Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Managing customer relations and ensuring high levels of customer satisfaction are providing the competitive edge in the New Economy.

In the current business environment:

• Customers are more demanding and exhibit heightened expectations,
• Companies must close business opportunities before competitors do, and
• Customers are valuable assets that, when properly managed, yield increasing sources of revenue.

Companies are responding to these opportunities and challenges by implementing CRM solutions. A typical CRM solution is dependent on some or all of the following data:

• Account contact information,
• Sales history information,
• Product information,
• Customer service records,
• Account balances and payment history

This data may reside in one or multiple data sources.

One investment firm, for example, deployed a CRM solution that extracts customer data from 12 different data sources to provide customer service reps with a wealth of information to use when customers call for assistance.

Inevitably the volumes of information gathered for CRM systems come from a variety of financial and operational systems, involving distributed data sources of disparate formats and data types. Integrating customer data and synchronizing information with field sales and service employees represents a formidable challenge.

Responding to CRM Information Needs

The dbSpaces data layer provides transparent access to multiple data sources simultaneously, as if they were a single data source that CRM applications use for customer and product information. Promptly and accurately.

dbSpaces provides:

• The ability to access, view, manage, replicate, update, query and deploy any data located anywhere in any format, including legacy system data for historical information.
• Data Location Transparency so end-users can request information without knowing the data source or the physical location of the data.
• Data plug'n'play capability, allowing data sources to be added or removed with the dbSpaces Designer without the need for coding.
• Alerts and events from changes in data, so organizations can respond quickly and appropriately based on their custom requirements.
• Rapid, transparently integration of new databases with existing applications or old databases with new applications, eliminating the long lead times and high costs of writing data integration code.
• Security features that govern user authorization privileges, enable audit tracking of changes for security, and to protect vendor's proprietary information.
• The ability to alias table and column names which may not be suitable for reporting (legacy, flat file or COBOL).
• Replication capability to ensure information is kept current enterprise-wide.
• Provide access to virtual views of information, allowing users to see a result set that is an aggregation of information that doesn't exist in one specific database.
• Real-time data access to any data source to enable fast response to customer needs.

Using dbSpaces, your sales, marketing and customer service representatives get the information they need to satisfy customers and grow your business. Fast and cost-effectively.