Telstra Corporation: Information Management Proposal for CRM System

This report presents a comprehensive information management proposal for Telstra, focusing on the implementation of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. The introduction highlights Telstra's business structure and the benefits of adopting a CRM system, particularly cloud-based solutions. The discussion section analyzes Telstra's key business processes, including invoice billing, production, and customer support, and how CRM can enhance each area. The report details the technological infrastructure required for CRM implementation, including customer service helpdesks and electronic point of sale (EPOS) systems, along with data warehousing strategies. It also explores the role of various software components, such as call centers and automated chat support, in improving customer interactions. Furthermore, it examines how information flow and communication are improved through CRM, and its impact on decision-making processes. The report concludes by addressing potential problems associated with CRM implementation, such as low employee engagement, customer dissatisfaction, and unnecessary implementation, offering insights into mitigating these challenges. The report also assesses the cost of implementation and the return on investment to the company, including a discussion of ethical considerations and risks associated with CRM.

Running head: INFORMATION MANAGEMENT PROPOSAL
INFORMATION MANAGEMENT PROPOSAL
Name of Student
Name of University
Author’s Note

1INFORMATION MANAGEMENT PROPOSAL
Introduction
Telstra is an Australian company which deals with the technological and
telecommunication services in domestic and international market. The company is interested
in adopting the CRM system which would be implemented to provide better customer
support and satisfaction. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an approach or
strategy by the management of an organization for managing the organizational relationship
and interaction with the existing and potential customer. The Customer Relationship
Management system helps an organization that keeps their customers well connected with the
organization, improve streamline processes and increase productivity. The CRM technology
is much reliable and faster than any old technology. The cloud based CRM is an advance
technology which can be beneficial to the organization as it is an automation technology, can
be deployed faster within the organization, reduces the effective cost while scaling quickly,
helps to operate the database from any location and finally its increase the collaboration.
This report discusses about the various business process performed by Telstra like
invoice billing, production and customer support. Further to the discussion the reason for
implementing the information system is elaborated in terms of technological infrastructure,
data warehousing and software development. However, it also describes how the information
system helps in decision making processes. Further to the discussion the cost of
implementation is estimated and the return on investment is also calculated how the company
is benefited to with the system along with some ethical issues and risks associated with CRM.
Discussion
Telstra Corporation Limited is a technological company based on telecommunication
system management and business structure which provides information and
telecommunication services to the international and domestic based customers. The

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company’s operation is based on four segments (Witzleb 2017). The retail segment provides
telecommunication products, telephony and pay television/internet protocol television and
digital content, fixed and mobile broadband. The sales and contract management for
government customers are provided by the Global Enterprise and Service segment. The
planning, engineering and architecture and construction of Telstra networks, designing,
technology based IT solution are offered by the Telstra Operation segment. The Telstra
wholesale segment deliver telecommunication products and services to other Telstra network
associated with the support system and other carriers, internet service and carriage service
providers.
The major business processes performed by TELSTRA in terms of business flow are:
i) Invoice-billing: It is the bill or tab issued by the Telstra to its customers as a proof
of transaction indicating the purchase of the products in terms of quantity. The
payment mode is also stated on the invoice (Pa, Bidin and Kamaruddin 2018). The
cloud based CRM invoice-billing system is an automation software which
provides an additional support to the business flow. This enhance the billing
process while creating a strong business relationship with the clients. It
automatically generates up-to-date invoice at one click and sends it to the client
via emails, the clients can also print them off from the mail out.
ii) Production: The CRM plays an important role in production along with this
facilitates the organization to predict the accurate demand, improves the quality of
the project, intelligent supply chain. The prediction in accurate demand helps the
organization to operate in the level of a fast changing industries in terms of
adopting high-tech, electronics and retail (Shepherd 2015). These helps the
organization to cut out the development of a product to market delivery by
enabling more accurate prediction of the product demand to improve the

3INFORMATION MANAGEMENT PROPOSAL
production rate. The CRM system helps the organization to collect and analyse the
information from multiple sources and helps to figure the errors in the production
which directly reflects in the improvement of the product quality in real-time
basis. The intelligence supply chain helps in delivering remarkable results to the
firms to empower and manage the production schedule and maintain the material
supply.
iii) Customer support: The implementation of CRM helps to provide a better
customer support and services by TELSTRA. It helps to understand and fulfil the
needs of the customer. The organization cab serve customer support service from
various aspects whether it is from a help desk, a call centre or any social media
community (Wuyts, Rindfleisch and Citrin 2015). The following helps to reach
back to the customers need and desired in terms of business. However, it also
builds a good relationship with the customer and integrate the business flow. The
proper customer supports also provides the referrals from the clients which is the
reflection and sign of a better organization support by the company.
Implementation of Information System
The information system is a communication technology or an information that an
organization uses to interact with to support the business process. The implementation of
information system in terms of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) which is a
systematic plan and is executed by an organization to initiate a healthy interaction with the
existing customers to build a strong relationship with the existing and potential customers
(Nyadzayo and Khajehzadeh, 2016). The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system
helps an organization that allows them to stay well connected with their customers and

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enhances the process of streamlining, in result it increases the rate of profit. The advancement
in technological development has change the interaction among organizational and customer
relationship.
The implementation of CRM in the organization would put an organization to think
one step ahead from the competitors. The modern CRM is an advanced version of digital
Rolodex, which is type of desktop card index. This change in the technology has led to the
over leap on pen and paper customer interaction. It is the systematic design of an
organizational structure (Laudon and Laudon 2016). The main perspective of providing a
better customer support is based on the information technological structure, system and
devices, people involved to perform certain task, software, database system an organization
and disciplinary rules and procedures maintained by the organization.
Technological Infrastructure
i) Customer service helpdesk: The customer support provided in terms of CRM
can be describes as the technological infrastructure helps the company in
automating the customer support which helps the organization in delivering high
quality service to the customers associated with the organization. The software
which provides such support helps in logging the information about the customers,
enquiries and suggestions (Arndt and Brewer 2016). It helps in directing the
queries to the particular and appropriate employee within the company. It helps in
maintaining the information regarding the customers enquiries and all the stores
which supports the customers calls related to the communication effective with
the final solution in accordance with the contiguous updating database over the
system.
ii) Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS): The most beneficial part of EPOS is that it
delivers the accurate information in correct amount of time. The advancement in

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the technology has aided the data analysis scope in the operational field (Paul et
al. 2019). It has as impact on the whole of host variable- price, shelf position,
advertising and many more.
Data Warehousing
The data warehouse is an advanced type of database system which has the ability to
extract data perform analysis on it. The CRM is designed to provide a complete view of a
customer as a distinction from the stored data often obtained from the conventional
transactional databases. However, it designed strictly for the analysis rather than supporting
any transaction which is faster in performing such task rather than that of any transactional
database that runs the company (Amin and Khan 2019). However, an integrated database can
perform similarly as data warehouse, the data warehouse is designed to perform the tasks
based on analysis faster than that of an ordinary database (Jeffery et al. 2017). The data ware
provides a 360-degree view for the customer to guide the customer interaction support by the
organization. The data warehouse is very essential for every big companies to analyse the
data of the customer’s needs, transaction and customer’s issues.
Software
i) Call centres: The call centres helps in operating the inbound based calls along
with the outbound based calls generated between the company and the
consumers of the organzation. These integrated the voice switching of the
automated telephone system with the agent host software which allows the
automatic call routing to the agent, auto displaying the relevant customer data,
predicting the dialling, self-servicing interactive voice response system and
many more (Poster 2018). However, more new technologically advanced
software are used to provide more reliable service to the customers. Therefore,

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CRM system allowing the companies to handle customer interactions in all
forms
ii) Automated chat support: The CRM software also supports the admin help in
terms of automated social media chat. This helps the customers to interact
directly with the support team which is automated by a CRM software
technology (Turban 2016). This generally provides the web based self-service
and unassisted sales.
Support by the Information System
Information flow: The firms using the information flow within their system as it
helps the employees to understand better about the changing and increasing needs of their
customers (Karnila, Ramaputra and Aziz 2018). An effective road map should be drawn out
by the organization. The effective road map will enable the organization to understand as
well as recognize how an effective CRM strategy will help the routing relevant to information
flow via technology.
Communications: The customer relationship management improves the internal
communication better by tracking the communication channel and making it accessible to all
the employees (Chidester, Kanki and Anca). It tracks all the communicative details related to
customers experience and request. Thereafter streamlines this communication so that it can
be accessible in accurate and timely format. CRM can improve the communication process
which may lead to satisfaction among both customer and employee.

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Hierarchy
Decision Making
The decision making is the comprehensive process of an organization which deals
with the action or the process of making decision within the organization (MacLeod 2017).
The CRM tools have an effective role in the decision process. It addresses the needs to
integrate the technical and communicational strategies which allows an organization to
perform certain task and services on the basis of an automation system (Beach. and Lipshitz
2017). The CRM helps in obtaining the key information about the customers which not helps
in building a strong and effective relationship with the customers but also optimize other
business process and levels of the organization.
Potential Problems of CRM
The CRM system are effective in growing the business system to connect with the
customers in a better way to improve the business running process (Reid and Catterall 2015).
However, the customers can encounter the certain issues which proves the failure or
Customer Support
Collaborative
CRM
Analytical CRm
Operational CRM

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unsuccessful implementation of the CRM over the business which can prove as a big waste of
money as well as time. Some issues and potential problems in implementing CRM are:
i) Low employee engagement: It has been observed very often while getting to grip
a new system replacing the old system which is already involved in the place for a long time
(Carter et al. 2018). The staffs become more unwilling and hesitated to use the new CRM
technology. However, it can be solved by providing the staffs and the every level of
management with adequate knowledge about the benefits of CRM over the business (Shields
et al. 2015). The staffs should have to award with the incentives and bonus for positive use
and successfully adopting and implementing the CRM system.
ii) Customer dissatisfaction: The CRM based automated customer service often
proved to customer dissatisfaction or may cause inconvenience in communication who prefer
to have more direct and personal contact (Hill and Alexander 2017). They might have been
looking for more convenient form of communication like emails. However, this problem can
be eliminated to some extend by trialling the system to access its suitability and performance
to balance its efficiency and personal contact ability and help support to ensure customer
satisfaction.
iii) Unnecessary implementation of CRM: The business which are not fully
informed, often results in investing on a package of CRM to the system which is actually
unsuitable of the system and its needs (Mohiuddin 2019). Some of the CRM software are
developed to be hosted on the single platform which is suitable for small business but cannot
be implemented over a large scale business and its needs alternate options for it.
To solve this issue the large business should use cloud based CRM system which
would help the organization access their data from any location whenever it needed. Several

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CRM based companies provide trial version for limited period of time, using different trial
software will help to choose the better one.
iv) Collecting crucial data: Collecting the exact data required which is effective for
the CRM can make a big difference in the business rather than simply collecting the data on
sales and personal details will no longer help in staying ahead in the competition. The
tracking, engaging and interacting with a crucial tool is by integrating the CRM system with
the social media channels of the organization (Girchenko, Ovsiannikova and Girchenko
2017). A better CRM system will enable the organization to capitalise on the growing
channel. The active interaction with the customers over the social media platform can help in
developing a better understanding the customer needs and also enhance the customer
experience.
v) Security issues: The CRM possess a potential risk on its very nature which often
mistreat the data. The database is stored on a server which is holding a large numbers of data
and can be accessed by the organization from any part of the world. Such risks can be
reduced by introducing regular testing and analysing the CRM package (Frygell, Hedman and
Carlsson 2017). The employees should be fully trained to handle such big and sensitive data.
The organization should ensure the data should be provided with robust internal security in
order to prevent it from the external hackers and threats. However, storing the sensitive data
over an online server composes several risk factors but it can be minimise by adopting certain
early preventive measures.
vi) Backdated information: It very important to keep the updated data about the
customer need and desires as their tastes changes very often and frequently. It is very
important that the makers do not fall behind with backdated and old information (Bertozzi,
Ali and Gul 2017). This small issues can be eliminated by regularly updating and auditing the

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data and asking the customers to verify their details at a regular basis, which would be an
effective way to ensure that only the relevant and updated data is available to the company.
The CRM can encounter problems with the businesses but it can be easily resolved by
seeking expert advice and by using the most effective CRM system which is compatible and
suitable with organizational needs.
Information Management Proposal
Aims and objective
The aim of Information Management Proposal is to forge good relationship and
keeping track of the customer’s visions which is essential for customer acquisition and
retention.
The objective behind the IMP is based on the
i) To understand the sale pipeline better by the sales team in terms of CRM: The
sales team can track the progress of individual teams members in achieving the sales targets.
ii) The market team can use CRM to make forecasting simpler and accurate: to
get the visibility over every objectives and needs and provides better understandings.
iii) To track the conversation across the channel by the customer service team: A
customer may raise issues on channels over social media but then turns the communication to
some other mode to resolve it in private.
iv) To manage the relationship better: The supply chain, procurement and partner
management team can track the and schedule follow ups to stay on the top of the expectation.
v) To accelerate recruitment: The HR team can use CRM the recruitment process,
automating the process of managing candidates, identifying skills and gaps, analysing the
resource needs and supporting the pursuit of staff retention targets.

11INFORMATION MANAGEMENT PROPOSAL
Technical Architecture
A CRM system consists of three major components
i) CRM software: This is the backbone of the CRM system which includes the
relational database for storing information, software applications for handling the business
logics.
ii) CRM hardware: It could be any devices like PC or any hand held devices for
accessing the information based on the database of the system.
iii) Telecom specification: It is a middleware which facilitates the interaction
between the CRM software and hardware. The telecom specification provides a great
specification for conveying the communication within the organization and give access and
share information across organizational lines and location.
Dataflow in an organization: