__java of CRM system under Java

Keywords
Customer Relationship Management CRM Java

Display window: A variety of application modes of CRM system

Undoubtedly, as the author of an article introducing the "CRM system", I have a responsibility to show the full implications of this abbreviation. However, because of the different definition of each vendor, it is difficult to give a complete and universal definition of CRM system. We might as well start by enumerating the current application patterns of a variety of CRM systems, with the right to fill a curious and cautious customer with a window shopping in this field.

According to the business focus, we can roughly divide the sales type, marketing type, customer service type and operation type four kinds of common CRM system Application mode.
Sales-type Application model is also known as Sales automation (Force AUTOMATION/SFA), the main focus on pre-sales customer lead capture and sales opportunities throughout the track. To standardize, streamline sales processes, improve visibility of sales and ultimately increase sales revenue by documenting the activities of salespeople and customers/contact people and the progress of each phase of the sales opportunity.
Marketing-oriented application mode, mainly through investigation, consulting means, analysis of purchase intention, and at the same time to explore potential customers. Common ways include telemarketing (telemarketing), email marketing, and market questionnaires.
Customer service-oriented application model is also called Customer Service Center, mainly through after-sale customer service, consulting, warranty, complaints and other processes, so as to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, reduce customer churn.
Operation mode is often used in service opening, order Processing and other links. This is especially important for emerging industries such as online trading or electronic shopping.

According to the system function, it can divide four aspects of interaction, storage, business process processing and data analysis in CRM system.
The interaction refers to the CRM system as the communication platform to realize multi-channel communication between enterprises and customers. The advanced CRM system can integrate almost all customer contacts through CTI (Computer-telephony integration), Internet and other modern communication technologies, and realize the Unified Front-End Office (Front-office) platform.
Storage is the basic information of the customer, and the various departments of the company's exchanges, transaction information by the unified storage in the unified customer base, so that the next interaction occurs quickly positioning customers, and provide the basis for analysis. For large commercial enterprises, the maintenance of complete customer history data (total customer experience) often means the application of mass storage technology.
Business process processing refers to the process of distributing, approving, and processing specific tasks according to specific business rules (business rules) and workflows (workflows). These are generally implemented through workflow and message middleware technology.
Data analysis is based on the relatively perfect customer base and a certain period of customer history records, the relevant data mining, analysis, Customer layering (segmentation), cross-selling (cross selling) and other functions, and to achieve the purpose of decision support. Data Warehousing (warehouse) and Datamine (data mining) technologies are critical here.

Progressive: The implementation principle of CRM Project

At this point, I introduced the enterprise application of the CRM system in different modes and functional aspects. Depending on the technical background and product positioning, different vendors tend to emphasize one or more aspects of the "CRM system" to give their own definition. Imagine a SFA product manufacturer and a call center manufacturer in the mind of the concept of CRM system, almost and the Taoist and revolutionary eyes of the "dream of Red mansions" as diverse. Facing the dazzling novelty concept and the frontier technology, how to implement the CRM project for the enterprise needs to put forward the problem to the enterprise decision-makers.
In fact, the "CRM system" and "CRM" are very different from the two. "CRM system" is a kind of enterprise application which is composed of software and hardware, but "Customer relationship management/crm" itself, it may not have specific technical connotation, but first is a modern enterprise management practice. The core content of CRM is nothing but the principle of "keeping original customers, attracting new customers and maximizing customers ' profit through effective means". For similar purposes, a savvy grocery store owner may be better than a company that has just launched tens of millions of dollars in a CRM system.
Thus, CRM in an enterprise implementation, more and the standardization of Enterprise management and team business intelligence, and far from simple technical problems, can not expect to rely on the introduction of a software system to be able to solve. At present, the risk of CRM project implementation is mainly from here. I have recently seen a number of implementation cases, because too much pursuit of rapid implementation and "one-step", no actual analysis of business requirements, expensive hardware and software configuration in exchange for complex abstract applications and end user complaints.
Many people compare system implementations to tailored ones. But for the CRM project, the metaphor may still be a rush, and it could give us a dangerous technical illusion. No matter how smooth the implementation, the performer's skill is not a substitute for the enterprise's own learning and adaptation process. And this process is doomed to slow, including a lot of repeated, as the enterprise understanding of CRM gradually in-depth, many business needs will gradually sprout or a dramatic change. All these, all decided the implementation of CRM project is difficult to do overnight.
So a gradual attitude is particularly important here. The ideal CRM project implementation should be an ongoing attempt-adjustment of the adaptive process. In contrast to the "CRM-CRM" approach, I would like to advocate a methodology that addresses a specific problem, that is, to divide the implementation of a project into multiple steps, each of which is a milestone in solving the pressing problems that actually exist in a particular business, such as sales and customer service. This methodology is clearly more robust and rational than the one-step system for constructing all-inclusive.
As noted above, the CRM project is not a technical issue at first. But this does not mean that the choice of technology platform is not significant to the project. Here's what I'll argue.

The art of craps: The advantages of the Java platform

It is well known that in enterprise applications, three system frameworks are currently prevalent, namely, the Microsoft. NET Framework, the LAMP (linux-apache-mysql-php) framework, and the Java platform pioneered by Sun. Any one of these, is sufficient to constitute a complete, efficient enterprise applications. Therefore, it becomes a very difficult choice to decide which frame is more suitable for the system. One of the experts I met even joked that it was up to the dice to make a decision.
Perhaps a similar agnosticism attitude is effective and even necessary when developing a generic software product. However, for specific industry applications and specific projects, which of these three choices is preferable, it should be possible to analyze the characteristics of their respective platforms.

Here we talk about the general features of the Java platform, and then analyze why these features can constitute a nearly-win bet when building a CRM system.

* Operating System Independent
It may be the most famous feature and advertising language of the Java platform. The same application, without recompiling, can be run on a variety of operating systems as long as the simple configuration (or even without the need to be configured at the lucky time).
If you have a Java version of the CRM system handy, whether it's a first-time attempt to just use the free PC in the office, a Linux expert, or a corporate CIO who sits on multiple high-end sun servers, it's easy to use and get your own experience.

* Vendor-independent nature
The Java platform's enterprise application has a mature open standard, that is, Sun's proposed Java EE framework. For all aspects of the framework, such as database management systems (DBMS), application servers, data caching, messaging middleware, Web servers, and so on, we can make the best choice from a wide range of standards-compliant products. Especially because of the standardization of standards, the choice of manufacturer and product is transparent to system core code. Even upgrading or replacing specific system software (such as migrating Web servers from tomcat to resin) does not require changes to the core application modules.

* Rich in both products
Development or purchase ("Build or buy") is an important consideration when building a system. The use of off-the-shelf products can greatly shorten the system implementation cycle, this factor for the attractiveness of policymakers is self-evident.
In a number of specific business areas, such as workflow, enterprise application integration (EAI) and so on, there are a variety of off-the-shelf software products suitable for the Java platform. In these products, there are many open source software (OSS) can further reduce the overall development costs, and can be slightly modified to be ironed to fit the specific needs of the enterprise.

Clearly, compared to the high level of consolidation and ease of use of the. NET platform, and the low total cost of ownership (TCO) of lamp, the fundamental feature of the Java platform is its freedom, or the variety of choices it offers. But if this degree of freedom is only an abstraction, the price we pay for it (for example, the ease with which the sacrifice is vital to the maintenance staff) is questionable. So, the "freedom" of the Java platform will bring the advantages to the construction of CRM system.

First of all, a Java platform based CRM system can be based on the project budget, the formation of a variety of options from low-end to high-end.
If the budget is adequate, we can choose high-end server, operating system, and the use of top-level database management system, coupled with data caching, to meet the requirements of large-scale CRM applications high concurrent access and mass data indicators. In particular, thanks to the excellent scalability of the Java EE Framework, we can configure server clusters (clustering) and hot backups on all levels of the system (such as database servers, application servers) to achieve high availability (HA) of the system. For a variety of system middleware and specific business components, we can also choose the industry-leading products.
And for the same system (exactly, the same set of system code), we can also constitute the price comparable to lamp's cheap solution: at all levels of the software system can find very cheap, even free products, for example, using MySQL as dbms,jboss as an application server, tomcat/ Apache as Web Container ... The above open source products have been evaluated and validated by a large number of users, and they are fully qualified for the small and medium scale application requirements of general enterprises.

Second, the Java platform is easier to meet the requirements of the CRM system for application integration.
As described in the first part of this article, a complete CRM system integrates a large number of business applications from different businesses. such as accounting systems, product catalogs/inventory management systems, enterprise information systems or telephone, e-mail and other communications systems integration, often involves both the sharing of data, but also including interaction and collaboration.
The operating system and vendor independence of the Java platform, as well as its strong support for Web service, provide multiple possibilities for application integration. The JCA architecture proposed by Sun provides a common standard for application integration. In particular, high-end projects can choose from a variety of mature EAI products (such as webmethods) available on the Java platform.

Finally, and most fundamentally, building a CRM system on the Java platform is more consistent with the "incremental" CRM project implementation principle mentioned in the second part of this paper.
As mentioned above, CRM projects are much more meaningful than simple software systems. Rather than focusing on TCO and system integration, policymakers should be more interested in the success or failure of the CRM project itself. And the nature of CRM project also decided, its implementation is a gradual, need to adjust the process repeatedly. No matter how high the initial investment, a mature CRM system can not be achieved overnight, but certainly through a number of phases of implementation, getting better. If you agree with this, then the "freedom" of the Java platform is not only reflected in its ability to meet the different budget scale of the solution, more importantly, it can also ensure that the enterprise in a multi-step way to complete the implementation of the CRM project.
An application scenario: a small and medium sized enterprise at the beginning of the project, you can use the "free PC in the office" and use off-the-shelf CRM software products to start CRM practices for a business that needs to be adjusted (such as order Processing, after-sale support, or sales opportunity management); When customer-facing Attitude gradually began to form in the enterprise, Enterprise's customer base tends to complete, the enterprise part of the business also because of the introduction of CRM and improve the efficiency of the time, and then gradually expand the CRM system involved in the business scope, expand the software and hardware configuration, and according to the existing customer base and application, further customization of the enterprise's CRM application, The introduction of reasonable business rules and procedures, until the CRM concept into the entire enterprise, the application of the CRM system has naturally reached a fairly full extent, then the CRM system and enterprise systems are adjusted mutatis mutandis, and the need to complete the data analysis module. This implementation of the CRM project, each stage revenue is obvious, the risk to the lowest, and CRM can truly become the core part of the operation of the enterprise.
In the process of implementation, the Java platform can ensure the consistency of the system under the software and hardware adjustment of each step. When the system is finally stabilized and the utility is fully operational, we are also able to perform configuration supplements and performance tuning to ensure high availability based on the maximum possible load.

Conclusion
Just as CRM is not a simple software system, the implementation of CRM project is not a simple software installation or system integration work. At present, as a hotspot of enterprise application, CRM obtains the attention of enterprise decision-makers and the favor of it vendors. But a good passion translates into solid results--Andre Gide said that people make poor work with good feelings--a mature methodology and enduring patience. This article is willing to make a modest contribution to the promotion of the following two aspects (rather than those that gide talk about)