Implementing CRM at Minitrex: Challenges and Solutions

Minitrex faces challenges due to outdated systems and lack of communication among salespeople. Implementing CRM can improve productivity and customer relations. Steps to follow include uniting workers, purchasing an advanced system, and adhering to a certain process. The importance of sharing information and considering employees' opinions is highlighted.

Minitrex case study1
Minitrex Case study
Name
Institution

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Minitrex is a sales company that deals with salespeople to ensure that customers’ needs
are met. In this company it is possible for someone to call a customer and not know that whoever
you are calling is a customer or that is the third time they had been called in that week. This is
because the company uses unreliable outdated system and it has always been promising
provision of better systems though never implemented (Ahuja, & Medury, 2010).Sales people
use the customer contacts system, the brainchild of Degas boss, Jon Bettman, and VP of
marketing. This are back-end systems. The industry team keep front-end customer knowledge in
their own documentation and in their head.
Handwritten documentations might be misplaced or the salesperson forget to update it
hence unreliable data. Likewise to keeping it in one’s head, it is only kept for a short term
duration but not long term (Heller Baird, & Parasnis, 2011).When the head absorbs a lot of
information than it cannot accommodate, some of it gets lost so one can’t remember which
customer s they dealt with in the course of the week. It is very hard to combine everyone’s
documentation so as to know which minitrex sales customer were called in a certain week to
avoid repetition (Javadi, & Azmoon, 2011). Meanwhile the salespeople can’t do their job
properly because the company is customer centric.it seems to depend on whose customer view is
to be considered rather than salesperson’s opinion. Also the management team fails to share
basic information with the other workers in the company.
CRM stands for Customer relationship management that is used in the large
organizations to develop better associations with the customers. Organizations collect the
customer data and contact them to know their needs and to serve their needs. This is used to

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achieve business goals by selling their products to the customers. At Minitrex the CRM need to
be implemented in order to control some of the challenges that salespeople come across and also
improve their productivity. Bettman needs to take leadership of his department, making final
decisions based on the best choice for the full department, whether or not everyone agrees. As
much as Bettman needs to implement Customer relationship management in this company, there
are some steps to follow. First, he has to unite the workers. The salespeople in Minitrex company
work without consulting one another concerning any issue, and this why we see that a case of a
sales person calling a customer without knowing that they are customers, and also calling the
same customer more than three times in a week due to lack of communication within
themselves( Kumar, 2010). Blumfen is not willing to allow any money channel to IT neither is
he in good terms with Hopkins. Hopkins been an IT representative, is ready for collaboration but
she doesn’t want to interfere with her well-functioning system. Bettman wants both to reconcile
for he needs to work with both of them for a successful implementation of CRM and for the
better of the company. Bettman has to persuade both Blumfen and Hopkins to work together
their client information, from which helpful client information must be brought together.
Bettman thinks of ways to get common customer data, even if the data is used in different ways
(Verhoef, Reinartz, & Krafft, 2010).He also make sure that they discuss and come to agreement
on what information they require about the customer.
Secondly, he will have to purchase a more advanced system which can accommodate the
works of the company. The few that are present are back –ended then the workers have to keep
their documentation individually and other information keep it in their minds which is
impossible. Introducing of this system will ensure that no important data that gets lost and the
systems are up to date (Kumar, & Petersen, 2012). Each and every worker will have access to

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this information from their various offices and avoid miner mistakes like calling the same
customer severally. Even though the use of computers can’t replace people’s knowledge, they
are faster and can multitask. For example, in the case of Minitrex Company where salespeople
have to go to field and convince customers about the products they are dealing with they are the
best and buy them (Palmer, 2010).The computers can keep large amounts of information as
compared to human mind like customers contacts, what product they purchased at a specific day
and the amount of money paid.
Thirdly, a certain process has to be adhered to, for success to be achieved. The juniors
have to take orders from those above. The management team has to be willing to share basic
information with all other workers. They should identify, prioritize and pay for IT opportunities
for duplicating support services very costly (Rigby, & Bilodeau, 2011). The company should
stop being fully customer centric and try to put into account their employees’ opinions. Bettman
will also have to feed available customer information personally to his system, then he will share
it to the main multitasking one when provided. Lastly, bettman will follow up and ensure that
Degas finances the project of purchasing an improved system of the latest technology and avoid
his many promises which are never fulfilled.

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Reference
Ahuja, V., & Medury, Y. (2010). Corporate blogs as e-CRM tools–Building consumer
engagement through content management. Journal of Database Marketing & Customer Strategy
Management, 17(2), 91-105.
Heller Baird, C., & Parasnis, G. (2011). From social media to social customer relationship
management. Strategy & leadership, 39(5), 30-37.
Javadi, M. H. M., & Azmoon, Z. (2011). Ranking branches of System Group company in Terms
of acceptance preparation of electronic Customer Relationship Management using AHP
method. Procedia Computer Science, 3, 1243-1248.
Kumar, V. (2010). Customer relationship management. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Kumar, V., & Petersen, J. A. (2012). Customer relationship management (pp. 1-10). John Wiley
& Sons, Ltd.
Palmer, A. (2010). Customer experience management: a critical review of an emerging idea.
Journal of Services marketing, 24(3), 196-208.
Rigby, D., & Bilodeau, B. (2011). Management tools & trends 2011. London: Bain & Company.
Verhoef, P. C., Reinartz, W. J., & Krafft, M. (2010). Customer engagement as a new perspective
in customer management. Journal of service research, 13(3), 247-252.