coupled with the enterprise-wide integra-
tion mentioned earlier also enables enterprises the powerful capability of
concurrent processing
,
which would be impossible without systems like SAP CRM. Enterprises can obtain tremendous
efficiencies and throughputs because of this ability to administer in parallel many processes that
are related but independent of each other. In non-ERP enterprises, such closely related processes
are typically done sequentially because they are usually handled by the same set of personnel, who
may obviously be constrained to address them only in a sequence.
Customer responsiveness is an outcome of real-time sharing of current, complete, and consis-
tent information on interactions with individual customers. Furthermore, it implies instantaneous,
transparent connectivity and visibility between customer-facing processes with the corresponding
order fulfilling processes. This visibility not only permits the salesman to give accurate available-
to-promise (ATP) information to the customer but also enables him to assess for himself the latest
capable-to-promise (CTP) status for a particular order prior to making any commitments. In turn,
the various members of the supply chain also have a better visibility and understanding of the
