DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
ABSTRACT
This project topic “Customer Relationship Management System” was carried out with a view to creating an application that will be used to keep, collect information of customers such as basic information, educational background, and service preference. The project developed a system that lets management efficiently manage customers and its transaction with the company. The system was developed using visual basic 6.0 programming language. This language was used because of its easy syntax and structure for developing graphical user interface windows based application.
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
    CRM (customer relationship management) is an information industry term for methodologies, software, and usually internet capabilities that help an enterprise management customer relationship in an organized way.
    For example, an  enterprise might build a database about its customers that described relationship in sufficient detail so that management, salespeople, people providing services and perhaps the customer directly could access information match customer needs with product plans and offerings, remind customers of services requirements, know that other products a customer had purchased and so forth.

1.1    BACKGROUND OF STUDY
    Customer relationship management system came into existent when companies were intent on developing stronger bonds with their customer. According to Kenbrell P (2002) CRM is the process of managing detailed information about individual customers and carefully managing all customer “touch point” to maximize customer loyalty.
A customer touch point is any accession on which a customer encounters the brand and product from actual experience to personal or mass communication to usual observation.
    Its’ impossible to state precisely what customer relationship management (CRM) means to everyone. The term has been applied to almost every element of business. In its infancy, by Koch Christopher (2004) CRM system was a series of mainframe or server based applications specific to sales marketing and support business functions.
     The application was high weight by today’s standards and did little more than capture and file critical data. But as cultural boundaries within organizations weakened individual freedoms of information gave way to sophisticated applications that could span business functions. By doing so, these applications created the vision of a single viexi of the customer.
    For the first time, organizations could track and analyze shifting customer needs, link marketing campaigns to sales results, and monitor sales activities for improved forecasting accuracy and manufacturing demands.
CRM EVOLUTION
    Patton (2005) says that CRM has evolved since its earliest incarnation, originally driven by an inside out focus, through three phases of evolution: technology, integration and process. Recently we have seen a major leap forward to a full version of a fourth phase: customer driven CRM an outside in approach that has intriguing financial promise.
    Technology: In its earliest incarnation, CRM meant applying automation to existing sales, marketing, decision support and channel processes as organizations attempted to improve communications, planning opportunity and campaign management, forecasting, problem solving and to share best practices. To some degree it worked. However, automating poorly performing activities or processes revelry improves the quality of the outcome. So, for the most part, the quality of the return on investment (ROI) was meager if measurable at all.
    The promise of the technology was there, but few organizations were realizing   the panache of performance. The metric of success was increased efficiency in sales, marketing and support and channel process.
    Integration: By developing cross, functional integration, supported data warehousing and shared roles and responsibilities organizations began to create a customized view of the customer. Support issue, web hits, sales calls and marketing inquires started building   a deeper understanding of each customer and allowed aggressive organization to adapt their tactics to fit individual needs. Integration focused around two primary components.
    Make it easier to do business with the seller. Instead of operational silos that inhibited superior customer relationship, the organization as a whole took ownership and responsibility for customer satisfaction. With a single view for the customer, it was much easier for anyone to respond to sales opportunities or impending support issues and take appropriate steps expected benefits are to improve retention and lower support costs.
    Prediction modeling: Data mining of an aggregate of corporate knowledge and the customer contact experiences was used to improve operational and sales performance. By applying complex algorithms to a history of purchasing or inquiring characteristics, it became practical to predict the demand of individual customers. Up –selling, cross selling, even the ability to preempt potential problems was now possible for all customers. Facing representatives. Expected benefits are to have better cross, selling up selling and improved product offerings or delivery.
    Process: By rethinking the quality and effectiveness of customer related processes many organization began to eliminate activities, improve outdated processes, and redesign activities that had failed to deliver the desired outcomes. Then, by re0creating the process through an understanding of capabilities of the technology the outcomes were more predicted able are the promises for a meaningful ROI more substantial and realistic. The metrics for success become the improved effectiveness in serving the customer.
    Thus far, almost everything about CRM has focused on improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the seller’s organization have evolved from sales representatives working  from paper notebooks, or a card  system, to a tightly integrated network that sees movement in sales activity, product demand on manufacturing and manages the logistics of complex terms to serve the buyers and sellers marketing support services, channel management, forecasting, manufacturing logistics and even research and development have all seen the benefits of a well – designed CRM strategy.
    However, the past decade of CRM and its associated improvement have been based on three assumptions.
    The past would be a logical foundation to predict future customer needs and profitability.
    Demand for traditional value propositions would remain constant
    Better customer relationships would deter attrition.
    All three of these assumptions have field or at least become unstable in a post September II environment. Historical purchase or inquires are not a clear indication of future needs as buyers are rapidly redefining requirement to satisfy their current business market or shareholder demands. Value proposition are changing in highly competitive markets as sellers are working aggressively to reestablish structural bonds. And driven by most cost effective solution that promises to stabilize, or improve, their business performance these factors are driving CRM into a fourth phase.

1.1.1    HISTOICAL DEVELOPMENTS OF CRM
    Http://ezinearticles.com stated that customer relationship management (CRM) is one of those magnificent concepts that swept the business world in the 1900’s with the promise of forever changing the way businesses small and large interacted with their customer based. In the short term, however, it proved to be an unwieldy process that was better in theory than in practice for a variety of reasons. First among these was that it was simply so difficult and expensive to track and keep the high volume of records needed accurately and constantly update them.
    In the last several years, however, newer software systems and advanced tracking, features have vastly improved CRM capabilities and the real promise of CRM is becoming a reality. As the price of newer, more customizable internet solutions have hit the market place; competition has driven the prices down so that even relatively small businesses are realigning the benefits of some custom CRM program.
    From www.wikipedia.com. in the 1980’s saw the emergence of database marketing, which was simply a catch phrase to define the practice of setting up customer services groups to speak to individually  to all of a company’s customers.
    In the case of larger, key clients it was a valuable tool. For keeping the lines of communication open and tailoring service to the client’s, however, it tended to provide repetitive, survey like information that cluttered databases and didn’t provide much insight. As companies began tracking, database information, they realized that the bare bones were all that was needed in most case; what they buy regularly what they spend, what they do.
ADVANCE IN THE 1990’S
    In the 1990’s companies began to improve on customer relationship management by making it more of a two- way street, instead of simply gathering data for their own use, they began giving back to their customers not only on terms of the obvious goal of improved customer services, but in incentives, gifts and other perks for customer loyalty.
    This was the beginning of the now familiar frequent flyer programs, booms points on credit cards and a host of other resources that are based on CRM tracking of customer activity and spending pattern. CRM was now being used as a way to increase sales passively as well as through active improvement of customer services.
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
    Wikipedia (2008) stated the time had come where system are being moved from extranets to the internet. Customers have become a fully integrated participant in the value chain and have the same customer relation management systems access as manufactures, supplies distributors, or facilitators.
    In future, it is likely that reengineering principles will be incorporated further into customer management system. It is said   that rather than organizing a firm into functional specialties and looking at the tasks that each function performing we would be looking at compete processes from materials acquisition to serve our subscribers, to marketing and distribution. More and more software will utilize these approaches ultimately there will be fully integrated business information system in which all types of business information are seamlessly moved throughout the firm.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
    Lack of good customer record keeping
    Inability to trace customers past records
    Inability to make customer orders available to marketing accounting departments
    Duplicate of send mail shots to existing and selected business customer.
    Inability to trace orders placed by customers
    Incorrect costing of order placed by customers.
    Inability to process and generated monthly bills of business type customers
    Inability of load credit cards.
    Inability to access credit balance
1.3 OBJECTIVE OF STUDY
    The request for better quality information and the rapid advances in technology has called for the embankment of this project. This project which involves the development of an automated customer management system is used  to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the relationship betweens the task of managing in a large business organization and the technology that has become an essential part of the task customer management systems.
    The aims of this project however, are to seek and play an important role in the development of customer relations management systems and increase the productivity of the case study business organization (intercellular Nig Ltd) through the managed use of the technology of the organization.
    Develop a customer information systems to ensure proper management of customer details record
    Ensure that ordering is made easier for customer by sending complete detailed list of available artist and items to call center department.
    Ensure that all customer order are processed efficiently
    Ensure increasing customer record is taken care of using the Microsoft access database for its customer records.
    Improve company and advertising and marketing through the use of the mail shots.
    Boost sales by sending mail shots during exhibition and sales
    Ensure correct and complete payment of orders by all business customers.
    Ensure accurate data connectivity between department of the organization.
    Ensure customer particular interests are met buy sending mails during sales and exhibitions
    Save time and efforts for the member of staff currently performing the task of customer details keeping, accounting and marketing manually.
    Provide better service to customers, staff of the organization and anyone else affected by the new system developed.
    The cut cost and save money thereby increasing the productivity of the organization through the managed use of the technology of the organization.
    To create a user friendly system given enjoyment and entertainments to the users of the system by the use of visual basic which has a friendly graphical user interface.
I.4 SIGNIFICANT OF THE STUDY
    This project would be useful in communication system with the following advantages it possesses.
    It saves time
    It I efficient
    It is modern and reliable
    It is very fast, accurate and security conscious.
1.5 SCOPE OF STUDY
    The study of the information system will be narrowed down to a selected telecommunication organization. Which is the case study; intercellular Nig Ltd. The system to be developed is a customer relation management system and is intended to enhance rather that to replace the current system of recoding transactions purchase and accounting it will include;
    Record keeping of the call center department: The recording of all customer information details.
    Order processing of the sales department: The processing of customers orders
    Bill generation and processing of the accounts department the tracking of payments by customers and generation of documents in connection with the preparation of bills for each business type customer.
    SMS message shot generation of the call center department: The generation of mails for all the customers to boost sales, advertising and improve marketing.
1.6 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
     Expenses incurred by transportation typing and photocopying materials reduced of extent of details information presented. I was restricted to some equipments used in the organization
    System does not encourage customers complain carefully consider the complains you get, if there is nobody to get it across us, these are the thing that matters. It’s often much easier for your customer to just get up and walk away
1.7 DEFINITIONS OF TERMS
CUSTOMER
    A person or an organization who buys and services from a store or shop or business
RELATION/ RELATIONSHIP
     The way in which two people group or countries behave towards each other or deal with each other.
    The way to which to or more things are connected
MANAGEMENT
     The people who run and control a business or similar organization
    The act of running and controlling a business or similar organization
    The act or skill of dealing with people or situation in a successful way.
SYSTEM
    An organized set of ideas or theories or a particular way of doing something
    A group of thing pieces of equipment e.t.c that are connected to work together.

INFORMATION
    Consist of data that have been processed and are meaningful to a user.
DATA WAREHOUSE
    A data warehouse is a repository of an organization’s electronically stored data. Data warehouse are designed to facilitate reporting and analysis. This classic definition of the data warehouse focuses on data storage. However, the means to retrieve and analyze data, to extract, transform and load data, and to manage the dictionary data are also considered essential component of a data warehousing system.
DATA FLOW DIAGRAMS
     Data flow diagrams illustrate how data is processed by a system in terms of inputs and output. Data flows are pipelines through which packets of information flow label the arrows with the name of the data that mores through it.
RETURN ON VESTMENT
    In finance rate of return (ROR) or return on investment (ROI) or sometimes just return is the ratio of money gained or lost on an investment to the amount of money invested. The amount of money gained or lost may be referred to as interest, profit loss, gain/ loss or net income loss. The money invested may be referred to as the asset, capital principal or the cost basis of the investment. ROI is usually given as a percent rather than decimal value.