CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an information industry term for methodologies, software, and usually internet capabilities that help an enterprise manage customer relations in an organized way.

For example, an enterprise might build a database about its customers that described relationship in sufficient detail so that management of the organization, salespeople, people providing services and perhaps the customer directly could access information that matches customers need with product plans and offerings, remind customers of services requirement, know that other products a customer had purchased and so on.

1.2  GOALS OF CUSTOMER RELATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (CRMS)

·        Relevance: The CRM developer should identify one important priority that requires investment in computer and/or human resources. The developer then proposes a specific initiative that addresses this priority. The resource should meaningfully address the issues and opportunities facing the organization for instance, billing system that only processes individual invoices may not be relevant in a world of complication payment options.

·        Accuracy: Any system that relies on estimating financial data is allowed a range of estimation error. The resources should compile and report summary data in a logistically accurate fashion. For example, sales orders are initial recorded in the field or over the telephone retrospective data input procedure are often notoriously inaccurate.

·        Validity: The underlying systemic assumptions should be consistent with the nature of the organization’s business. For instance, a financial accounting program, that calculates costs per unit in accordance with traditional retail product transaction may not be valid for private services contracts. Though the cost information may be relevant, and the calculations may be accurate.The nature of the information may be invalid for purposes of managing a service business.

·        Reliability: The information should be made available when expected. Many companies have failed to develop flat fee guaranteed services contracts because they could be process cost and utilization on a reliable basis and thus could not decide in a prudent pricing schedule. A serious organization should have a 24 hours service provider.for example every ISP should run steady.

·        Accessibility: The appropriate end user should get to the information when needed. The world’s finest internet based application may be useless if its cable connection or dial-up modem is constantly off-line if employees do not understand how to develop data queries.

·        Speed: The information should be able to be analyzed and conclusion drawn quickly enough to justify the investment in maintaining the management information system. For instance, end users must be able to retrieve, review, revise and replicate information within minutes.

·        Cost: The resources should be affordable to the organization and/or users of the system. Affordable must encompass all the benefits and costs of the CRM system, strategy such as the benefits derived from becoming more efficient and the costs required to train employees to use the new system developed.

1.3  BACKGROUND THE OF STUDY

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system came into existence when companies were intent on developing stronger bonds with their customer. According to [Kenbrell, (2002)], CRM is the process of managing detailed information about individual customers and carefully managing all customer “touch point” to maximize customer loyalty.

I-cell Telecommunication Nigeria Ltd is a telecommunication firm located in Nigeria. This telecommunication came up fully in existence in 2008, but due to manual way of organizing there customer relationship, I now decide to develop a web base application to enable the customer have effective and interactive interface.

It is impossible to state precisely what Customer Relationship Management (CRM) means to everyone. The term has been applied to almost every element to business that even remotely interacts with a customer. In its infancy, by [Kosh (2004)], CRM systems were a series of mainframe or server based applications specific to sales, marketing and support business functions.

The applications were lightweight by today’s standards and did little more than capture and file critical data. But as cultural boundaries within organizations weakened individual freedoms of information gave way to sophisticated applications that could open business functions. By doing so, these applications created the vision of a single view of the customer.

For the first time, organizations could track and analyze shifting customer needs, link marketing campaigns to sales results, and monitor sales activities for improved forecasting accuracy and manufacturing demands.

a.     Advance In The 1990s

In the 1990s, companies began to improve on customer relationship management by making it more of a two – way street, instead of simply gathering data for their own use, they began giving back to their customers not only in terms of the obvious goal of improved customer service, but in incentives, gifts and other perks for customer loyalty.

This was the beginning of the now familiar frequent flyer programs, booms point on credit cards and a host of other resources that are based on CRM tracking of customer activity and spending pattern. CRM was now being used as a way to increase sales passively as well as through active improvement of customer services.

b.    Future Developments

A material accessed on the website: http://www.wikipedia.com in May (2011), state the time had come where system are being moved from extranets to the internet. Customers have become a fully integrated participant in the value chain and have the same customer relation management systems access as manufacturers, supplies distributors, or facilitators.

In future, it is likely that reengineering principles will be incorporated further into customer management system. It is said that rather than organizing a firm into functional specialties and looking at the tasks that each function performs, we would be looking at complete processes from materials acquisition, to serve our subscribers, to marketing and distribution. More and more software will utilize this approach ultimately there will be fully integrated business information system in which all types of business information are seamlessly moved throughout the firm.

1.4   STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The major problem that leads this research is poor communication approach of the company to old and new customers which did not make provision for dynamic online business. They include:

1.     Difficulties in promotion and advertisement.

2.     Poor marketing strategy.

3.     Poor product and services.

1.5   OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The request for better quality information and the rapid advances in technology has called for the embankment of this project. This project which involves the automated customer management system is used to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the relationship between the tasks of managing in a large business organization and the technology that has become an essential part of the task customer management systems.

      The aims of this project however, are to seek and play an important role in the development of customer relation management system and increase the productivity of the case study business organization (I-cell Telecommunication Nig Ltd) through the managed use of the technology of the organization.

-         To develop a web based customer relation and management system.

-         Develop a customer information system to ensure proper management of customer details record.

-         .Ensure increasing customer records are taken care of using the Microsoft access database for its customer records.

-         Boost sales and advertisement by sending mail shots during exhibitions and sales.

-         Save time and efforts for the member of staff currently performing the task of customer details keeping, accounting and marketing manually.

-         Provide better service to customers, staff of the organization and anyone else affected by the new system developed.

-         To create a user friendly system given enjoyment and entertainments to the users of the system by the use of visual basic which has a friendly graphical user interface.

1.6   SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

This project would be useful in communication system with the following advantages it possesses.

-         It saves time.

-         It is efficient.

-         It is modern and reliable.

-         It is very fast, accurate and security conscious.

1.7   SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The study of the information system will be narrowed down to a selected telecommunication organization, which is the case study; I-cell Nig Ltd. The system to be developed is a customer relation management system and is intended to enhance customer relationship in business; these are the component required.

-         Record keeping of the call center department: The recording of all customer information details.

-         Order processing of the sales department: The processing of customers order.

-         Bill generation and processing of the accounts department: The tracking of payments by customers and generation of documents in connection with the preparation of bills for each business type customer. The bill depends on the tariff the customer is using.

-         SMS message shot generation of the call center department: The generation of mails for all the customers to boost sales, advertising and improve marketing.

1.8     LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

Expenses incurred by transportation typing and photocopying materials reduced of extent of details information presented. I was restricted to some equipment used in the organization.

System does not encourage customers complain carefully consider the complaints you get, if there is nobody to get it across us, these are the thing that matters. It is often much easier for your customer to just get up and walk away.

1.9   DEFINITION OF TERMS

Customer

-         A person or an organization who buys and services from a store or shop or business.

Relation/relationship

-         The way in which two people, groups or countries behave towards each other or deal with each other.

-         The way to which two or more things are connected.

Management

-         The people who run and control a business or similar organization.

-         The act of running and controlling a business or similar organization.

-         The act or skill of dealing with people or situation in a successful way.

System

-         An organized set of ideas or theories or a particular way of doing something.

-         A group of things pieces of equipment e.t.c. that are connected to work together.

Information

-         Consist of data than have been processed and are meaningful to a user. It can be on a hard copy or software and can be shared.

Data Warehouse

-         A data warehouse is a repository of an organization’s electronically stored data. Data warehouse are designed to facilitate reporting and analysis. This classic definition of the data warehouse focuses on data storage. However, the means to retrieve and analyze data, to extract, transform and load data, and to manage the dictionary data are also considered essential component of a data warehousing system.

Data Flow Diagrams

-         Data flow diagrams illustrate how data is processed by a system in terms of inputs and outputs. Data flows are pipelines through which packets of information flow label the arrows with the name of the data that moves through it.

Return on Vestment

In finance rate of return (ROR) or return on investment (ROI) or sometimes just return is the ratio of money gained or lost on an investment relative to the amount of money invested. The amount of money gained or lost may be referred to as interest, profit/loss, gain/loss or net income loss. The money invested may be referred to as the asset, capital principal or the cost basis of the investment. ROI is usually given as a percent rather than decimal value

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