Social CRM is the philosophy of monitoring and managing customer interactions, and relationships with existing and potential customers, through web, social networking sites, and other digital channels. The amalgamation of Social Media Marketing and CRM gives rise to the concept of the Social CRM.

As per the study conducted by Coleman Parkes Research in May 2008, sixty four percent of companies interviewed, reported an improved reputation in the marketplace due to social media tools.

The pervasive web has opened up enormous opportunities to interact with varied group of customers.  The success of Web 2.0 based social media tools – such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many more – have created new avenues for carrying out the marketing and sales activities. These forums provide the appropriate hunting ground for organizations to generate a positive buzz about their product offerings. The marketing strategy of “Word of Mouth” can be carried out easily though Social CRM and in the most optimized way!

One of the most promising features of Social CRM is that it enables organizations to understand the customer preferences and behavior through direct interaction with them. These interactions along with web analytics can be captured in the form of data, and analyzed for better understanding of customers. The analytical operation on the captured data can be extended to calculate the effectiveness of a marketing campaign, unravel the customer navigation patterns on an organization’s website, and formulate strategies for targeting customers through web based social media forums.

Krawler social networking expertise based on Web 2.0 along with its CRM offers the right kind of Social CRM capabilities.

There is no denying the fact that the global economy around the world is facing the recessionary heat which is being felt by every Organization – small or big, global or local. In such difficult times, Enterprise Owners become impatient in acquiring new customers and improving their diminishing bottom-line. The need of the hour however, is to concentrate on “Business Basics”. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) can definitely help enterprises in achieving that!

Let us briefly visit some of the action areas from business perspective that can help Businesses to perform better during Economic Downturn.

Up-Sell and Cross-Sell Opportunities

During the recessionary times, the most effective way of getting the business is to do “Up-Sell” or “Cross-Sell” to the existing customers. The probability of succeeding in Up-Selling and Cross-Selling is directly related to how the customer relationship is maintained in the past. This is exactly where the benefits of CRM can be realized in such a tough time!
A Customer Relationship Management solution effectively and efficiently caters to the aspect of customer retention through functionalities such as Account Management, Contact Management, Case Management and Activity Management, among others. The automation of these functionalities helps in optimizing the related sales and marketing efforts.

Customer Segmentation

The philosophy of customer segmentation is evergreen irrespective of economic conditions. But its value has increased many folds, when even a penny spent on marketing and sales effort means a lot! The CRM solution enables stakeholders to accurately analyze the data related to market segments, products, leads and campaigns. This results into better understanding of customer demography, product/brand loyalty and purchase behavior, among others. To summarize the point, CRM aids in formulating a “Sales Funnel” that provides  information about the most profitable customer segments and helps devise appropriate methods (Personal campaign, Mass marketing) to target them.

Empowering Marketing and Sale Team

Enterprises tend to reduce the marketing and sales resources during the tough times. Such an approach is definitely not fruitful in the long run. The emphasis should be on empowering the marketing and sales team and thereby enhancing their productivity as well as efficiency.
The CRM solution offers automated functionalities such as lead management, order processing, product pricing, mobile notifications, system generated emails and other administrative tasks. The end result of such CRM initiatives is that the Marketing and Sales representatives can concentrate better on those activities that directly impact the company’s bottom-line and do away with the routine non-value adding tasks.

In conclusion, CRM solution enables Organization to focus on customer acquisition and retention even in the most demanding situations and that too with the most optimized approach.

Krawler CRM enables stakeholders to study customer’s needs and behavior in order to provide better customer experience. Krawler Business Intelligence 2.0 blended with its CRM offers a unique feature – Customer Intelligence that empowers managers at every level of the organization to gather and analyze information regarding customer details and activities.

The buzz word in the IT industry is ‘Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)’. The Web, IT literature and other resources provide different definitions and interpretations on SOA. Some refer to it as a “Sophisticated Product”; some as an “Architectural Approach” while others treat it as a mere marketing gimmick. Of course, a deep understanding of SOA concepts would definitely help to clear the air but a more logical way would be to answer the question – When to use a Service Oriented Architectural approach?

In layman terms, Service Oriented Architecture provides a framework where different (Heterogeneous) platforms (Windows, Linux, and UNIX), technologies (.NET, Java) and applications (ERP, CRM, and SCM) operate in synchronization. More specifically, this is achieved through “Services” and “Web based Open Standards”.

Now the logical thought that follows is that SOA should be used in an IT Architecture that consists of heterogeneous platforms, technologies and applications. Such systems often have various complex issues ranging from inter-operability to flexibility and adaptability. The SOA approach does provide an effective solution for handling these issues.

Consider the scenario where Enterprise systems have different owners and multiple teams working on them. In order to improve visibility and accessibility, centralized control is required. The Service Oriented Approach is appropriate in such a scenario as it provides complete information about the system components through its Service Registry.

A Business Process Management solution which is  blended with its SOA framework is most suitable for cross-functional process management in heterogeneous enterprise IT systems.

What if you have the Enterprise Information Architecture that is fairly homogeneous!!

In such a scenario, it is always advisable to thoroughly weigh the pros and cons of the SOA approach before coming to any conclusion. There may not be any direct perceivable advantages of SOA in such a case but the hidden benefits (such as scalability in case of future expansion) could always exist!

In conclusion, SOA implementation should be driven by business needs and requirements. The most appropriate case would be of heterogeneous systems operating in Enterprise IT framework.

Krawler is a one of the pioneers in implementing the SOA approach with its Enterprise 2.0 platform.

BPEL is used for integrating and assembling various modular service components in order to execute the business process.

BPEL stands for Business Process Execution Language. It is also known as WSBPEL – Web Services Business Process Execution Language and is maintained by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS).

BPEL is an XML based language that enables task sharing in a distributed computing or grid computing environment through the use of web services. BPEL is basically an amalgamation of XLANG Language (Based on block structure) and WSFL Language (Based on directed graphs).

In the jSonic BPM environment, BPEL employs web services for enabling the import and export of process information as well as execution of business process.

The main aim of BPEL is to invoke various web services in the manner as defined by the process logic. This invocation can be either sequential or parallel. BPEL constructs consist of activities (basic and structured), variables, partner links and handlers (fault and exception) to carry out its function.

BPEL basic activities include “invoke”, “reply”, “receive”, “assign”, “throw”, “wait”, “terminate” and so on. The structured activities combine these basic activities with a condition. The structure actions include “switch”, “sequence”, “flow”, “while” and so on.

The ‘Partner Link’ represents the link to a web service that is being invoked or the link used by web services to invoke a BPEL activity.

‘Handlers’ in BPEL environment are used for facing an error or exception condition.

‘Variables’ are used to map and store data in the business process. There are three types of variables – Simple, Message and Element.

BPEL supports two basic types of business processes:

•Executable Process – Contains comprehensive details about business processes and can be executed through an Orchestration Server.

•Abstract Process – Contains only the public message protocols exchanged between various parties and are not executable.

The Orchestration server provides a run time environment for executing the ‘executable process’ and can operate on any platform that supports web service development, such as Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and Microsoft .NET, among others.

BPMN stands for Business Process Modeling Notation. It is maintained by Object Management Group (OMG), also known as Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI). BPMN enables stakeholders to graphically represent business processes from process initiation stage to final stage.

The main goal of BPMN is to model the business process in a manner that is easily understood by developers, business analysts, process owners and business users. It combines the advantages of text based, event based and graphical notations based business modeling languages.

BPMN consists of four basic categories – Flow Objects (Events, Activities, Gateways), Artifacts (Data Object, Group), Connecting Objects (Sequence Flow, Message Flow, Association) and Swimlanes (Pool, Lanes). A brief explanation of these four categories is presented here:

The ever changing market conditions across the world have forced organizations to rethink the way they carry out business. Organizations are focusing on optimizing and managing operational cost, improving customer service delivery, adopting strategy (IT & Non-IT) for flexibility and much more.

For businesses to be successful, a comprehensive framework involving People, Process, System and Technology (popularly known as PPST framework) plays a critical role. Let us briefly visit these four components.

• People refers to management, employees, vendors and customers. The People component is the most critical and decisive factor that determines the state of business.

• Process refers to the way in which various business activities are carried out. A well defined process framework guarantees success, consistently.

• System refers to various enterprise applications such as ERP, CRM, SCM and PLM, among others. These enterprise applications are generally tightly integrated with their respective domains. For example, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is only attached with marketing, sales and customer service.

• Technology refers to platform (UNIX, Windows) and architecture (n-tier, client server) on which the enterprise applications are employed.  Integration and communication issues between various enterprise applications are encountered due to heterogeneous platform and architecture.

So the question arises now is – Do we have a software system that incorporates the PPST framework?

I firmly believe that Business Process Management provides capabilities for effectively and efficiently managing people, process, system and technology.

Krawler offers a unique Business Process Management solution – jSonic BPM. It offers functionalities such as Process Management, Workflow Automation, Collaboration, Reporting, Data Management and Web Services that incorporates people, process, system and technology aspects. Some of the major functional capabilities of jSonic BPM are:

• Design, model, execute, automate and optimize the cross-functional business processes.
• Manage Process users at each process activity
• Add value to the existing enterprise applications
• Integrate with heterogeneous platform and architecture through an SOA framework
• Provides Collaboration features such as Document Management
• Web Services based for communicating with any web enabled device

The next question that arises now – What are the key Business Process Management offerings?

The main BPM offering can be summarized as:

• Holistic View of Business
• Understanding about the most fundamental component of business operations – Business Process
• Leverages on existing enterprise applications
• Effective communication between stakeholders
• Flexibility and adaptability to face any dynamic business conditions

In a nutshell, Business Process Management offers a comprehensive solution for managing enterprise operations through management of business processes.  BPM provides a complete solution for cross functional business process management that involves people, system and technology aspects.

BPM, in the true sense, acts as a business enabler by empowering organizations to handle any business opportunity or threat effectively.

Web Services is a mechanism to provide a standard means of communication between various applications operating on similar or heterogeneous platforms. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the official body for maintaining web services standards.
In the context of Service Oriented Architecture, Web Services are used to facilitate communication between service providers and service consumers. Special adapters are used for applications that don’t support web services.
Krawler employs web services standards that enable our Service Oriented Architecture to offer functionalities such as location neutrality and technology/platform independence.
There are many web services standards used in the SOA framework, including WS-Security, WS-Transaction, WS-Reliable Messaging and WS-Policy. But the underlying principals of web services are publication, discovery and communication:
Publish – Service Producers register their service in the SOA registry.  Web Services Description Language (WSDL) is used to describe a service.
Discovery – Service Consumers make a request for a service in the SOA registry. Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) standard is used for locating a service in the registry.
Communication – Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is used for facilitating communication between Service Providers and Consumers.

In conclusion, we can say that web services standards provide an open standards based communication framework that operates within the purview of W3C guidelines. Web Services provide a platform/technology independent communication methodology while SOA is an overall IT strategy framework that aims to provide business agility.