The closer you can get to your customers, the better.

We can help. Cognizant Customer Solutions Practice asked some of our top CRM consultants to share their recent thinking on getting closer to customers. The result is a highly relevant and easy-to-digest collection of articles that are yours -- for free.

Using Project Charter to Define the Project Character

Tracking Digital Body Language Using Social CRM

A project charter's simplicity belies its utility. While some organizations use project charters as a way to quickly quantify benefits and resources to determine how the project stacks up against other proposed efforts, many best-in-class organizations leverage these one-page documents as a way of ranking projects. Learn:

• Why some projects fail and how Six Sigma project charters help prevent them
• Understanding key elements of a project charter and how they add value
• Real-time example of how project charters helped a leading organization

Download: Back to Basics: The Importance of Project Charters

Social CRM, while being a solid complement to an effective CRM and customer experience management strategy, can also be used to generate better awareness for your brand. In this paper, see how organizations are increasingly looking towards SCRM solutions to not only establish a two-way customer relationship feedback mechanism, but also as a strategy that yields deeper insight into consumers' minds, hearts and wallets. Read:

• How wise companies today react to changing customer perceptions
• Using Social Media to your organization's advantage
• Social CRM strategy, channels and how to get it all in place

Download: Joining the Conversation: Charting Your Social CRM Strategy

BPR for Redefining Process Excellence

Unlocking Customer Centric Processes Using VSM

Business processes are the engines of enterprise value creation and the drivers of business performance. Wherever you find yourself in your CRM journey, reengineering customer-related business processes will help you achieve significant improvements in process performance. Get to know:

• Need for continuous scrutiny of business processes and their reinvention
• Reinvigorating existing CRM systems in varied industries
• Inclusive Benefits of BPR for CRM in the short and long term

Download: BPR for CRM: Driving Business Performance to the Next Level

Value stream mapping can put companies directly in touch with how their customers perceive value. Understanding how you can take action to reengineer processes from your customers' point of view, can drive maximum customer satisfaction and competitive advantage. In this paper, see how value stream mapping help companies take traditional process mapping to the next level.

• The importance and need for Value Stream Mapping
• Movement, Method and Metrics -- the 3M's of VSM
• Waste, Variability and Inflexibility -- the demons to fight

Download: Value Stream Mapping: Unlocking What Your Customers Treasure

Global Business Agility through CRM Harmonization

Spending Small for Big CRM Gains

Global CRM harmonization across a geographically distributed enterprise is a complex initiative, with multiple phases requiring participation from many different decentralized and disparate groups. The good news is that there are generally some quick returns to keep the organization attentive to the long-term fruits of process and system harmonization. Learn from this paper about how organizations adopting CRM harmonization best practices are getting the best of both worlds -- the cost savings and global efficiency.

• Taking stock of your global CRM program and how to assess its health
• The unique balance between global and local systems
• The right approach to systems evaluation and revamp

Download: CRM: Globalizing the Local Village

Increasing efficiency and waste reduction are imperative in today's climate, and you can use your CRM system to do just that. The current downturn is an ideal time to mine the hidden nuggets in your CRM system -- a minimal investment that can yield big gains.

• Why the downturn is the best time to act
• Identifying unused CRM features that can pay off
• Testing small before you rollout new capabilities
• Building slowly while boosting ROI with every step

Download: Eight Quick Ways to Derive More Value from Your CRM System

Fine-Tuning CRM for the Downturn

CRM’s All-Time Top Rights and Wrongs

Senior management's initial objectives for CRM may have been to automate sales processes, improve sales ability, and increase the accuracy of forecasts. But with the economic downturn hitting hard, their biggest priority now is to retain the most profitable customers.

• Adjusting your CRM vision to accommodate change
• Five common reasons to make adjustments
• Five strategies for increasing CRM effectiveness and ROI
• Getting sales users to become advocates

Download: Adjust Your CRM Vision to Deliver Business Value During Changing Times

Strong program/project management often determines the success or failure of large CRM projects. Here are Cognizant's top do’s and don’ts.

• Establishing a robust vision
• Staffing adequately to avoid burnout
• Bringing sales and marketing leadership together
• Defining metrics for success

Download:Program Management Do’s and Don’ts for Large CRM Implementation Projects

Getting Sales People To Love Your CRM

No More Hit Or Miss Marketing

One factor above all has prevented many CRM implementations from achieving the projected ROI: the legendary disconnect between sales (who approved the purchase) and the sales force (who failed to adopt the system fully). Here’s how to bridge the gap.

• The most common problems with CRM today
• The questions to ask about your present ROI
• Looking at CRM from the sales person's perspective
• The benefits of refreshing the system for sales needs

In too many companies, marketing campaigns are executed with a hit-or-miss approach that pays too little attention to measurement, monitoring, and consistent improvement. The solution? A marketing operations roadmap.

• Manage marketing more effectively through the downturn
• Identify the campaigns that work, and how well
• How to draw your roadmap and what it should contain
• Following your map to better marketing ROI

Driving CRM Adoption in a Reluctant Culture

Managing CRM Complexity the Right Way

Lack of adequate user adoption is one of the chronic pain points for CRM implementations. Almost universally, companies are struggling to boost CRM adoption rates. Here are five things you can do to drive adoption, starting today.

• Why user adoption of CRM is so painful
• The problem with most CRM applications
• Five strategies for increasing adoption
• Why investing in the user experience will pay major dividends

When organizations pursue large, complex CRM engagements, it is often a daunting to accept the time and cost that is truly necessary to be successful. But a dedicated program management team is vital to obtaining real business value.

• Four mistakes to avoid in large engagements
• How to engage the right stakeholders
• How to maintain the CRM vision
• Coordinating teams most effectively

Turning Customer Data Into Behavioral Insight

Customer Emotions: The Next Frontier

Analytics tools -- homegrown or from a third party -- will help you mine data for information you need to succeed during the downturn.

• What is CRM analytics?
• The many business benefits
• Six vital questions to ask about CRM analytics
• Sales, Marketing, and Customer service analytics

The evidence is in. Recent market intelligence from leading researchers show that the investment financial institutions make in customer experience translates directly to customer loyalty. Customer Experience Management (CEM) is the right tool.

• Why customer loyalty hinges on customer experience
• Why CEM is a competitive advantage
• Why now is the ideal time to develop CEM
• The key building blocks of a CEM strategy

Designing the Customer Experience

Putting a Team On Customer Satisfaction

How do you delight your customers when your products and services are more complex than ever, are delivered through ever more channels, and must be produced and supported at ever-lower cost? The first step is to map your customer's journey with you.

• Overcoming complexity to attain customer delight
• How to find out what customers want
• Separating reality from aspiration
• Key success factors in mapping

Most companies that measure customer satisfaction do it departmentally rather than at the enterprise level. So no one in the organization is responsible for customer experience. The better way is a Customer Experience Management team. CEM teams evaluate customer experience holistically, across channels and departments, taking ownership of customer perception and satisfaction.

• How to get a true enterprise view of customer experience
• Why it's important to set standards (and how to do it)
• Who should be on your CEM team
• Meaningful metrics

Download: Taking a True Measure of Customer Experience

Harnessing Social CRM the Right Way

Meeting Physicians at the Emotional Level

Online gaming companies pioneered social interaction between gamers to build "stickiness." Now, user communities are popping up all over — from airline travel and hotel booking sites to the online presence of packaged goods maker Procter & Gamble. The goal is to leverage interactions between customers (and the company) to drive product innovation and customer satisfaction.

• The latest indispensible tools and techniques
• Developing a social CRM strategy that fits your company
• The right (and wrong) way to engage customers online
• Participating in the dialogue

Bonding physicians to your pharmaceutical company requires connecting with them on an emotional level. Progressive companies in many industries are leveraging a customer experience management (CEM) methodology to create positive emotional value.

• Why CRM systems are now ripe for CEM
• How CEM improves the sales rep's interaction with physicians
• Turning negative perceptions into positive advocacy
• Maximizing "emotional value"

Tracking Marketing Effectiveness (Finally)

Getting It Right With Doctors

MRM software can manage and track every portion of cross-channel, highly-automated, and data-driven marketing campaigns, beginning with planning, budgeting, and strategic goal-setting through to execution and measurement.

• MRM tools that span all phases of marketing
• Key ways to automate delivery and evaluation
• What to look for in MRM tools, questions to ask
• Better results at significantly lower costs

Pharmaceutical companies need to understand how to gather the data necessary to develop a targeted physician sample plan based on sample sensitivity. This requires an investment in sales and marketing analytics technology that works with your existing CRM infrastructure.

• Gathering the right data
• Leveraging through analytics
• A better strategy for working with physicians
• Three key ways to increase physician receptiveness

Taking Better Care of Your Best Customers

Are You Missing the Web 2.0 Boat?

Eighty percent of an organization's sales come from 20% of its customers. Some pharmaceutical companies have found that just 1% of their customers account for 50% or more of their revenues. It makes sense to focus on improving relationships with these customers. Here’s how.

• The ideal sales process -- step by step
• Key Account Management (KAM) done right
• Account strategy planning for your best customers
• Improving results with every new cycle

Many life sciences companies have not incorporated next-generation Web 2.0 functionality, such as peer-to-peer online patient communities, into their marketing and promotional mix. Now is the time.

• Why social networking is no longer a "fringe" channel
• Why the ROI is so high
• What you need to get up and running
• Using analytics to get optimal ROI

How Doctor?s Think

CRM On-Premise or On-Demand?

The next step for many life sciences companies is behavioral science -- gaining better insight into the minds of physicians and understand their motivations in order to build tighter relationships.

• Exerting the right influence through education
• Gauge the best time to make a call, avoiding overload
• Segmenting customers and tailoring sales efforts
• Breaking down barriers between marketing and sales

Many organizations that implemented an on-premises CRM solution are still waiting for their intended ROI. User adoption is often too low. The sales team wants something simpler. The alternative is CRM on-demand, an easy-to-use interface that can be reconfigured rapidly around business initiatives. But is it always better? Not necessarily. Here's why.

• What you need to consider when weighing your options
• Why customizing on-demand services may not be worth it
• Six ways on-demand solutions can be challenging
• Cognizant's surprising conclusions

Modeling Your CRM SaaS Solution, First

The Virtue of Getting Clean Data

A key difference between on-demand CRM and an on-premise solution that most companies fail to consider: the need for a governance structure and operating model that will dictate how your organization and its users interact with the application. If you don’t develop one, you risk losing the benefits of SaaS.

• Why an operating model is so vital
• The elements of an SaaS operating model
• Change Management, Release Management, Support
• One proven approach

All businesses would like to transform customer data into a value-generating asset. Many are implementing customer master hubs, a central source of core customer profile data that can be efficiently maintained and is accessible to transactional and business intelligence applications across the enterprise. To make it work, you need one thing above all else: clean data. Easier said than done.

• The major benefits of a master data hub
• Why most organizations underestimate what it takes
• Cleansing your data -- a step-by-step process
• One client's costly journey down the wrong path

A CRM-Based Pricing Approach for Global Organizations

When it comes to pricing, one size does not fit all. Nor will one pricing solution fit the needs of all organizations. In fact, the more complex your organization is in terms of size, product diversity, industry, and global presence, the more complicated your pricing will become, and the greater your need for a coherent pricing strategy aligned with business objectives. A CRM-based approach could be the answer.

• Pricing challenges in a globally competitive world
• Using CRM to get pricing right
• Building a streamlined enterprise pricing structure
• Communicating with sales to avoid resistance