Customer / Partner Relationship Management facilities in On2Biz
January 16, 2007 – 1:20 pmOn2Biz relationship management module provides facilities for managing relationships with companies, including customers, distributors or any other type of relationship.
The objective of this modules is to ensure that we are prioritizing our activity across our entire database of companies. Usually activity gets prioritized based on immediate need. However, with the relationship management module, You can grade companies based on level of attention required, and On2Biz will automatically bring to your attention those companies that need to be attended to out of turn. In addition, you can now track activity that is not necessarily related to any open or active project. Hence you can create tasks, appointments, calls, notes and files for companies even if they do not relate to any specific active project.
A. Creating a new customer / company
Usually a new company is created when you add the first project for the company. With relationship management activated, a new link appears in the workspace to create a new company. To view or edit the company details, you can click on the company name in the project to view the company page.
The company page contains the following details:
1. Company Name - as entered in the project
2. Company Code - you can use this to assign a unique accounting code to the customer, so as to match your internal accounting code for the company
3. Type - this specifies the relationship of the company - default relationships are End Customer, Distributor, Consultant etc. These can be customized to your requirement.
4. Account Manager - The account manager is automatically set to the project manager of the first project created for that customer.
5. Grade - You can assign a grade to the customer. Default grades are A,B,C,D. Grades correspond to a rating of the importance of the customer for your company. You can grade the customer based on any factor such as potential of business value, strategic importance of the relationship for entering a new market segment, possibility of repeat business, etc. For each customer grade, you can specify a default frequency of contact. For example, you can specify that A grade customers should be contacted every week, B grade customers every month, C grade customers every two months, and D grade customers every quarter. These are the default grades and periods. You can change these for your company’s requirements.
6. Company Website - the address(URL) of the company’s web site
7. Scale - Large scale, medium scale, small scale or professionals - can be used to segment customers
8. Industry Type - containing a choice of various types of industries - used to segment customers
9. Project List - showing a list of projects that relate to this company (as end customer or other company role). You can also create a new project from here. Clicking on the project title opens the corresponding project page.
10. Contacts List - list of contact persons with contact details. You can add or edit contact persons from here.
11. Address List - list of addresses or locations at which the company has presence. You can add or edit one or more addresses.
12. Tasks - tasks related to the company but not to any individual project. You can add tasks for the company or for the project, but only company related tasks are listed here. Project tasks are listed in the project page.
13. Appointments / Calls - appointments related to the company but not to any individual project. You can add appointments/calls for the company or for the project, but only company related calls are listed here. Project calls are listed in the project page.
14. Files - files related to the company but not to any individual project. You can add files for the company or for the project, but only company related files are listed here. Project files are listed in the project page.
B. Customer Activity in Workspace menu
The relationship management module introduces a few new entries in the workspace menu for managing company relationships:
1. Active Companies
a. by Activity - lists customers that have some activity(calls/tasks/notes) in the last 1 week
b. by Calls - lists customers that have been called (not tasks / notes) in the last 1 week
Note: The above should actually show customers who have been attended to in the period as defined by their grade. However, since in the beginning, no customers have been graded, we are starting with 1 week.
2. Inactive Customers
a. by Activity - lists customers that have NO activity(calls/tasks/notes) in the last 1 week
b. by Calls - lists customers that have NOT been called (not tasks / notes) in the last 1 week
Note: The above should actually show customers who have been not been attended to in the period as defined by their grade. However, since in the beginning, no customers have been graded, we are starting with 1 week.
C. Customer Analytical Reports
1. Customer Coverage Analysis in Pipeline Report - The pipeline report will contain a new section called customer coverage analysis which shows how well the user/group/category covers the customer base. For each grade of customers, it will show:
a. Total customer base - the number of customers in that grade, who have account managers as the selected user/group
b. Customers in pipeline - the number of customers who have active projects in the pipeline
c. Other customers - the number of customers who do NOT have active projects in the pipeline
d. Customers with completed calls - the number of customers who have been called in in the period specified
e. Customers with completed tasks - the number of customers who have completed tasks in the period specified
These metrics indicate the extent of coverage of the customer base by the pipeline and by activity. If the number of customers in the pipeline at any customer grade is too small, it shows that we are not covering enough customers of that grade. Then, we can see whether there is adequate activity for that grade of customer. If there is not enough activity, then we can re-focus activity for that grade of customer.
2. Company Listing Reports
In addition to the new section in the pipeline report, we also have a companies list report which can list out customers by various search criteria:
a. Company Name
b. Company Grade
c. Industry Type
d. Company Scale
With this module, On2Biz introduces an easy-to-use mechanism to add relationship management facilities, without adding any significant overhead of effort for users.