Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Initiating change and confronting change are the two most important issues facing the enter-
prises of today. The ability to change business processes contributes directly to the
innovation
bottom line. The traditional concept of change management is usually understood as a one-time
event. But if an organization is looking for the capability to handle not only change management
but also management of changes on a continual basis, then CRM, like SAP CRM, is a must!
SAP CRM enables the essential changing of customer-facing processes that are so critical to
the success of the enterprise. Business processes that
reside
or are internalized within an organiza-
tion's employees are difficult to change simply because human beings naturally find it more dif-
ficult to change. However, processes that reside within any computerized systems are much more
easy to change. The consequences of using information technology/information systems (IT/IS)
can itself be managed by using more IT! The abstraction and electronic manipulation that have
increased the speed of change can itself be used to manage (transparently to the end users) these
changes. It is reported that in the mid-1980s, managers at the Australian bank Westpac concluded
that the bank's adaptability to change could be enhanced by first modularizing and then codify-
ing core functions, policies, and knowledge in a computerized system. Linking this separate sys-
tem to the regular operational systems, the bank was able to reduce their time to market with new
products; thus, the bank was able to enhance their ability to meet changed market conditions in
weeks or months instead of months or years.
1.3.6 The Learning Enterprise
RBE builds customer relationships based on customer-related information. Evidently, all this
information is necessarily finite in nature and also keeps on changing with changes in the cus-
tomer environment. RBE recognizes that perfect information at any instance and especially on an
ongoing basis is impossible and, therefore, incorporates them incrementally. Customer-responsive
management enables enterprises to be more adaptable to changing conditions and responsive to
smaller markets. It recognizes that forecasting and planning become more difficult as the market-
place and environment become more turbulent. It gives frontline workers more responsibility and
authority so that they can innovate. The delivered solution may be expensive, but it is probably
less expensive than the traditional deterministic planning and approval process. The solution may
not be optimal, but the customer gets served (called
single-loop
learning), and the first delivered
solution occurrence serves as a learning process for new guidelines that will need to be devel-
oped (called
second-loop
learning). Thus, the detailed planning of work is done at the front line.
Customer-Responsive Management develops numerous best-practice guidelines to guide frontline
workers as they interact with customers to plan solutions and also enables them to modify these
if necessary, to improve the customer it. After the problem has been identified and resolved, it
is added dynamically to the best-practice guidelines. Thus, CRM not only would assist in the
immediate problem-solving efforts in the present but would also define the problem in a new way.
The essential difference between the two types of learning is between being adaptive and having
adaptability. CRM provides and increases the adaptability of the enterprise. It is the dynamic
development of best-practice guidelines that keeps the organization flexible in responding to new
needs and in making continual improvements to the process as new techniques and technolo-
gies develop. CRM also automatically transforms the tacit knowledge within the enterprise to its
explicit form for everyone to know it, feel it, analyze it, and, if possible, improve it further.
MBC also underlies the contemporary notion of the learning organization. To compete in an
ever-changing environment, an organization must learn and adapt. Because organizations cannot
think and learn themselves, it is truly the individuals constituting the organization who have to
