CRM or Customer Relationship Management generally means a holistic approach to company management which orients towards the customers and keeps them in focus. An important task of a company here is to manage the relationships with its customers professionally.

In Comarch ERP Enterprise, the term Customer Relationship Management further comprises of partners. A partner can accept several partner roles at the same time in Comarch ERP Enterprise. Therefore, a partner can be a customer and a supplier at the same time, for instance. This is why we talk of Relationship Management in Comarch ERP Enterprise and the facts described for customers below are also applicable for other partner roles. Normally, the external partner is activated first. eCRM (electronic Customer Relationship Management), better known as E-Business Relationship Management, is also represented by the technology in Comarch ERP Enterprise.

The following document gives an overview of the applied basics of CRM or Relationship Management for the representation of these processes in Comarch ERP Enterprise. It will also tell you about the applications in Comarch ERP Enterprise which are the work steps of the Relationship Management.

Definitions of terms

Relationship Management

Relationship management is an holistic approach to partner-oriented business management. Its most important task is the professional management of customer and supplier relationships. Comarch ERP Enterprise supports not only classical customer relationship management with its focus on the customer, but supplier relationships can also be managed.

Customer relationship management

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) comprises of three areas:

• operative CRM
• analytical CRM
• collaborative CRM

Here, eCRM (electronic Customer Relationship Management), better known as E-Business Relationship management, is also supported by Comarch ERP Enterprise.

Operative CRM

CRM works as information source for the operative company here. The CRM is mainly used by employees who are in direct contact with the customers and are party to customer information. Therefore, information on purchase behavior, credit standing, preferences of the customer, competition situation etc. are collected in operative CRM. Here, the structure of this database can be made automatically through the business data or from the personal or purchased knowledge. Operative CRM also includes planning, verifying and evaluating the sales projects such as campaigns and concrete acquisitions (in the Sales views) or the SalesForceAutomation and the organizational support for the processes in CRM (workflow). The ERP integration, with which current data can be received and also immediately used, is obviously present in Comarch ERP Enterprise.

Analytical CRM

Analytical CRM serves as the basis for classification of won data and can be used for the tactical and strategic company structure in future. So, a forecasting on the basis of the current opportunities of individual employees is possible. Furthermore, the collected knowledge of past sales possibilities and projects can be evaluated and used in order to answer questions such as:

• How good was the estimation of opportunities by the sales employees?
• Which activities influenced the success or failure and how much?

Forecasts about the future customer behavior about cross selling potentials and future requirement are included. A data warehouse is required for it in which the collected data of campaigns and opportunities are collected and prepared.

The data is transferred to a special Comarch ERP Enterprise online analytical processing (OLAP) database and saved there. The data is evaluated through modern data mining programs such as Cognos.

Collaborative CRM

Collaborative CRM involves aspects of cooperation and collaboration:

• involvement of the partner,
• management of communication channels,
• direct sending of information to partner (via letter/fax, web/e-mails, call center and other communication media). Letters and faxes are handled directly through the integrated Document Management.

Comarch ERP Enterprise can support you in all three points. Through the integration in other Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) processes and the facility to provide a comprehensive workflow (from sales campaigns to invoicing), there are several advantages here.

Relationship Management in Comarch ERP Enterprise

Relationship Management enables planning, evaluation and follow-up of sales projects such as opportunities and sales campaigns. Successful sales rely on knowing the client and the other people involved in the sales project and their influence on the purchasing decision. Addressees can therefore be created, contact persons assigned and participating people with partner references according to their role in the sales process (decision-maker, contact, etc.) assigned and set in relation to each other in Relationship management.

A look at the Partners

All activities available with a partner, already carried out or still planned that have arisen in the Relationship Management framework can be selected and monitored in the Relationship cockpit according to various criteria. Relevant symbols assist the user to get a quick overview of the processing time. You can search for all activities of a partner through the context menu. Besides the activities in the Relationship Management framework, those in the Workflow Management are also assigned to a partner.

All documents and notes existing for a partner can be found either in the document cockpit in Document Management framework or you can select it through the context menu and the [Document query] command if your focus is in a partner field. Other statistical data can be created and found for a partner in its master data in the Partner application in the Base framework. The especially interesting data for Relationship Management and marketing purposes can be found in the Marketing view. The Contacts application is available in the Relationship Management framework for the purpose of creating new partners in the Contact role with the base and marketing data or to view the base and marketing data of existing partners.

Interaction of the applications

Following applications are available in Relationship Management with the exception of applications which are relevant for the transfer and evaluation of the Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) data. The OLAP data is saved in an OLAP database.

The applications Opportunities and Sales campaigns are used for creating and editing the sales projects.

In a sales campaign, possible interested people or customers from the partner master data are selected as target group of the campaign. Finally, activities are defined which are to be carried out for the target group in the campaign. Campaigns are generally based on several addressees and follow a defined target.

The other applications in Relationship Management are used to control the editing of the sales projects and to create specific master data, meaning the background information for sales projects, for Relationship Management.

In general, sales projects consist of several sales stages and numerous individual activities. The sales stages are used in opportunities and sales campaigns to document the progress of the process. The activities in the opportunities and campaigns are specifically scheduled and are assigned to a responsible person for executing the activities. Every Relationship Management activity is generated while saving, along with a workflow activity and one or more tasks from it. Activity types contain the settings required for generating the Workflow activities and tasks.

In opportunity and sales campaign types, those settings are saved that are applicable for all opportunities and for all sales campaigns that use this opportunity type or sales campaign type. For instance, there are partner relationship types in opportunity types for which the corresponding partner must be displayed in the views. There are also special partner reference types valid only for the Relationship Management. Partner references can be created in the opportunities through these partner reference types. With this you can assign more contact persons to the opportunities even if these partners are not yet connected directly to a company.

The Relationship cockpit finally serves the purpose of searching for and displaying the different data present in the applications of the Relationship Management framework and relevant for the Relationship Management. In this way, the user can receive an overview of the sales campaigns and opportunities, activities and tasks as well as the partners relevant for the projects.

OLAP Data

OLAP is a collection of technologies, methods and tools which support the ad-hoc analysis of company-related information in a multi-dimensional way and therefore provide data evaluation and decision-making of the management and analysts. The data required for OLAP analyses are saved in Comarch ERP Enterprise in a special OLAP database.

The OLAP data are generally transferred from the transaction data of the company which are saved in the Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) data to the OLAP database. This is applicable for opportunities data in Relationship Management.

While creating, deleting or changing specific data of Opportunities, the changes are saved in the Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) database as historic data. These data are:

• status of the opportunity,
• sales stage,
• binding checkbox,
• probability,
• revenue,
• net margin and
• sales representatives or competitors assigned under partner

History of opportunity is logged in this way. This historical data can be transferred from the OLTP database to OLAP database. The transfer process is initiated through batch jobs.

These data are finally available in the OLAP database. They can be used with corresponding external software programs and tools for statistical evaluations such as assessments and analyses of the opportunities. For information on data which can be transferred as dimensions and facts to the OLAP database, please refer to the document Introduction: Data Warehouse and Statistics.

Content-based authorizations in Relationship Management

By allocating content-based authorizations you can specify the limits for a user in Comarch ERP Enterprise. Through the authorization of utilization of specific

• Sales campaign types,
• Opportunity types,
• Activity types and
• Partner reference types

the rights of the user are regulated in relation to utilization, visibility, assessability etc. In this way, it can be ensured that an employee uses his/her own data.

Please read through the detailed full description of usage possibilities and procedures in the business document Content-based authorizations.

Relationship management in multi-site environment

A campaign can be created specific to an organization in a multi-site environment. Any other organization can be then connected to specify campaigns throughout the concern, for instance.

Please read through the detailed full description of usage possibilities and procedures in the business documents Introduction: Multi-site and Introduction: Organizations.