Implementing Knowledge-Enabled CRM Strategy in a Large Company 261Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without writtendemand for its telecom services across all sales and service channels, and respond
quickly to changing customer needs.
The vastness and complexity of customer-centric knowledge required in today’s
service operations demand advanced technology capabilities. There is no doubt that
today’s ICT power has opened the door to a new breed of codified knowledge that can
help in addressing customer-centric knowledge problems, that is, EDW and CRM, and
it is obvious that ICT has dominated GTCOM’s customer-centric KM plan.
KCRM strategy aims at providing GTCOM with an integrated environment to track
its sales opportunities, build accurate sales forecasts, provide an outstanding multichan-
nel customer service, and deliver speedy fulfillment of customer orders. “Service is
proving to be a key differentiator in the region’s increasingly competitive telecoms
sector, and GTCOM’s CRM initiative is targeted at achieving one integrated approach
toward serving our customers through a multitude of channels,” commented one IT
manager. The CRM program manager noted, “CRM is expected to give [GTCOM] a single,
updated view of our client base, enabling us to create more targeted sales offerings while
providing enhanced service capabilities.”
However, in light of fierce competition facing GTCOM, there is a need to do much
more and much faster to increase its customer-centric knowledge base, invest in training
their staff, and take advantage of the new ICT for acquiring and disseminating knowledge
throughout the company. GTCOM also needs to carefully analyze the potential costs and
benefits of introducing ICT-based customer-centric knowledge programs, and adapt
these ICT solutions to its KM and corporate context. Also, one needs to remember that
KCRM is not only a technology solution to customer-centric knowledge problems.
Rather, it is a long-term integrated strategy that combines processes, people, and
structural changes.
KCRM Architecture
The KCRM strategy was enabled by three ICT-based solutions: operational CRM,
EDW, and analytical CRM (Figure 1). The operational KCRM is composed of three layers.
The first layer is customer contact/interaction channels or “touch points,” that is, phone,
e-mail, integrated voice recognition (IVR), fax, mail, e-commerce, and person walk-in retail
stores. The second layer represents customer-facing departments, that is, marketing,
sales, and customer services departments. The third layer is composed of several front-
office operational systems:
- CRM: Fixed telephone line service provisioning system (replaced the old CSS
provisioning side) - FODS1: Fixed telephone line billing (replaced the CSS billing side)
- FODS2: Internet protocol billing
- FODS3: Prepaid mobile telephone line service provisioning
- FODS4: Postpaid mobile telephone line provisioning and billing
The second part of the KCRM is the EDW. Incoming transactional data from all
front-office systems as well as many back-office operational systems feed into the EDW.
The EDW operates as follows:
- Extracts data from operational databases, namely, sales, service, and marketing
systems.