Customer Relationship Management

Customer Relationship Management is a comprehensive strategy and process of acquiring, retaining and partnering with selective customer to create superior value of the company and the customers.

CRM is a management approach model that puts customers at the core of a company processes and practices. CRM Leverages cutting adge technology integrated strategic action planning up-close and personal marketing techniques and organization development tools to build internal relationships that increase profit margins and build internal external relationships that increase profit margins and productivity within a company.

When we talk about products or service quality, actually it is not focused on the products/service itself, but it is more about matching needs. Customer have their own expectation. This expectation are depend on the customer needs itself, the past experiences, and the information they have. Meanwhile, the company also has their own perception about the customer expectation. From this perception the company build a products/service quality specification that will be delivered to the customers through external communication with customers. When this product/service quality specification meet with the customer expectation than we call it as a perceived product/service.

But the perceived product/service oftenly didn't get. There are several gaps that can lead to this situation such as;

• Not knowing what customers expect
• Not selecting theright service design standard
• Not delivering to service standards
• Not matching performance to promises

CRM is efective to eliminate or at least reduced these gaps. The major process of CRM will be include of

• Standards of Customer Service
• Expanding Customer Service to Customer Relations
• Managing Customer Relations

By applying CRM hopefully some benefit could be achieved such as;

• Increase sales revenues
• Increased Win rates
• Increased Margins
• Improved customersatisfaction things
• Decrease general sales and marketing administrative cost

To be successful on implementing CRM there are 10 critical success factor that should become the management's attention;

1. Determine the functions to automate
2. Automate what needs automating
3. Gain top management support and commitment
4. Employ technology smartly
5. Secure User ownership
6. Prototype the system
7. Train User
8. Motivate personel
9. Administrative the system
10. Keep management commited

The process of implementing CRM can be evaluate by three stage of the CRM implementation level

1. Satisfaction Based => Re-Active
   
   • Meet customer needs
   • Respond to complaints
   • Minimal evaluation of customer srvice levels
    
2. Performance Based => Pro-Active
   
   • Evaluate customers perception
   • Identify customer retention factors
    
3. Commitment Based => Very Pro-Active
   
   • Evaluate multiple customer needs
     
   • Continuous inbound/outbound flowand feedback
   • Continuous improvement

Finally you should be aware with the CRM Myths

• CRM is Primarily about Technology
• Successful CRM project are managed by IT
• "Executive buy-in" is the key
• We need to roll this out across the enterprise ASAP
• CRM system are intuitive. User will only need some initial hand holding
  

Financing a Start-Up Business

When it is a time for you to start a business – or expand your existing business, it is no doubt that you have a great idea, super attitude and the entrepreneurial spirit. You go down to your local bank or financial institution; you sit down in front of your loan lenders manager and start to explain this brilliant idea and how you need some elastic line of credit.

Perhaps you will be surprised when the credit manager interrupts you: “That sounds great, but where
is your business plan?”

Its always easier to write if you have a clear picture of what the finished product should look like. The attached files contain the component elements of sample business plans for three fictitious companies. Taken together, they illustrate the type of information that is essential to the creation of a high quality business plan.

These documents are not complete plans; they are not templates into which you can cut and paste information about your business. Instead, these documents demonstrate how the nature of a business and the target audience for the plan affect the content. After looking over one or more of these business plans, a business owner should have a handle on what information his or her business plan needs to contain to make it the best possible plan.

It is a Financial Plan!
Every business is different and has its own specific cash needs at different stages of development; therefore there is no generic method for estimating your startup costs. Some businesses can be started on a shoestring budget, while others may require considerable investment in inventory or equipment. It is vital to know whether you will have enough money to launch your business venture.

To determine your startup costs, you must identify all the expenses your business will incur during its startup phase. Some of these expenses will be one-time costs, such as the fee for incorporating your business and the price of a sign for your building. Some expenses will be ongoing, such as the cost of utilities, inventory, insurance, etc.

While identifying these costs, decide whether they are essential or optional. A realistic startup budget should only include those elements that are necessary to start the business. These essential expenses can then be divided into two separate categories: fixed (overhead) expenses and variable (related to business sales) expenses. Fixed expenses will include figures like the monthly rent, utilities, and administrative and insurance costs. Variable expenses will include inventory, shipping and packaging costs, sales commissions, and other costs associated with the direct sale of a product or service.

No matter how detailed you’ve been in preparing your business plan, there are always unexpected expenses and even expenses that you’ve underestimated.

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False Alarms in the East, Analyzing the next stage in the crisis

BY RUCHIR SHARMA

"Troubled Baltic and balkan economies are simply too small to bring down the rest of the world"


IN FINANCIAL CIRCLES, the mere mention of Eastern Europe these days conjures conjures up images of collapsing banking systems, currency instability, and capital flight. The travails of the Baltic states have come to symbolize all that has gone wrong with Eastern Europe's high-growth economic model. Some analysts even believe that the region is now the weakest link in the global economy and could be the source of yet another financial contagion.

At the center of the storm are small countries like Latvia, now paying the price for the heady growth of the past few years, which was fueled by unbridled household consumption and property investment. With capital flows drying up of late, Latvia is under pressure to break the peg with the euro and devalue the exchange rate -a move that could lead to widespread losses for many of its households and banks, as the country's debt is largely held in foreign currency.

Latvia is trying to stick with the peg, relying on billions of euros' worth of assistance from the International Monetary Fund and European Union, which come with the usual strictures of fiscal discipline entailing painful spending cuts. The suspense relating to the fate of Latvia's peg is indeed intense, because any devaluation of the lat would make currency pegs in nearby Estonia, Lithuania, and Bulgaria more vulnerable.

Yet even if this happens, the size of the problem won't match the hype. These are $25 billion to $50 billion economies, which means that the repercussions for the world economy will be limited. Western European banks, which own nearly half of Eastern Europe's banking assets, have the most to lose. But assuming the value of nonperforming loans in all of Eastern Europe totaled 10 percent of the region's total economy, parent banks in Western Europe would suffer losses of only about $60 billion@less than a quar ter of those incurred from their exposure to toxic U.S. banking assets.

The key reason that Eastern Europe's problems aren't quite as serious as generally believed is that the bigger economies in the region never got caught in the credit boom-bust cycle. The $500 billion-plus Polish economy -which is the biggest in Central and Eastern Europe- has no banking problems, and didn't rely on hot money to rapidly boost consumption growth. Instead, Poland spent much of the past decade reforming and instituting Western European laws, which subsequently helped pull large amounts of foreign direct investment into its manufacturing service sectors.

The Czech Republic, which at $220 billion is the region's second-largest economy, didn't overextend itself either. Credit penetration in the Czech economy remains low, at 50 percent of GDP, and the pace of credit expansion during the boom years of 2003-07 was well below the 20 to 25 percent annual rate that usually leads to trouble over time.

Both Poland and the Czech Republic have the competitive advantage of a well-educated and highly skilled workforce, which supports strong productivity growth. This, along with substantial foreign direct investment, has historically played the most important role in a nation's long-term economic development. Furthermore, both Poland and the Czech Republic have flexible exchange-rate systems, and their currencies have already fallen to fairly competitive levels. Once global credit conditions improve, these economies should be able to resume the natural growth path that will eventually put them in line with richer Western European counterparts.

However, smaller countries in the Baltic and Balkan areas face a prospect similar to that of the heavily indebted East Asian tigers in 1997-98. Their growth will continue to be severely crimped as the overextended banking sector shrinks and badly scarred foreign investors are reluctant to return. These smaller economies will also have to rethink their development model, now that the road to riches based on easy money is no more.

All these developments have a political fallout. The bigger powers of Western Europe will probably be less inclined to further integrate their smaller, beleaguered neighbors into the euro zone. This marks a major change from the rapid accession path of so many Eastern European economies over the past few years, a path that significantly increased their per capital income levels. That shift will have a major impact on the wealth and the future of the smaller nations in the region. But it's hardly an earth-shattering event for the rest of the world, given that the affected economies are only a tiny fraction of the global economy. Despite all the talk about weak links, the current fuss over the region far outweighs the size of the problem.

SHARMA is head of emerging markets at Morgan Stanley Investment Management.

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3. Review your credit report to ensure you’re not being punished for something someone else did or something that happened a long time ago.
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Kalla sells nationalism to businesses

The Jakarta Post (Tuesday, May 19, 2009)

Presidential candidate Jusuf Kalla is selling a line on economic nationalism to top business people, despite his family's close business ties with Japan.

In a dialogue forum organized by the country's powerful business lobby, the Indonesian had not only fallen victim to unfair business practices by overseas companies, but was also becoming too dependent on foreign entities.

Kalla is the first presidential candidate attending the economic dialogue, which will feature incumbent President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Wednesday. Presidential candidate Megawati Soekarnoputri has been at odds with Kadin since 2003, and has yet to confirm attendance.

While ensuring listeners that he was not anti-foreigner, Kalla strongly criticized foreign companies for taking excessive profits from the country, and argued that free trade was basically unfair to Indonesia.

He slammed the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which he said was trying to "destroy" the country by requesting that all commodities be available for export. "What we need is investment that is honest, and fair trade which is not free trade", said Kalla.
They (the foreign companies and entities) are not necessarily plundering (the country's resources), it is us who give them (the resources) due to our helpless condition".

He pledged that if elected as president he would seek fair business deals with foreign companies, investors and multilateral agencies.
"I'm not saying that I want to prevent outsiders from coming to Indonesia. Indonesia is an open country, but we need investment which are more productive and with more benefits to us", he said.

However, it remains to be seen how fa Kalla's nationalist line might be nailed down in detail.
His family's business empire has been primarily nurtured by Japanese automotive kingpin Toyoto Motor Corp., since back in the 1970s, when he was the sole distributor of Toyota for the eastern part of indonesia.
Kalla also helped his brother-in-law Aksa Mahmud to set up a dealership for Toyota's rival, Mitsubishi competing for the same market.
Since taking office as vice president, Kalla often visited Japan to "socialize" with Toyota executives.
He invited an influx of Chinese contractors, suppliers and lenders fot the construction of the government-initiated 10,000.- megawatt power program.

During the dialogue, Kalla criticized how easily Indonesia had taken up foreign loans that had eventually mounted up to cost the country between US$ 6 billion and $ 7 billion in interest payment annually.

But it was during his tenure that Indonesia inked an economic partnership agreement (EPA), a kind of free trade deal, with Japan which analysts believe could mean higher costs to the country than benefits.
Under the EPA, the country would remain heavily dependent on Japan in the automotive sector and in heavy machinery.

Kalla is also aware that the recent free trade agreements between the association of southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) and Australia and New Zealand potentially brough more disadvantages than profits, especially to the country's cattle farmers and dairy industry.

While keeping this problems to one side, Kalla continued his strong criticism on the country's heavy dependence on foreign products.
"to be a self reliant country means we are not addicted to support from foreign countries like loans or financial assistance", Kalla said before 350 businessmen.
"We can do everything for our selves, by our own power, our own know-how, and our own finance. Indonesia is a rich contry, we have to use everything we can to build this country for ourselves."

He said there were three obstacles to Indonesia competing with foreign contries; the high cost of funds, lack of infrastructure and insufficient electric power capacity. If this obstacles could be addressed then Kalla is upbeat the country could easily grow at 8 percent annually by 2011.

Kalla answered about 15 questions from Kadin members, mostly about free trade, capital markets, the real economic sector, banking and his strategy for economic crisis.
However, none of the businessmen riased questions about conflict of interest between public oficials with their family businesses, nor about governance or accountability.

Sofyan Wanadi, the chairman of the Indonesia Employers Association (Apindo), said Kalla's target to reach 8 percent of economic growth was acceptable.
During the Suharto regime, Indonesia recorded 7 to 8 percent economic growth. We also can do that now", Sofjan said.

Kadin chairman M.S. Hidayat did not attend the dialogue as he was taken ill. (naf)