Gadget Addiction

First it was ‘texter's thumb'. Now gadget addicts are coming down with ‘text neck'. Today, many patients are suffering neck pain from spending too much time hunched over phones and computers. The rise of smartphones and tablet computers has fuelled the problem. The extra capability for playing games and browsing the Internet on smartphones means they tend to be used for longer periods. And unlike laptops, tablet computers are often placed flat on the lap, meaning you crane your neck over to view the screen.Knee and hip replacement surgeon Dr Kaushal Malhan says, â€Å"Technology has made life easier, but at the same time brought in newer problems. The easy accessibility to almost any information and quick communication through the use of smartphones and laptops has made them an invaluable resource. At the same time, their indiscriminate use has brought in new health problems. † It is common to find people using their laptops for hours at a stretch. Smartphones now work as mini computers and it is not unusual to find people busy with their phones which are much more than simply a means of communication. People often complain of neck and back pain, and the cause for these can often be sourced to indiscriminate laptop use in an incorrect posture. These patients often have a good range of movements with pain mainly at the end of the day,† adds Dr Malhan. Orthopaedic surgeon Dr Ashish Arbat agrees. â€Å"Today, we are observing many young patients who are into gadgets with wry neck, which is caused by continuous craning of the neck for texting, etc. † He advises that one should exercise one's neck daily and stretch the cervical and trapezial muscle, with a healthy habit of sleeping supine straight, with balanced diet to prevent wry neck.How to avoid such problems – Use a chair of correct height so that your legs comfortably reach the floor. – Table height and computer monitor height should be at your eye level so that yo u are not forced to adopt unphysiologic postures. – Elbows should be well supported on armrest or table in front of you. – Do not forget to blink your eyes intermittently to reduce eye fatigue. – Change your posture every now and then and regular breaks in between. – Stretch out all muscle groups whenever you have the opportunity. – Regular stretching exercises are a must for people who sit for long hours.In case of problems like neck pain, see a doctor to rule out other non-postural causes. Once that is ruled out, one can look at changing habits and lifestyle as advocated above. A short course of anti-inflammatory medication and hot packs with gentle massage should help. — Dr Kaushal Malhan http://articles. timesofindia. indiatimes. com/2012-08-03/fitness/33002266_1_neck-pain-text-neck-tablet-computers Carl Alasko: How will gadget addiction affect us? Carl Alasko On Relationships Posted: 04/08/2012 12:06:07 AM PDT Updated: 04/08/2012 12:06: 07 AM PDT Dear Dr. Alasko: Our two sons, ages 9 and 13, love technology.My husband is himself a computer geek so he thinks it's great. He says the more they know the better equipped they'll be for their future. But I worry about the human side of their lives. For instance, when they're together with their friends, all of them seem to be looking at their gadgets and doing very little talking. I worry that they won't be able to form healthy adult relationships and bond with their own children — except maybe through technology. Dear Reader: You have a right to be worried. We don't yet know if there are permanent developmental problems when children have constant access to fast-moving technology.At this point the â€Å"experts† seem divided. About half are optimistic. They believe that electronically connected youth will have the advantage of being nimble analysts and fast decision makers. The others are pessimistic. They worry that hyper-connected young people are too dis tracted by constant input to have deep-thinking capabilities. And they're not able to retain information and train their brain to remember things because everything is instantly available on their phone. Then there's the question of face-to-face relationship skills and the ability to focus on emotional issues.My personal concern is that boys who grow up completely immersed in the electronic connectivity of video games, texting and ear-buds will not be capable of the extended focus required to deal Advertisement with the complex world of emotional issues, the kind that every adult relationship requires. There's a physiological analogy with our vision. If you do a lot of reading as a child in dim light, your eyes strain to see the tiny printed words and in response your eyeballs actually become enlarged. This condition leads to extreme myopia.It seems logical to suppose that if a child's growing brain is subjected to constant fast-moving images and scattered input from video games, te xts, etc. , the child's brain will lose the ability to remain focused on one issue beyond a few seconds. From the psychological point of view, the term â€Å"deep-thinking capabilities† is the biggest area of concern. I recently read about how we are losing our ability to do long-term thinking, the kind that happens when, for instance, a person spends a few hours walking in a forest. During extended periods of rest (without media), the brain automatically sorts things out on its own.We can â€Å"think through† complex problems. Supporting this idea is the fact that we must have periods of deep sleep. Only during REM sleep does our brain recalibrate and settle down. If we consistently interrupt REM sleep the person develops a kind of psychosis. As I said earlier, you have a right to be worried. The goal would be to achieve a balanced, moderate use of technology. But promoting these behaviors in your technology-dominant family will be difficult. However, if you strongly believe in the wisdom of moderation, your belief (and common sense) should provide the energy to effect meaningful change.Carl Alasko, a licensed marriage and family therapist, is the author of â€Å"Emotional BS† and â€Å"Beyond Blame. † For information about his books, see: carlalasko. com. Contact him at [email  protected] com . http://www. montereyherald. com/carlalasko/ci_20351336 Modern menace: Society's addiction to gadgets Top ArticleAll 4 Articles 2 of 4 by Nanette Piotrowski Created on: February 19, 2013 Just ask any six year-old to put down his cell-phone or controller to a video game to come to the table to eat and you have your answer to the statement.They would rather starve to death than do it. Children no longer know what to do with themselves without them. The statement ‘go outside and play' is foreign. If you told them to play a game of tag, they would look at you like you'd lost your mind. Unfortunately it is the parents who have turned the young ones into veritable Zombies. The parents are the ones who fortunately (or unfortunately), benefited from the advancement of modern conveniences; whether it is appliances like washer/dryers, toasters, coffee pots and micro-wave ovens to cell-phones, computers and fancy cars.Somewhere and somehow with time, people have forgotten how to wash dishes and clothes by hand, cook over an open fire, use a broom and live by candle-light or lantern. Heaven forbid! Whereas modern technology has made crucial advances like medicine and surgery, time travel shorter (planes, trains, automobiles) and life easier, it has also created a decline in family time, creative thought, obesity and believe it or not, intelligence.Today a majority of the population (particularly children), cannot add, subtract, multiply and divide (without a calculator), spell (without spell check) or count back change for a dollar, balance a checkbook, change a tire, work on a car, and in a lot of cases, can't even cook. So regardless of technological advances (by a brilliant few), the remainder of the population has become inept, unproductive robots. It is a sad state of affairs to see adults and/or children sitting in a restaurant texting someone, only to find out that it is to each other.Cell-phones, while a possible convenience and safety gadget (calling for help), is also one of the main reasons for deadly car accidents. Most people can't walk and chew gum at the same time, let alone operate a motor vehicle that weighs 3,000 pounds safely while they are talking and texting. Besides these issues, there is also the fact that these modern gadgets also make it possible for government intrusion. Cameras in the television, GPS in vehicles and cell-phones, direct accessibility into your computer; every move you make can be accounted for and watched.Very real intrusions of privacy which can be very menacing. The big question to be asked here is: â€Å"How would society react if there was a complete el ectrical and satellite shut-down? † It could happen whether caused by a meteor, massive volcanic explosion, hackers or terrorists. Think about it; could you and/or your family survive without all the modern gadgetry and convenience? Would you know what to do? And what if it was the worst case scenario where it was impossible to return to the current standard of things and we were thrown back to the 1800's.Truly, society's addiction to gadgetry has become our greatest menace; that of how to cope without them http://www. helium. com/items/2422560-addiction-to-gadgets-in-modern-society Gadget Addiction Making People Crazy Gadgets and machines have become an integral part of our lives. What would we do without them These gizmos are like a necessary condition now which make our lives complete. However, we must keep in mind that everything has its own limit otherwise it can become a cause for concern and in extreme cases, fatal. Market of devices and gadgets seems to be flooded with production.Day in and day out new technologies appear in front of us. If one has bought the latest mobile phone or laptop etc then he does not have much time to feel proud on that because the next day there would be much more superior device than that in the market. This is one of the reasons of addiction. The present day is no less crazy. We are now getting addicted to those things which five years ago we had not thought of even. Earlier people would go and talk to people they know, spend time with them but now they love to talk to their gadgets.Once my friend showed me an application of speaking Tom-cat in her mobile phone which repeats everything you speak and told that she spends a long time with it.. seems crazy.. The effect of this addiction is that people even can’t resist themselves from taking calls and accessing Facebook and other social networking sites during office hours. The lure of being constantly in touch is so strong that they don’t stop sending text messages even if they are told to switch off their phones. It creates a distraction from work. The devices supposed to increase the productivity are giving an opposite effect.In fact the worst affected are the youths. In most of the schools use of cell phones is banned but many of the students carry them. Use of costly and hi-fi gadgets has become a status symbol among them. Daily on way to my work, I see children in school uniforms of age not more than 15 carrying smart phones, iPods etc. It has become a trend now. They push their parents to buy them the latest cell phone or other gizmos because their peers use it. HOW TO GET OVER THIS ADDICTION Gaining or using anything in excess frequently becomes a source of disturbance.It is very important to prevent this. There should be some time bounds to use gadgets. Getting dependent on them is harmful. We will have to learn to balance and manage time. It is important to have a balance between our different engagements such as time spent with family and friends, office work, proper rest as well on gadgets. â€Å"We are exposing brains to an environment and asking them to do things we weren’t necessarily evolved to do. We know already there are consequences. † http://writerspavilion. hubpages. com/hub/-Gadget-Addiction-Making-People-Crazy

Using Can and Be Able to to Speak About Abilities

Using Can and Be Able to to Speak About Abilities Can and Be able to are both used to speak about abilities, and the possibility of doing something. Can and Be able to are known as modal verbs in English. Here are some examples of can and be able to used to speak about abilities. Can for Abilities She can play tennis.They could speak English at a very young age.Peter can type 100 words per minute. Be Able to for Abilities My sister is able to run a marathon.The students were able to get an A on the test.We will be able to attend the class next semester. Here are examples of the two forms to speak about possibilities. Can for Possibilities Can you come to the party next week?Do you think he can help with my homework?Peter told me he could pick you up at the airport. Be Able to for Possibilities We werent able to get tickets to the concert.Shell be able to study for the test tomorrow.Jack wont be able to come for another three days. Listed below are examples and explanations for can/could/be able to for ability and permission in the past, present. and future. Examples Usage He can play tennis well.She is able to speak five languages.They can come on Friday.Jack will be able to come next week. Use can or be able to to express an ability or possibilityNOTE: The future of be able to is will be able to He could swim when he was five. Could in the past means the general ability to do something. They were able to get tickets for the concert.I was able to finish before 6.I couldnt come last night, sorry. OR I wasnt able to come last night, sorry. IMPORTANT: If someone was in the position to do something, or managed to do something, we use was/were able to instead of couldIn the negative, wasnt able to OR couldnt are both correct. Note: Can is also often used to ask for permission, as well as may: Can I come with you? May I come with you? Practice Can/Be Able To Practice can and be able to with this role play. Once youve finished, make up some of your own dialogues and practice with a classmate or a friend.   Peter: Hi Janet. Can you help me for a moment?Janet: Sure, whats up? Peter: Im not able to understand this math problem.  Janet: Really. I think I can help, but Im not that good at math. Peter: You were able to all the problems last semester, werent you?Janet: Yes, thats right, but I cant do everything. Let me see.   Peter: Here you go.Janet: Interesting, are you sure youre not able to do this? Peter: Yes, thats why Im asking for help!Janet: OK. After I explain this, youll be able to do without any problems. Peter: Great. So whats the answer?!Janet: Dont be in a hurry. Can I have a few minutes to think? Peter: Of course you can. Sorry.  Janet: No problem.

Make an Inference Practice Questions

Make an Inference Practice Questions Want to master your reading comprehension? Practicing your inference skills is a great place to start, but if you are unsure how to make an inference at all (or what one even is), you might want to start with the  basics of inference  which will give you all of the  details that you need. If you are ready to go, go ahead and get started with these easy inference practice questions to hone your reading skills. The following inference questions provide a basic assessment of your comprehension of the skill. Printable PDFs: Inference Practice Questions 1 | Answers to Inference Practice Questions 1 Inference Practice Questions 1 Using your best inference strategies, make an inference about the following statements. The first two are done for you. I wouldnt eat after that two-year-old if I were you.Inference: The two-year-old probably did something gross to the food you were about to eat or has a cold and you could catch it. Something bad will happen to you if you eat  the food.  For Valentine’s Day, my fantastic neighbor gave his wife a poem that took him about two seconds to write. Sheesh.Inference: My neighbor is not very considerate since he didnt take his time writing the poem.A man ran after a retreating bus, waving his briefcase frantically.Inference:If she died, I wouldn’t go to her funeral.Inference:Jake almost wished that he hadn’t listened to the radio. He went to the closet and grabbed his umbrella even though he would feel silly carrying it to the bus stop on such a sunny morning.Inference:Hey! What happened to all the school construction money taken from the taxpayers? It paid for this toilet the money was flushed down.Inference:As you give a speech in front of a large audience, you reali ze that people are laughing behind their hands and pointing to the region below your waist.Inference: No, Honey, I don’t want you to spend a lot of money on my birthday present. Just having you for a husband is the only gift I need. In fact, I’ll just drive my old rusty bucket of bolts down to the mall and buy myself a little present. And if the poor old car doesnt break down, I’ll be back soon.Inference:A woman walks into a hospital clutching her abdomen and yelling at  her husband, who trails behind her carrying a large bag.Inference:Youre driving on the highway, listening to the radio, and a police officer pulls you over.Inference: Inference Practice 1 Suggested Answers 3. A man ran after a retreating bus, waving his briefcase frantically. Inference:  The man had to take that bus to work and he was running late. He wanted the bus driver to stop the bus so he could get on it. 4. If she died, I wouldn’t go to her funeral. Inference:  Im extremely angry with this woman for some major  reason,  because one of the worst things a person could do is to hate someone after they have passed away. 5. Jake almost wished that he hadn’t listened to the radio. He went to the closet and grabbed his umbrella even though he would feel silly carrying it to the bus stop on such a sunny morning. Inference:  Jake heard that it was going to rain later in the day. 6. Hey! What happened to all the school construction money taken from the taxpayers? It paid for this toilet the money was flushed down. Inference:  The school district is wasting tax payers money. 7. As you give a speech in front of a large audience, you realize that people are laughing behind their hands and pointing to the region below your waist. Inference:  You forgot to zip up your fly or you have something on your pants. 8. No, Honey, I don’t want you to spend a lot of money on my birthday present. Just having you for a husband is the only gift I need. In fact, I’ll just drive my old rusty bucket of bolts down to the mall and buy myself a little present. And if the poor old car doesnt break down, I’ll be back soon. Inference:  The wife wants the husband to buy her a new car for her birthday. 9. A woman walks into a hospital clutching her abdomen and cursing out her husband, who trails behind her carrying a large bag. Inference:  The woman is in labor. 10. Youre driving on the highway, listening to the radio, and a police officer pulls you over. Inference:  Youve broken the law in some way while driving.

Global warming Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 6

Global warming - Essay Example Allegre et al argues that CO2 can’t be a pollutant yet it is colorless and odorless. According to Wenner, there are several research evidence that shows that human activities cannot change the climate in any way. Curry argues that several research proofs that climate is insignificantly sensitive to carbon (IV) oxide increase in the atmosphere. Therefore the argument that emissions related to CO2 should be reduced is baseless. Curry believes that those supporting global warming have been exaggerating their findings using fabricated data. She believes that an organization like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been misled. â€Å"This pause in warming is at odds with the 2007 IPCC report, which expected  warming to increase at a rate of 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade in the early 21st  century.† The fact that even the International Panel on Climate Change, a body with both human and financial resources, cannot prove the existence of climate change shows that it doesn’t exist. The proof that the temperature of the world has been stagnant for more than a decade is a proof enough that global warming is not well researched as a field but

West Indian Literature Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

West Indian Literature - Essay Example Different authors have presented their own interpretations and preferences for what shape the Caribbean identity should take, but amongst the more prominent Caribbean authors there are those who want the improvement of the self for the uplift of the institutions and those who have a more historically oriented view. Both Derek Walcott and Wilson Harris have a desire for broader integration and fulfilment, but although Derek Walcott wants those from the Caribbean to boldly cease looking to their past in order to embrace the future, Wilson Harris appears to be somewhat fearful. This essay presents an examination of the debates about the Caribbean identity that are apparent in Caribbean literature and the evolution of Caribbean literary aesthetics by examining selected works of Derek Walcott and Wilson Harris. Caribbean literature has existed for centuries, but within the relatively recent past it has increased its worldwide acclaim and its mass of production. Both Derek Walcott and V. S. Naipaul were awarded the Nobel Prize in literature for their efforts which can be appreciated by anyone who has an interest in literature. Whereas Naipaul examines his Asian aspect of the Caribbean identity, Walcott presents a far more complex heritage and language in his poetry that presents the varied nuances of the Caribbean (Cudjoe, paragraph 23). Other writers have also made their contributions to the depiction of Caribbean aesthetics and culture by trying to define an identifiable cultural matrix within their works and some of the more prominent names that come to mind include Kamau Braithwaite, Erna Brodber, Wilson Harris and Olive Senior. Aesthetics refers to the branch of philosophy that deals with beauty and taste (Merriam-Webster, â€Å"aesthetics†). Thus, Caribbean aesthetics refers to that which is considered as being beautiful and worthy of distinction in the Caribbean region, especially

Abortions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Abortions - Essay Example These views have been termed as â€Å"pro-life† and â€Å"pro-choice†. Those who are against the abortion believe that there is something needs to be done to preserve life. They believe that the government has a duty of preserving all human life (Pro-choice Action Network 1). This view is typically held by the mainstream churches such as the Roman Catholic Church. On the other hand, those who support abortion believe that a person has a right to their own productive means (Pro-choice Action Network 1). People not affiliated to mainstream churches usually hold this view. These have been described as pro-choice. These people believe that all choices must remain valid. The stands have generated a serious conflict on the issue of abortion. Such believe on the issue of abortion are rooted on science and religion. Therefore, any view tries to prove its stance on the issue of abortion. A reflection on abortion helps in understanding pro-choice and pro-life position. There is d ifferent postmodern worldview based on pro-choice position on the issue of abortion. These views have been in support of abortion and have come to be known as prochoice. The worldview has made it possible for abortion to be viewed as a simple thing. In fact, most of the people in favor of abortion believes that abortion is as easy as taking of pill.

Success Guide to CRM From Information Technology Perspective

Success Guide to CRM From Information Technology Perspective Abstract The research work is majorly classified into seven different sections. The first section deals with a brief description of CRM, its rise in the industry, its importance in the organizations and its evolution. The next section deals with Electronic Customer Relationship Management, which is the web-version of Customer Relationship Management deployable in organizations. It is a collection of work put together between various Front-end systems, Data-handling technologies and Back-end systems. All these put together form the backbone of Customer Relationship Management. Third section deals with the approaches to Customer Relationship Management. Customer Service,Campaign ManagementandSales Force Automation(SFA) are core of the CRM system and they are discussed in detail. Apart from which other modules such as Operational CRM, Analytical CRM is also presented with a brief description. Fourth section deals with the modules of Customer Relationship Management which needs to be taken into c onsideration for developing a CRM software solution. Primarily the modules of importance in most of the organizations such as Marketing module, Service module, Sales module, and Call center module are dealt with. Each of the modules is in turn covered in detail encompassing the finer divisions in individual module. Fifth section focuses on the types of Customer Relationship Management. Business-to-Business CRM, Business to -Consumer CRM and other CRM related application areas, technical functionality and support required are presented with. Additionally each section is illustrated in detail so that a future organization/individual can have a quick understanding of their requirements and adapt a one which meets their requirements. Sixth, seventh sections provide the list of software vendors, their existing products and how one can select a software as per the needs and requirements of the user. This piece of research work mainly focuses on enabling an individual to understand ones re quirements and facilitates the person in adopting a module which meets all the desired needs. 1. Introduction: Information Technology has made a huge impact on how a business operates; thereby it is being seen as an important area of commerce which needs to be tapped. Despite the large scale investments in trying to automate a business entity, many businesses have failed to attract customers. The factors such as time frame of response, understanding customer needs and new ways to attract customers are making it difficult for the businesses to cope up with. Customers pose a key role in success of an e-business and it has called for extensive research in understanding the key areas of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in the field of Information technology. Customer Relationship Management from the Information Technology perspective is called as Electronic Customer Relationship Management (ECRM). 1.1 What is CRM? In todays market trend, customers are more educated, better informed, more technology aware and hence demanding more in the service they buy. So, the task becomes more challenging for business managers in attracting the profitable customers. Hence, small as well as big Information technology companies are working hard for maintaining good customer relationships and reaching customer satisfaction. To improve business strategy and plans, firstly, companies need to emphasis more on customers needs and behaviors in order to develop stronger customer relationships. The very first approach comes in this methodology is CRM. CRM stands for the customer relationship management. It is the process or methodology used to interact with customers, which will help bring together lots of information about customers, sales, marketing effectiveness, and customer responses and market trends. It helps businesses use available technology and resources to gain behavior and value of the customer. It broadl y covers concepts used by companies to manage their customer relationships very effectively by capturing, storing and analyzing customer information. For example by having such database created with customers need, matching customer needs and product plans and offerings, knowing what other products customer had purchased, etc. can improve product quality, indirectly improving customer relationships. Thus, CRM is the one of the important aspect in the business industries. (Eric Williams 2006) 1.2 Evolution of CRM CRM must start with an industry business strategy, which will offer positive changes in organization and work processes, which are then enabled by Information technology. In 1960s, academic researchers found that the 4Ps marketing framework i.e. product, price, place and promotion was less valuable than ongoing business relationships. By 1980s, marketing teams used to describe his new focus on understanding customer segment and achieving high customer satisfaction. In 1990s, CRM became the umbrella term; computer systems were deployed to support sales and service processes. By late 1990s, the real impact of these systems was outside the corporate world. Explosive growth in the internet usage broadened the concept as e-CRM to manage online customers. Now, multi-channel systems are available to support direct, internet and partner channels to allow user to use whatever mode of communication, they pleased. (Digital Publishing Solutions May 2007) These systems could typically answer many of the questions such as: How can oneself improve sales activities to have better idea of business improvement. How one can improve capability for leading the generation, account management and opportunities. How to make meaningful decisions on measuring the results from marketing campaign. How to resolve customer service troubles, make queue time shorter, make customer happy by offerings. All in all, how one can improve customer relationship. To answer these questions, CRM was developed to provide best operating practices in sales, marketing and customer services. This is where, companies started using CRM to store customer history, real time activities accumulation, which each department could bring up a record and see all customer interactions. 1.3 Why is CRM important? Everyone faces with the products and services at every single turn. But in realty, many of the product and service providers do actually not know the persons those using them. Major corporations failed to realize that it is the customer who is their biggest ally. Several millions of dollars are lost yearly because they failed to make profit, beat their competitors and stay ahead in this race. They wasted their money in marketing and endeavoring to gain the customers. They all are prone to make same mistake at some point of time. The main reason behind this failure was the attitude of companies towards their customers. The customer is the real king, who makes decision on failure and success of any service or product company. Many of the companies are not open to customers suggestions and more often that they do not provide the customer with a proper avenue and expel their ideas. This often leads to customers unhappiness and eventually their loss. Here comes the real need of the CRM. ( Rick Cook, 2008) CRM take into consideration the customers need and behavior towards services and products provided by companies. Companies can define their business strategy that primarily focuses on the customer, their ideas and suggestions. Benefits of CRM are listed below as business perspective: Increased sales through better timing by analyzing needs based on historic databases. Identifying improvement areas by understanding specific customer requirements. Increasing business, by highlighting and suggesting alternatives or enhancements. Identifying profit making customers. Better marketing of products. Enhanced customer satisfaction and retention. Enhanced customer loyalty. Improved quality communication and networking. Increased overall efficiency with reduction of total cost of sales. Better stand against global competition. Once business starts to look after existing customers effectively, effort can be made to gain new customer thus expanding market value. 2. Electronic Customer Relationship Management: Electronic Customer Relationship Management (ECRM) is the current trend with most business organizations be it small or large. The companies are hesitant in using the traditional strategies for running its businesses. The customers are treated as the most important part of the implementing a business strategy. That is the reason why ECRM has gained a lot of importance in the past decade. Romano (2001) defined ECRM as, â€Å"ECRM is concerned with attracting and keeping economically valuable customers and eliminating less profitable ones†. This aspect of the CRM which deals with the customers over its online business portals helps to identify the key customers and by spending more resources on them to make the business run better. The solutions offered to these businesses are of wide range and they are often sold as a package at very high prices. The nature of a business plays a vital role as adopting these CRM packages is not only waste of money but also huge waste of time. This could even lead to loosing customer base which are absolutely essential for running business. It is highly important to retain customers for a business as a recent study by McKinsey Co. revealed that if there is gain of 10% repeat customers then it will add about a profit of 10% to the company (Sims, 2000). It is highly obvious that a successful business should try and retain customers even though it is at a cost of their own terms. It is important to understand the three requirements that a CRM must address to be successful from IT point of view. 2.1 Front-end Systems In 2.1 shown below, the front-end systems constitute the key aspects of the business such as sales force market automation, customer service automation and application software. In case of online business or retailer, sales force and market automation is totally dependent on how the website looks and what features does it provide in order to attract and retain customers. Tracking all the customers and identify the potential customers will help the managers to take important decisions and capture the market. Customer service automation is a must as it the only place for a customer to reach out if they need any help. It includes setting up of call centers, communication technology infrastructure and websites. As these represent the face of a business it is important to automate these technologies. (Boon et al. 2002) 2.2 Data-Handling technologies The number of customers who shop increase day by day and it is impossible to keep track of them. As a result it has become obvious that one has to employ software tools which can manage the customer information and also be able to provide a proper links between them to help serve the customers. The techniques of data warehousing, data mining and knowledge management helps by making the CRM a better choice. In 2.1 below, the important modules which are part of data-handling technologies are shown. Data warehousing manages the companys data which is stored on a backend system and maintains the records regarding the data such as extracting, loading data in the repository and also managing the metadata. Data warehouses consists of business intelligent tools, tools to retrieve and manage data. Alex (2000) defines Data mining as a tool that automates the detection of relevant patterns within a database. The term explains how much a tool like this would help a business prosper; it gives the business, time to focus on the long term customers of the company and address various other issues. It helps in building strategy close to how the patterns reflect. Knowledge management uses the data warehouse and works as an intelligence tool by trying to establish new links within the data. For example, if a person searches for an item and if it is not found on the database then a tool like this could help the business by recording the information and possibly the customer. This improves the ef ficiency of business and customer satisfaction. These technologies are evidently a mark of the high standards a business can establish in order to survive their competitors within the global market (Compton, 2004). 2.3 Back-end Systems It is the backbone of the business without which everything else goes in utter vain. The data integrity is often considered a major player in getting all the acts together i.e. by bringing together the front-end systems and data handling technologies. It is important to integrate technologies into CRM as it forms a good strategy to work along with all the applications within the system. (Boon et al. 2002) The hierarchy present at the back-end systems as shown in 2.1 depicts the non-sales departments such as application software, enterprise wide applications, and ERP and supply chain management. In first stage, organization starts to analyze the Information systems available in place to suit their needs. The application software is deployed across the platforms they feel necessary and then it is important to establish a link between these applications which are called Enterprise Wide Applications (EWA). These help in interchanging the data between the application software and the systems. This could help the business establish all important background work as it highly important to maintain synergy between them and also update them whenever necessary to increase the speed with which they work. ERP forms the next stage of hierarchy wherein it integrates the EWA with the supply chain management which is a part of the front end and also data handling technologies. (Boon et al. 2002) The technology is considered to be the key player for any organizational success as it can be seen from the above literature. ‘IT infrastructure generally has been described as a set of IT services, including communications management, standard management, security, IT education, service management, application management, data management and IT research and development (Hwang et. al., 2002). ECRM is in short, the customer relationship management which is implemented electronically across the organizations. As CRM is mostly implemented as web based applications, the systems mentioned above play a crucial role in the management of CRM from small and medium businesses to very large scale organizations. Proceeding further, we will see various approaches in the implementation of CRM or ECRM. 3) Approaches to CRM: There are different approaches to CRM implementation and it is presented in different packages focusing on different aspects. In generalCustomer Service,Sales Force Automation (SFA) and Campaign Management are considered as core aspects of the CRM system. Customer service: Customer service is the provision for the customers before, during and after the purchase. â€Å"Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation. (Jamier L. Scott. 2006). Its importance depends on the product, industry and customer. Customer service provided by a person or by automated mean as self-service (for example, Internet service). In bookRules are to break and Laws are to Follow, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D. wrote that customers have memories. They will remember you, whether you remember them or not. Further, customer trust can be destroyed at once by a major service problem, or it can be undermined one day at a time, with a thousand small demonstrations of incompetence.† From the point of organization view, customer service plays important role in generation of income and revenue. From this perspective, customer service must be included as part of the overall approach to the systematic improvement. Campaign management: It may happen that company may not always require all the details pertaining to particular customers history. In such cases to avoid large sending of data and insecurity, many of the organizations prefer campaign management. Enterprise campaign management solutions allow customer to provide centralized databases to send one or multiple dialers. Rather than sending down all the record, part of the record will be send as and when required. This simplifies the management of the complex dialing campaigns. Sales Force Automation: These are the information systems, which automatically records all the stages in a sale process. Such systems keep track of the all contacts that has been made with the customer, purpose of the contact, and any follow up that might be required. This ensures that sales efforts will not be duplicated, reducing the business risks. It also lists potential customers of related products. It might happen that different department may contact same customer number of times for same purpose. To avoid such a risk, SFA must be fully integrated in all the departments that deal with customer service management. 3.1 Various approaches of CRM: Operational CRM Analytical CRM Sales Intelligence CRM Campaign management Collaborative CRM Consumer Relationship CRM (White PaperonArchitecture for CRM approachesin Financial Services) Operational CRM: Operational CRM provides support for front end business processes, which includes sales, marketing and services. Interactions with customers are generally stored in customers database history and company staff can retrieve information as and when required. So, the need for direct contact with customer for his requirement details will be eliminated and reaching to the customer at right time and right place will be more preferable. Operational CRM processes customers data for various purposes such as managing campaign, marketing automation, sales force automation, sales management system, etc. Few of the benefits of the operational CRM systems are as follows: It delivers personalized and effective sales, marketing and service through multiple channels. Enable 360 degree view of the customers details while interacting with them. Sales or service department can easily access history of the all customers interaction, without referring directly to customer. In sales source automation, company can automate their critical sales and sales force management tasks. Few of the examples include account management, contact management, forecasting, and sales administration keeping track of customer preferences as well as performance management. (Effective CRM Consulting 2009) In customer service and support, many companies automate some service requests, complaints, product returns and information requests. Key infrastructure requirements of CSS include volume processing capability and reliability, multiple channels support such as web, phone/fax, face-to-face, etc. In case of the Marketing Automation, information regarding business environment, industry trends macro-environment variables is stored. And then business strategy is defined. Predictive business model is defined. Analytical CRM: Analytical CRM includes the process of understanding the behaviors of customers, analyzing this data for marketing effectiveness and planning strategies of cross-selling, up-selling, etc. The process of analytical CRM starts with analyzing the customer profiles by targeting various categories of customers and evaluating their responses. These responses can be tracked using customer complaints or through transactional data or by direct customer contacts through satisfaction survey. This data of attitudinal and behavioral responses of customers is input for the next process which is nothing but customer behavior modeling. This includes building of predictive models according to the analysis data for various set of customers. The customer behavioral modeling helps to understand the homogenous customer segments. Also the methods like association discovery which is nothing but understanding the associations between the customer needs. Here only Operational CRM and Analytical CRM are discussed as they are different from the other approaches. The other approaches of CRM namely, Sales CRM, Campaign management, Consumer relationship CRM explanations are not furnished here as they are presented in very much details in the subsequent section, modules of CRM. 4) Modules of CRM: The key functionality of a CRM solution can be studied under 4 basic modules. They are Marketing, Service, Sales and Call centre. All these modules are Collaborative, Analytical and Operational. 4.1 Marketing Module The marketing module ofCRMcomprises of functionalities regarding short term execution of marketing related activities and long term planning within the company. It also helps in activities like planning, Campaign Management and lead management. Marketing module enables different communication channels to run marketing campaigns by the company, which targets potential buyers in using a product or a group of products as a message. One positive way to increase marketing effectiveness is to get better the way leads are captured and acted on. The old method is when an investigation is presented to the organizations web site; an email is generated and delivered to the department of marketing. Novel way is, a new prospect record is automatically formed in the master database which presents the lead source and campaign, assigns it to a sales representative, and emails the prospect with information or instructions scores the lead. Leads can be allocated upon product curiosity, region, or any additional defined criteria. Automated processing is defined by quicker routing and the facility to scrutinize the lead progress on a real time basis as leads are qualified and converted. The whole lot is processed and followed up in the CRM database, but more importantly such types of workflow improvements effects in greater conversion rates. (Kevin M. Turner, 2007) CRM marketing tools afford the infrastructure to prop up a huge variety of lead generation strategies which may be by email marketing, through advertising, direct mail, or trade shows. CRM also facilitates the marketer with metrics which validate financial plans and establishes the worth of marketing to management and sales. Target Marketing: Attaining the correct message at the correct time from the right people is vital. Wish to aim only the decision makers those with a practical role of engineering for technical illustration at trade fare? In order to win over, organizations need to elevate consciousness among their most accessible objectives, at the appropriate time with less cost and endeavor. CRM enables an institute to manipulate the valuable knowledge captured through accessible customer relations. As CRM is in place as infrastructure, setting up and maintaining an effective route for getting customer support CRM and sales customers to enter required knowledge into the database is simple. Have a glance at marketing, the sales and support business processes and workflows, and then categorize communication and marketing opportunities. Mixed with a focus on marketing targets and tactics, now have a map to yield the value in CRM by target marketing. (Kevin M. Turner, 2007) Campaign Management and Effectiveness Tracking: The CRM solutions have incorporated marketing tools to support complete campaign management to conduct the webinars, the marketing campaigns, seminars, trainings, events etc. Choose targets, give invitations, obtain registrations through the web, deliver automated replies and reminders, create attendee lists, and carry out satisfaction surveys. Each detail, offline and online, may be watched, measured, and administered as part of the operation. Every movement that has been made with each of the individual analysis and clientele is captured. Outcome is radically improved marketing administration effectiveness and efficiency, along with a current, shared, and a complete picture of every touch which is made with each client and viewpoint. Icing on the cake is that marketers can obtain benefit of the data obtained to observe real-time campaign metrics, and gauge the efficacy of individual campaigns by kind, time period or medium. Email Marketing and Communications: Email marketing plan is the core of marketing success today. Email marketing is timely, cheap, and when done exactly, effectual. Along with CRM, the sales and customer support staff capture and update email addresses in the main CRM repository during their usual tasks. Its vital to confine and keep up an updated email database of clientele and scenarios. Modules of CRM have complete email marketing facilities built in. A lot of of them do have the capability to send batch emails and trace the reads. However there is a big market of well-known on demand email marketing attributes which â€Å"plug in† to CRM functionality and offer considerably better features to make generating professional email interactions better and perk up the deliverability. In addition, email programs also help to tackle the intricacies of government regulations, tracing, and delivering. If used jointly with CRM, it will have a totally fledged email marketing solution which is professional, acquiescent and effectual. (Kevin M. Turner, 2007) Marketing Administration: CRM can supervise marketing administration activities, which in numerous cases are time intense, not possible, and pricey to administer devoid of automation. Newsletter List Management: Saving and continuing supporting the lists of subscribers for alerts and newsletters may be a full time activity, but the task may be automated by combining a web page to the CRM repository where lists are followed up. The integration allows the subscriber to check current preferences, modify and append to their subscriptions, the login, and authenticates requests and one can send the customer an email to corroborate and thank them. (Kevin M. Turner, 2007) Literature Fulfillment: CRM modules can track supplies and rearrange points and direct orders for dispensation. Moreover, the user wants the ability to follow up fulfillment requests and check their order records. In few cases, literature fulfillment requests are required to come from associates, prospects, or clients via web site, all of which can be contained. Event Management: Events managing require lots of dexterity. A site must be booked, salespersons contracted, presenters scheduled, fund-raisers signed, broadcasts sent, registrations noted, fee processed, and of course the affair must be held. By making the most of CRM for event management, marketing department can with no trouble and efficiently carry out far more events, whilst building a record of sources concerned that may be required in the prospect. Customer Surveys: CRM systems can carry survey administration and consecutively can get better end results for both the corporation and the consumer. Survey invitations may be sent by email from the CRM system, provoking the member to click on a link which guides them to a web survey on organization site. The email address or an approved identifier rooted in the link can combine the study to the members details in the CRM record, where it can get details and also reported about. The CRM workflow may also send announcements as soon as a survey is received. (Kevin M. Turner, 2007) 4.2 Service Module The service module of CRM focuses on how effectively the system is managing customer service which is either planned or unplanned. It helps in activities like Service Contract Management, Service Order Management, and Planned Services management, Installed Base (Equipment) Management, Warranty Management, Service Level Agreement Management, Scheduling, Resource Planning and Knowledge Management. Service contract management: Maintain a variety of service contracts, including labor contracts, standard parts and usage-based contracts. Administer service contracts, manage service-level agreements, automatically verify entitlement, and alert agents when a customers contract is about to expire. Claim and warranty management: Synchronize with third-party logistic providers to avoid unnecessary goodwill allowances and ensure timely customer credits. Handle the entire warranty and claims process, from RMA (return merchandise authorization) to receipt and inspection. Maintenance and Installation: Minimize downtime with planned protection service. Predict impact of new product installation for accurate and fast service. Track customers installed base of products and their pattern with graphical hierarchical demonstration. Customer support and service: Access data on the service histories, the service entitlements and contracts, the installed base, service levels, and the warranties by an easy-to-use communication center screen (SAP Customer Relationship Management on Environment 2006) 4.3 Sales Module This Module ofCRM Solutionsfocuses mainly on the sales team of the company to execute the pre-sales process and manage, making it more organized. The sales teams in most companies are responsible for capturing customer interaction, capturing any leads or opportunities, the CRM helps them to process this data and monitor it in the future. This helps in organizing all relevant data captured and received for a deal to be put into one place, it could hold data as expected budget, prospective customers, total spending, key players, important dates, products interested in and expected closing dates of a deal. Each of these can be stand only applications depending on organizational need. It is important that the right software is selected at the right time and more importantly implemented correctly for any CRM to be effective. Important key sales procedures includes Sales forecasting and planning: Anticipated sales volume over time and provide a total picture of predictable revenue. Augments the precision of sales forecasts and demand plans. Increase performance with coordinated planning and implementation of sales actions across all channels. Territory management: Gets better resource utilization with apparent visibility into accessibility and assignments. Consign the right sources at the correct time in the exact locations to optimize team performance. Maximize distribution of sales sources and account reporting across clearly defined areas. Accounts and contacts management: Present a single, inclusive view of all data required to supervise sales accounts. Capture, monitor and track all vital information about prospects, customers, and partners. Access key contacts, detailed customer profiles, critical relationships, critical relationships, and the position of all recent communications from any place and at any time. Activity management: Seamlessly synchronize e-mail, calendar entries, contacts, and tasks with important groupware solutions. Handle customer visits, account profiles and activity-driven sales activities. Focus on the combined energy of sales team events to proven to promote money-making b Success Guide to CRM From Information Technology Perspective Success Guide to CRM From Information Technology Perspective Abstract The research work is majorly classified into seven different sections. The first section deals with a brief description of CRM, its rise in the industry, its importance in the organizations and its evolution. The next section deals with Electronic Customer Relationship Management, which is the web-version of Customer Relationship Management deployable in organizations. It is a collection of work put together between various Front-end systems, Data-handling technologies and Back-end systems. All these put together form the backbone of Customer Relationship Management. Third section deals with the approaches to Customer Relationship Management. Customer Service,Campaign ManagementandSales Force Automation(SFA) are core of the CRM system and they are discussed in detail. Apart from which other modules such as Operational CRM, Analytical CRM is also presented with a brief description. Fourth section deals with the modules of Customer Relationship Management which needs to be taken into c onsideration for developing a CRM software solution. Primarily the modules of importance in most of the organizations such as Marketing module, Service module, Sales module, and Call center module are dealt with. Each of the modules is in turn covered in detail encompassing the finer divisions in individual module. Fifth section focuses on the types of Customer Relationship Management. Business-to-Business CRM, Business to -Consumer CRM and other CRM related application areas, technical functionality and support required are presented with. Additionally each section is illustrated in detail so that a future organization/individual can have a quick understanding of their requirements and adapt a one which meets their requirements. Sixth, seventh sections provide the list of software vendors, their existing products and how one can select a software as per the needs and requirements of the user. This piece of research work mainly focuses on enabling an individual to understand ones re quirements and facilitates the person in adopting a module which meets all the desired needs. 1. Introduction: Information Technology has made a huge impact on how a business operates; thereby it is being seen as an important area of commerce which needs to be tapped. Despite the large scale investments in trying to automate a business entity, many businesses have failed to attract customers. The factors such as time frame of response, understanding customer needs and new ways to attract customers are making it difficult for the businesses to cope up with. Customers pose a key role in success of an e-business and it has called for extensive research in understanding the key areas of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in the field of Information technology. Customer Relationship Management from the Information Technology perspective is called as Electronic Customer Relationship Management (ECRM). 1.1 What is CRM? In todays market trend, customers are more educated, better informed, more technology aware and hence demanding more in the service they buy. So, the task becomes more challenging for business managers in attracting the profitable customers. Hence, small as well as big Information technology companies are working hard for maintaining good customer relationships and reaching customer satisfaction. To improve business strategy and plans, firstly, companies need to emphasis more on customers needs and behaviors in order to develop stronger customer relationships. The very first approach comes in this methodology is CRM. CRM stands for the customer relationship management. It is the process or methodology used to interact with customers, which will help bring together lots of information about customers, sales, marketing effectiveness, and customer responses and market trends. It helps businesses use available technology and resources to gain behavior and value of the customer. It broadl y covers concepts used by companies to manage their customer relationships very effectively by capturing, storing and analyzing customer information. For example by having such database created with customers need, matching customer needs and product plans and offerings, knowing what other products customer had purchased, etc. can improve product quality, indirectly improving customer relationships. Thus, CRM is the one of the important aspect in the business industries. (Eric Williams 2006) 1.2 Evolution of CRM CRM must start with an industry business strategy, which will offer positive changes in organization and work processes, which are then enabled by Information technology. In 1960s, academic researchers found that the 4Ps marketing framework i.e. product, price, place and promotion was less valuable than ongoing business relationships. By 1980s, marketing teams used to describe his new focus on understanding customer segment and achieving high customer satisfaction. In 1990s, CRM became the umbrella term; computer systems were deployed to support sales and service processes. By late 1990s, the real impact of these systems was outside the corporate world. Explosive growth in the internet usage broadened the concept as e-CRM to manage online customers. Now, multi-channel systems are available to support direct, internet and partner channels to allow user to use whatever mode of communication, they pleased. (Digital Publishing Solutions May 2007) These systems could typically answer many of the questions such as: How can oneself improve sales activities to have better idea of business improvement. How one can improve capability for leading the generation, account management and opportunities. How to make meaningful decisions on measuring the results from marketing campaign. How to resolve customer service troubles, make queue time shorter, make customer happy by offerings. All in all, how one can improve customer relationship. To answer these questions, CRM was developed to provide best operating practices in sales, marketing and customer services. This is where, companies started using CRM to store customer history, real time activities accumulation, which each department could bring up a record and see all customer interactions. 1.3 Why is CRM important? Everyone faces with the products and services at every single turn. But in realty, many of the product and service providers do actually not know the persons those using them. Major corporations failed to realize that it is the customer who is their biggest ally. Several millions of dollars are lost yearly because they failed to make profit, beat their competitors and stay ahead in this race. They wasted their money in marketing and endeavoring to gain the customers. They all are prone to make same mistake at some point of time. The main reason behind this failure was the attitude of companies towards their customers. The customer is the real king, who makes decision on failure and success of any service or product company. Many of the companies are not open to customers suggestions and more often that they do not provide the customer with a proper avenue and expel their ideas. This often leads to customers unhappiness and eventually their loss. Here comes the real need of the CRM. ( Rick Cook, 2008) CRM take into consideration the customers need and behavior towards services and products provided by companies. Companies can define their business strategy that primarily focuses on the customer, their ideas and suggestions. Benefits of CRM are listed below as business perspective: Increased sales through better timing by analyzing needs based on historic databases. Identifying improvement areas by understanding specific customer requirements. Increasing business, by highlighting and suggesting alternatives or enhancements. Identifying profit making customers. Better marketing of products. Enhanced customer satisfaction and retention. Enhanced customer loyalty. Improved quality communication and networking. Increased overall efficiency with reduction of total cost of sales. Better stand against global competition. Once business starts to look after existing customers effectively, effort can be made to gain new customer thus expanding market value. 2. Electronic Customer Relationship Management: Electronic Customer Relationship Management (ECRM) is the current trend with most business organizations be it small or large. The companies are hesitant in using the traditional strategies for running its businesses. The customers are treated as the most important part of the implementing a business strategy. That is the reason why ECRM has gained a lot of importance in the past decade. Romano (2001) defined ECRM as, â€Å"ECRM is concerned with attracting and keeping economically valuable customers and eliminating less profitable ones†. This aspect of the CRM which deals with the customers over its online business portals helps to identify the key customers and by spending more resources on them to make the business run better. The solutions offered to these businesses are of wide range and they are often sold as a package at very high prices. The nature of a business plays a vital role as adopting these CRM packages is not only waste of money but also huge waste of time. This could even lead to loosing customer base which are absolutely essential for running business. It is highly important to retain customers for a business as a recent study by McKinsey Co. revealed that if there is gain of 10% repeat customers then it will add about a profit of 10% to the company (Sims, 2000). It is highly obvious that a successful business should try and retain customers even though it is at a cost of their own terms. It is important to understand the three requirements that a CRM must address to be successful from IT point of view. 2.1 Front-end Systems In 2.1 shown below, the front-end systems constitute the key aspects of the business such as sales force market automation, customer service automation and application software. In case of online business or retailer, sales force and market automation is totally dependent on how the website looks and what features does it provide in order to attract and retain customers. Tracking all the customers and identify the potential customers will help the managers to take important decisions and capture the market. Customer service automation is a must as it the only place for a customer to reach out if they need any help. It includes setting up of call centers, communication technology infrastructure and websites. As these represent the face of a business it is important to automate these technologies. (Boon et al. 2002) 2.2 Data-Handling technologies The number of customers who shop increase day by day and it is impossible to keep track of them. As a result it has become obvious that one has to employ software tools which can manage the customer information and also be able to provide a proper links between them to help serve the customers. The techniques of data warehousing, data mining and knowledge management helps by making the CRM a better choice. In 2.1 below, the important modules which are part of data-handling technologies are shown. Data warehousing manages the companys data which is stored on a backend system and maintains the records regarding the data such as extracting, loading data in the repository and also managing the metadata. Data warehouses consists of business intelligent tools, tools to retrieve and manage data. Alex (2000) defines Data mining as a tool that automates the detection of relevant patterns within a database. The term explains how much a tool like this would help a business prosper; it gives the business, time to focus on the long term customers of the company and address various other issues. It helps in building strategy close to how the patterns reflect. Knowledge management uses the data warehouse and works as an intelligence tool by trying to establish new links within the data. For example, if a person searches for an item and if it is not found on the database then a tool like this could help the business by recording the information and possibly the customer. This improves the ef ficiency of business and customer satisfaction. These technologies are evidently a mark of the high standards a business can establish in order to survive their competitors within the global market (Compton, 2004). 2.3 Back-end Systems It is the backbone of the business without which everything else goes in utter vain. The data integrity is often considered a major player in getting all the acts together i.e. by bringing together the front-end systems and data handling technologies. It is important to integrate technologies into CRM as it forms a good strategy to work along with all the applications within the system. (Boon et al. 2002) The hierarchy present at the back-end systems as shown in 2.1 depicts the non-sales departments such as application software, enterprise wide applications, and ERP and supply chain management. In first stage, organization starts to analyze the Information systems available in place to suit their needs. The application software is deployed across the platforms they feel necessary and then it is important to establish a link between these applications which are called Enterprise Wide Applications (EWA). These help in interchanging the data between the application software and the systems. This could help the business establish all important background work as it highly important to maintain synergy between them and also update them whenever necessary to increase the speed with which they work. ERP forms the next stage of hierarchy wherein it integrates the EWA with the supply chain management which is a part of the front end and also data handling technologies. (Boon et al. 2002) The technology is considered to be the key player for any organizational success as it can be seen from the above literature. ‘IT infrastructure generally has been described as a set of IT services, including communications management, standard management, security, IT education, service management, application management, data management and IT research and development (Hwang et. al., 2002). ECRM is in short, the customer relationship management which is implemented electronically across the organizations. As CRM is mostly implemented as web based applications, the systems mentioned above play a crucial role in the management of CRM from small and medium businesses to very large scale organizations. Proceeding further, we will see various approaches in the implementation of CRM or ECRM. 3) Approaches to CRM: There are different approaches to CRM implementation and it is presented in different packages focusing on different aspects. In generalCustomer Service,Sales Force Automation (SFA) and Campaign Management are considered as core aspects of the CRM system. Customer service: Customer service is the provision for the customers before, during and after the purchase. â€Å"Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation. (Jamier L. Scott. 2006). Its importance depends on the product, industry and customer. Customer service provided by a person or by automated mean as self-service (for example, Internet service). In bookRules are to break and Laws are to Follow, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D. wrote that customers have memories. They will remember you, whether you remember them or not. Further, customer trust can be destroyed at once by a major service problem, or it can be undermined one day at a time, with a thousand small demonstrations of incompetence.† From the point of organization view, customer service plays important role in generation of income and revenue. From this perspective, customer service must be included as part of the overall approach to the systematic improvement. Campaign management: It may happen that company may not always require all the details pertaining to particular customers history. In such cases to avoid large sending of data and insecurity, many of the organizations prefer campaign management. Enterprise campaign management solutions allow customer to provide centralized databases to send one or multiple dialers. Rather than sending down all the record, part of the record will be send as and when required. This simplifies the management of the complex dialing campaigns. Sales Force Automation: These are the information systems, which automatically records all the stages in a sale process. Such systems keep track of the all contacts that has been made with the customer, purpose of the contact, and any follow up that might be required. This ensures that sales efforts will not be duplicated, reducing the business risks. It also lists potential customers of related products. It might happen that different department may contact same customer number of times for same purpose. To avoid such a risk, SFA must be fully integrated in all the departments that deal with customer service management. 3.1 Various approaches of CRM: Operational CRM Analytical CRM Sales Intelligence CRM Campaign management Collaborative CRM Consumer Relationship CRM (White PaperonArchitecture for CRM approachesin Financial Services) Operational CRM: Operational CRM provides support for front end business processes, which includes sales, marketing and services. Interactions with customers are generally stored in customers database history and company staff can retrieve information as and when required. So, the need for direct contact with customer for his requirement details will be eliminated and reaching to the customer at right time and right place will be more preferable. Operational CRM processes customers data for various purposes such as managing campaign, marketing automation, sales force automation, sales management system, etc. Few of the benefits of the operational CRM systems are as follows: It delivers personalized and effective sales, marketing and service through multiple channels. Enable 360 degree view of the customers details while interacting with them. Sales or service department can easily access history of the all customers interaction, without referring directly to customer. In sales source automation, company can automate their critical sales and sales force management tasks. Few of the examples include account management, contact management, forecasting, and sales administration keeping track of customer preferences as well as performance management. (Effective CRM Consulting 2009) In customer service and support, many companies automate some service requests, complaints, product returns and information requests. Key infrastructure requirements of CSS include volume processing capability and reliability, multiple channels support such as web, phone/fax, face-to-face, etc. In case of the Marketing Automation, information regarding business environment, industry trends macro-environment variables is stored. And then business strategy is defined. Predictive business model is defined. Analytical CRM: Analytical CRM includes the process of understanding the behaviors of customers, analyzing this data for marketing effectiveness and planning strategies of cross-selling, up-selling, etc. The process of analytical CRM starts with analyzing the customer profiles by targeting various categories of customers and evaluating their responses. These responses can be tracked using customer complaints or through transactional data or by direct customer contacts through satisfaction survey. This data of attitudinal and behavioral responses of customers is input for the next process which is nothing but customer behavior modeling. This includes building of predictive models according to the analysis data for various set of customers. The customer behavioral modeling helps to understand the homogenous customer segments. Also the methods like association discovery which is nothing but understanding the associations between the customer needs. Here only Operational CRM and Analytical CRM are discussed as they are different from the other approaches. The other approaches of CRM namely, Sales CRM, Campaign management, Consumer relationship CRM explanations are not furnished here as they are presented in very much details in the subsequent section, modules of CRM. 4) Modules of CRM: The key functionality of a CRM solution can be studied under 4 basic modules. They are Marketing, Service, Sales and Call centre. All these modules are Collaborative, Analytical and Operational. 4.1 Marketing Module The marketing module ofCRMcomprises of functionalities regarding short term execution of marketing related activities and long term planning within the company. It also helps in activities like planning, Campaign Management and lead management. Marketing module enables different communication channels to run marketing campaigns by the company, which targets potential buyers in using a product or a group of products as a message. One positive way to increase marketing effectiveness is to get better the way leads are captured and acted on. The old method is when an investigation is presented to the organizations web site; an email is generated and delivered to the department of marketing. Novel way is, a new prospect record is automatically formed in the master database which presents the lead source and campaign, assigns it to a sales representative, and emails the prospect with information or instructions scores the lead. Leads can be allocated upon product curiosity, region, or any additional defined criteria. Automated processing is defined by quicker routing and the facility to scrutinize the lead progress on a real time basis as leads are qualified and converted. The whole lot is processed and followed up in the CRM database, but more importantly such types of workflow improvements effects in greater conversion rates. (Kevin M. Turner, 2007) CRM marketing tools afford the infrastructure to prop up a huge variety of lead generation strategies which may be by email marketing, through advertising, direct mail, or trade shows. CRM also facilitates the marketer with metrics which validate financial plans and establishes the worth of marketing to management and sales. Target Marketing: Attaining the correct message at the correct time from the right people is vital. Wish to aim only the decision makers those with a practical role of engineering for technical illustration at trade fare? In order to win over, organizations need to elevate consciousness among their most accessible objectives, at the appropriate time with less cost and endeavor. CRM enables an institute to manipulate the valuable knowledge captured through accessible customer relations. As CRM is in place as infrastructure, setting up and maintaining an effective route for getting customer support CRM and sales customers to enter required knowledge into the database is simple. Have a glance at marketing, the sales and support business processes and workflows, and then categorize communication and marketing opportunities. Mixed with a focus on marketing targets and tactics, now have a map to yield the value in CRM by target marketing. (Kevin M. Turner, 2007) Campaign Management and Effectiveness Tracking: The CRM solutions have incorporated marketing tools to support complete campaign management to conduct the webinars, the marketing campaigns, seminars, trainings, events etc. Choose targets, give invitations, obtain registrations through the web, deliver automated replies and reminders, create attendee lists, and carry out satisfaction surveys. Each detail, offline and online, may be watched, measured, and administered as part of the operation. Every movement that has been made with each of the individual analysis and clientele is captured. Outcome is radically improved marketing administration effectiveness and efficiency, along with a current, shared, and a complete picture of every touch which is made with each client and viewpoint. Icing on the cake is that marketers can obtain benefit of the data obtained to observe real-time campaign metrics, and gauge the efficacy of individual campaigns by kind, time period or medium. Email Marketing and Communications: Email marketing plan is the core of marketing success today. Email marketing is timely, cheap, and when done exactly, effectual. Along with CRM, the sales and customer support staff capture and update email addresses in the main CRM repository during their usual tasks. Its vital to confine and keep up an updated email database of clientele and scenarios. Modules of CRM have complete email marketing facilities built in. A lot of of them do have the capability to send batch emails and trace the reads. However there is a big market of well-known on demand email marketing attributes which â€Å"plug in† to CRM functionality and offer considerably better features to make generating professional email interactions better and perk up the deliverability. In addition, email programs also help to tackle the intricacies of government regulations, tracing, and delivering. If used jointly with CRM, it will have a totally fledged email marketing solution which is professional, acquiescent and effectual. (Kevin M. Turner, 2007) Marketing Administration: CRM can supervise marketing administration activities, which in numerous cases are time intense, not possible, and pricey to administer devoid of automation. Newsletter List Management: Saving and continuing supporting the lists of subscribers for alerts and newsletters may be a full time activity, but the task may be automated by combining a web page to the CRM repository where lists are followed up. The integration allows the subscriber to check current preferences, modify and append to their subscriptions, the login, and authenticates requests and one can send the customer an email to corroborate and thank them. (Kevin M. Turner, 2007) Literature Fulfillment: CRM modules can track supplies and rearrange points and direct orders for dispensation. Moreover, the user wants the ability to follow up fulfillment requests and check their order records. In few cases, literature fulfillment requests are required to come from associates, prospects, or clients via web site, all of which can be contained. Event Management: Events managing require lots of dexterity. A site must be booked, salespersons contracted, presenters scheduled, fund-raisers signed, broadcasts sent, registrations noted, fee processed, and of course the affair must be held. By making the most of CRM for event management, marketing department can with no trouble and efficiently carry out far more events, whilst building a record of sources concerned that may be required in the prospect. Customer Surveys: CRM systems can carry survey administration and consecutively can get better end results for both the corporation and the consumer. Survey invitations may be sent by email from the CRM system, provoking the member to click on a link which guides them to a web survey on organization site. The email address or an approved identifier rooted in the link can combine the study to the members details in the CRM record, where it can get details and also reported about. The CRM workflow may also send announcements as soon as a survey is received. (Kevin M. Turner, 2007) 4.2 Service Module The service module of CRM focuses on how effectively the system is managing customer service which is either planned or unplanned. It helps in activities like Service Contract Management, Service Order Management, and Planned Services management, Installed Base (Equipment) Management, Warranty Management, Service Level Agreement Management, Scheduling, Resource Planning and Knowledge Management. Service contract management: Maintain a variety of service contracts, including labor contracts, standard parts and usage-based contracts. Administer service contracts, manage service-level agreements, automatically verify entitlement, and alert agents when a customers contract is about to expire. Claim and warranty management: Synchronize with third-party logistic providers to avoid unnecessary goodwill allowances and ensure timely customer credits. Handle the entire warranty and claims process, from RMA (return merchandise authorization) to receipt and inspection. Maintenance and Installation: Minimize downtime with planned protection service. Predict impact of new product installation for accurate and fast service. Track customers installed base of products and their pattern with graphical hierarchical demonstration. Customer support and service: Access data on the service histories, the service entitlements and contracts, the installed base, service levels, and the warranties by an easy-to-use communication center screen (SAP Customer Relationship Management on Environment 2006) 4.3 Sales Module This Module ofCRM Solutionsfocuses mainly on the sales team of the company to execute the pre-sales process and manage, making it more organized. The sales teams in most companies are responsible for capturing customer interaction, capturing any leads or opportunities, the CRM helps them to process this data and monitor it in the future. This helps in organizing all relevant data captured and received for a deal to be put into one place, it could hold data as expected budget, prospective customers, total spending, key players, important dates, products interested in and expected closing dates of a deal. Each of these can be stand only applications depending on organizational need. It is important that the right software is selected at the right time and more importantly implemented correctly for any CRM to be effective. Important key sales procedures includes Sales forecasting and planning: Anticipated sales volume over time and provide a total picture of predictable revenue. Augments the precision of sales forecasts and demand plans. Increase performance with coordinated planning and implementation of sales actions across all channels. Territory management: Gets better resource utilization with apparent visibility into accessibility and assignments. Consign the right sources at the correct time in the exact locations to optimize team performance. Maximize distribution of sales sources and account reporting across clearly defined areas. Accounts and contacts management: Present a single, inclusive view of all data required to supervise sales accounts. Capture, monitor and track all vital information about prospects, customers, and partners. Access key contacts, detailed customer profiles, critical relationships, critical relationships, and the position of all recent communications from any place and at any time. Activity management: Seamlessly synchronize e-mail, calendar entries, contacts, and tasks with important groupware solutions. Handle customer visits, account profiles and activity-driven sales activities. Focus on the combined energy of sales team events to proven to promote money-making b