Contact Management and CRM

ERPNext
12

May I add my “two-cents” worth of understanding CRM and related aspects.

I completely agree with the proliferation of terms and the confusion brought about by it. However, I do feel that should we take a step back and objectively reassess what it is we’re talking about, then these terms will fall into place.

For me CRM can mean essentially 2 things

  1. CUSTOMER Relationship Management: where the R is for the relationships within the Sales process
  2. CONTACT Relationship Management: where the R is for any generic relationship(s)

I do not favour the one above the other as they both have their place. However, for me, it’s an absolute necessity to have the latter ContactRM devoid of any notion of the former CustomerRM, as it is critical to maintain an enterprise-wide single-view of the Contact entities in an organisation. CustomerRM then becomes a very specific extension of ContactRM. Specific to the SALES process / perspective.

So, in my mind, ContactRM is:

  1. The management of a master repository of both INDIVIDUAL and INSTITUTIONAL entities, the Contacts, along with all of their relevant detail such as Contact Details, Addresses, Demographics, etc.
  2. Their inter-relationships and intra-relationships within my Organisation. What is the relation, if any, an Individual has with one or more Institutions. What is the relation my Organisation has with either an Individual (B2C) or Institution (B2B) from various perspectives:
    • Sales : the phased/staged transitioning and interactions over time, eg sales pipeline, from Lead to Prospect (to Opportunity) (to Quotation) to Customer, or whatever stages / nomenclature you like, eg Prospect to Lead.
    • Public Relations : stakeholder engagement process, reach-out, reach-in.
    • Marketing : marketing campaigns, market segmentation, focus-group management, newsletter dissemination, channel efficiency.
    • Legal : Application process, Fulfillment obligations, Contract renewal, SLA compliance.
    • Many more, eg Purchasing, HR, etc.
  3. Communication, especially omni-channel (voice, email, Whatsapp, Teams, physical meeting, etc) utilisation and recording of all communication. Curated responses, templates, agent scripts, schedule next communication, record notes, etc. Help Desk / Live Chat integration. PBX integration.
  4. Automation of some of these processes / transitionings, delegation and escalation, business rules, etc.
  5. Integration with other systems to facilitate master data exchange and business process continuation, especially of the Individual and Institutional entities to ensure a "single version of the truth" organisation-wide. You certainly do not want contact detail for the same entity to be redundantly duplicated by different systems. Nor do you want discontinuation in business process hand-overs to ERP and other systems, eg Quotation, Contract, Invoicing, etc.
  6. Reporting and Visualisation, which is dependent on the relationship perspective and the state transitioning within that relationship eg channel efficiency, life-cycle analysis, communication history, status evolution, sales funnel, etc.

So, to come full circle, ideally you should separate the master data management of Individual and Institutional contacts and their detail from any specific relationship management, such as sales. Hence Lead and Deal in FrappeCRM are specific to Sales management and specific to how the FrappeCRM developers see sales (which is a topic for another discussion). This nomenclature brings about great dis-ease to people wishing to apply another perspective to their CRM, other than the implied / forced Sales centric stance of FrappeCRM.

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