CRM and the Internet

Many technologies exist that can help create this single customer view and leverage it to optimize channel contacts:

• Central database, encompassing input from all touch points.
• Applied analytics to optimize customer interaction across channels.
• Communication with customers via the channel of their choice.
• Campaign management that anticipates results, responding immediately to opportunities as they are created.

Companies are successfully integrating data across channels, creating a single customer view – then applying a variety of technologies to derive value from this data. These include statistically derived models, recommendation engines, strategy optimization engines and sophisticated campaign management tools.

E-commerce technologies for capturing and organising data gained through Web interactions are productive. There are a number of companies that provide amazingly sophisticated and effective applications which enable merchants across all channels to optimise the supply chain. There are also many tools to capture and organize click-stream data, survey information and purchase history. What is consistently missing is the background and experience to apply direct marketing expertise to this information, in order to leverage its value across all the channels that the retailer serves.

The organizational separateness of the web-based business of retailers makes this process more difficult. Staffed with technology experts and fast-moving, risk-taking entrepreneurs, e-commerce companies are well equipped to build their infrastructure and their supply-chain management capabilities, but more often that not, they are not taking a customer-centric view of their business.