Up until now, I have been writing about the potential of CRM, but in talking with customers,The Need for CRMI felt the need to delve a little deeper into this, so I would like to write some additional information.

On the HPThe Need for CRMIn this article, we have mentioned that reports issued by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and others have shown that Japan is lagging behind developed countries in terms of IT investment, to the point that it can be considered an IT underdeveloped country, and that the country has not even been able to move beyond the rationalization phase.Taking the example of omnichannel strategies, for which our company has recently received many consulting requests, we would like to look at ``Why CRM?'' and ``How should CRM be used?''

OmnichannelSimply put, it is an attempt to link the channels that have been increased through multi-channelization, such as stores, the web, call centers, and salespeople, and utilize them to provide services to individual customers that could not be achieved through each channel alone (for example, marketing measures such as O2O and nurturing) (see diagram).
The big difference with multi-channel is that in order to interconnect these channels, an integrated information database is required for data utilization.

As I mentioned earlier, in a knowledge-creating society, it is necessary to utilize and create a "collection of knowledge (related knowledge)," and the management method required for this is "CRM." The integrated information database in omni-channel is the "related knowledge," and for this, the introduction of a CRM system is essential.
I think the most important thing here is how to separate it from the OMS (Order Management System) that is often connected to external e-commerce sites in the mail-order industry, which is often the target of our call center templates. (Strictly speaking, it is a different entity from the OMS in the WMS that appears in SCM, and the WMS itself is connected to the CRM in the background as a core system.)

Multi-channel simply required the addition of more channels, so orders could be processed even if the connected systems were not integrated.
However, since omnichannel is premised on mutual collaboration, ultimately customer information must be integrated and be able to be used in O2O (Online to Offline), etc. If you get this wrong, it will just be an extension of multichannel and will never reach omnichannel, so it is important to be mindful that you need to carefully consider the systemization requirements from the strategy formulation stage.

In addition, not only in the mail order industry, but also in the hotel and travel industries, customer information is sometimes not received from external e-commerce sites, so the connection is often to an OMS rather than a CRM, and customer information is often not linked even after check-in.To solve this problem, we are developing a solution for integrated resorts as an omnichannel solution.

Incidentally, the "IoT (Internet of Things)" that has been talked about recently has, from a CRM perspective, simply expanded the number of channels that can be added, without significantly changing what needs to be done. However, at our company, adding MtoM and HtoM channels that utilize robots, industrial machinery, sensors, etc. results in a huge amount of data, so we believe that artificial intelligence (AI) is essential to present appropriate information for people to utilize the data. Therefore, these solutions are equipped with an artificial intelligence engine and have a mechanism to analyze information, etc.

Furthermore, to realize an omnichannel strategy, in addition to linking with each channel, it is also essential to link with the OMS, WMS, and many other core systems mentioned above. Naturally, developing linkage programs for each interface one by one is nonsensical in terms of time and risk, and with today's rapidly evolving IT technology and fast-paced times, developing one from scratch seems like a waste of investment. In such cases, the standard approach is to choose an EAI tool, and we sell and offer an officially certified Dynamics CRM adapter for Infoteria's "ASTERIA WARP," the number one EAI tool, so we recommend using ASTERIA WARP for these solutions.

ASTERIA WARP exclusive "Microsoft Dynamics CRM Adapter" now available

*As a company that specializes in operational support for Dynamics CRM, we also provide a lot of support for data integration/data migration. In addition to the ASTERIA adapter, we also have our own original high-performance data migration tool, and from May we plan to offer a flat-rate operational maintenance/CRM establishment support package as a CRM service.

Finally, the omnichannel strategy is the basis for utilizing all application functions in CRM, including marketing, sales, contact centers, and after-sales service. We call these solutions "personalized CRM (customer relationship management)" solutions, and we are developing and providing a series of solution products, such as the integrated resort solution and solutions for B2C retailers mentioned above. We would like to introduce these on our blog, but that will be a fun story for another time!