The Executive Management Team Of A Medium-Sized Busin 840569

The Executive Management Team Of A Medium Sized Business Wants To Be M

The executive management team of a medium-sized business wants to be more customer focused in the marketplace. Because you oversee the CRM, you have been assigned to support the newly-created social media marketing plan: What are the best steps to identify customers and the different ways they use to contact your company? Defend your answer. Explain to the executive management team how the steps you recommended will be incorporated in the organization’s ERP.

Paper For Above instruction

In today's competitive marketplace, establishing a robust customer-centric approach is vital for medium-sized businesses aiming to enhance their social media marketing strategies. To achieve this, it is essential to accurately identify customers and understand the channels through which they contact the business. Implementing a systematic approach that leverages Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and integrates seamlessly with the organization's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system can significantly improve customer engagement and operational efficiency.

The first step in identifying customers involves developing a comprehensive customer profile that captures demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral data. This can be achieved through the collection of data via multiple touchpoints such as social media interactions, website analytics, email communications, and in-store visit records. Utilizing CRM systems facilitates the aggregation of these diverse data sources, providing a unified view of each customer. This consolidation allows the organization to segment customers effectively, tailoring marketing campaigns to specific groups based on their preferences and behavior (Buttle & Maklan, 2019).

Secondly, it is crucial to identify the multiple ways customers contact the business. These contact channels include social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), email, phone calls, live chat, and physical store visits. To account for this, the organization should establish a central contact management system that logs interactions across all channels. This can be achieved by integrating social media management tools with the CRM, ensuring that every customer interaction is tracked and accessible in real-time (Payne & Frow, 2017).

Furthermore, employing data analytics tools to analyze contact patterns can reveal the preferred communication channels for different customer segments. For example, younger demographics might favor social media messaging, while older customers might prefer phone calls. Understanding these preferences allows the company to optimize resource allocation and tailor communication strategies accordingly (Nguyen et al., 2020).

Integrating these steps into the organization’s ERP system involves establishing data synchronization protocols between CRM and ERP modules. This integration ensures that customer data collected from various touchpoints feeds directly into the ERP system, enabling real-time updates of customer profiles, order histories, and service requests (Al-Mudimigh et al., 2021). The ERP system can then automate processes such as order fulfillment, customer service, and reporting, streamlining operations and ensuring consistent communication across the organization.

Specifically, ERP modules related to customer management, sales, and marketing should be configured to incorporate CRM insights. For instance, customer preferences derived from CRM analytics can inform inventory management in ERP, ensuring the availability of products favored by target segments. Additionally, ERP’s reporting tools can provide management with insights into customer contact effectiveness, guiding strategic decisions to enhance customer experience (Bradford & Florin, 2020).

In conclusion, the best approach to identifying customers and their contact methods involves a combination of data collection, multi-channel integration, and analytics, all supported by CRM and ERP systems. This integrated approach empowers the organization to foster a customer-focused culture, deliver personalized engagement, and improve overall operational efficiency, thereby aligning with the strategic goals articulated by the executive management team.

References

• Al-Mudimigh, S. S., Zairi, M., & Qunqi, N. (2021). Enterprise resource planning: A holistic approach to managing business processes. International Journal of Business Management, 16(4), 45-59.
• Bradford, M., & Florin, J. (2020). Examining the role of ERP in enhancing customer relationship management. Journal of Business Technology, 34(2), 112-128.
• Buttle, F., & Maklan, S. (2019). Customer Relationship Management: Concepts and Technologies. Routledge.
• Nguyen, B., Simkin, L., & Canhoto, A. (2020). The dark side of CRM: Advantaged and disadvantaged customers. Journal of Business Research, 107, 39-49.
• Payne, A., & Frow, P. (2017). Strategic customer management: Integrating relationship marketing and CRM. Cambridge University Press.