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Becton Dickinson and Company: Multidivisional Marketing Programs

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BEST PRACTICE

Early adopters of customer relationship management systems were often disappointed by high costs and elusive benefits. Now some companies are reaping strong returns on their CRM investments.

CRM Done Right by Darrell K. Rigby and Dianne Ledingham

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HROUGH THE LATE 1990S a n d illtO

2000, managers plowed millions of dollars into information systems meant to track and strengthen customer relationships. Often built around complex software packages, these customer relationship management (CRM) systems promised to allow companies to respond efficiently, and at times instantly, to shifting customer desires, thereby bolstering revenues and retention while reducing marketing costs. But most firms failed to reap the …show more content…

By becoming the preferred partner of both the big original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and the commercial and military fleet owners, Aviall cotild consolidate customer demand and extend its reach worldwide, which would reinvigorate its sales and strengthen its margins. But f-ulchino faced a daunting obstacle to realizing his vision: Poor information and cumbersome processes hampered the company's sales and service operation. Difficulties with an existing IT system had increased sales reps' workloads, sometimes keeping salespeople trapped in local branches, helping managers input order information instead of making sales calls. What's more, the company hadn't trained the sales reps in proper time and territory 119

back from a CRM system is the creation of a "real-time enterprise." Understanding that highly acctirate and timely data are not required everywhere in their businesses, they've tailored their real-time CRM Initiatives to those parts of their customer relationships that truly do depend on "perfect" information. Once they've succeeded with the smaller, more-targeted CRM project, they've used their initial investments as springboards for solving additional problems. We've distilled the experiences of the CRM leaders into four questions that all cotnpanies should ask themselves as they launch their CRM initiatives: • Is it strategic? • Where does it hurt? • Do we need pertect data? • Where do we go from here? The

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