By understanding how business practices influence customer acquisition and retention, companies can take control over their destinies. CRM analysis can provide this understanding and serve as the foundation for focused business planning and execution. Effective CRM analysis requires much more than a monthly summary of web site hits, a chart detailing response rates for a marketing campaign, or a report on total call volume. These may be components of the solution; the solution must be much more comprehensive. It must provide not only a 360-degree view of a customer but also a picture of how all business activities influence the customer.

A true CRM solution provides the following:

• Flexible dynamic reporting, key performance metrics, modeling and forecasting, customizable measures, profiling capabilities, and analysis integrated across all business areas to identify complex customer behavior and subtle influencers.
• Integrated multi-channel analysis to see customer activity across all channels and understand the mutual influence of customers' online and off-line actions.
• A fully integrated application that is not a point solution but offers an analytical platform that ties together and balances all customer, business, and financial data sources.
• Features that support constant measurement, understanding, and refinement of the business practices. The solution must be part of an iterative analytic business process.

An effective analysis provides a complete picture of how a business interacts with and influences its customers. This understanding enables an iterative process of business refinement and measurement that will attract and retain the most valuable customers in the most cost-effective manner.

Products
SAP, Siebel and Oracle.