The Story

The Story of QF-CRM. How it has been discovered.

Companies Executives always try to make the best possible strategic decisions for maximizing their results. Many factors transform this goal in a really challenging exercise, and when it is related to sales and growth strategy, we touch at the most sensitive point. In our marketing background, we had the opportunity to wonder about questions like:

• What are the best markets to target now?
• How much should I invest and when?
• What will be the return on investment?
• Which prospects should I address first to optimize the results?

These simple questions are very often very difficult to answer even for the best skilled executive. Our customer’s VP Europe was faced to this situation. We wondered about the fact that if we ware able to use past records of our customer, and some advance statistics and strategy tools, we should be able to help him efficiently.

Our past experience with integrated marketing and scoring methods where largely unsatisfactory in term of targeting, but we were thinking more about a quantitative based approach rather than a pure strategic and traditional portfolio analysis approach.

We then embarked into this adventure of acting as a strategic advisor for our customer.

Of course, our first approach consisted to use the traditional strategic tools that we generally use, i.e. Portfolio analysis, Micro and Macro environment analysis, etc ….

Using this approach was a good start, but the results where not as accurate as we wanted. Furthermore, we discovered that a traditional portfolio analysis based on very few dimensions and variables was somehow a too simplified approach.

We then decided to use some advanced statistics techniques to go further. We used the same mind frame than a portfolio analysis, but with much more dimensions taken into account, much more variables than growth, market penetration and performance. It is worthy of note that some of the variables used where metric, and some where non metric. We end up with about 20 variables compiled from a very broad scope of data:

• Past CRM records
• Market records
• Financial records

During the process of doing it, we made a breakthrough discovery that led to discover a methodology (that we will call the QF-CRM methodology for Quantitative Factor Customer Record Methodology).

We hope that this (short) story make it easier for you to understand the background of the QF-CRM methodology, the very reason of this blog.

Linking CRM analysis to performance

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  Can you really get more benefits from your CRM system?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “Linking CRM analysis to performance”
  
  
  Perhaps you have recently invested, or your company plan to invest in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system?
  
  Do you know the real return on investment of this project? In Financial words, are you able to compute the Net Present Value (NPV) of this investment?
  
  Would you like to significantly increase this return on investment?
  
  Another question would be: do you experience one of the following symptoms, though your CRM system is up and running since more than one year:
  
  
  • Difficulties to quantify market segments value
  • Difficulties to achieve sales forecasts with a reasonable accuracy
  • Difficulties to understand what makes your customers buy
  • Difficulties to take strategic sales and marketing decisions
  • Difficulties to allocate sales resources on new and existing market segments
  
  This list is of course not exhaustive.
  
  If your answer is yes, the long term consequences for your company will be:
  
  
  1. Lack of growth and profitability
     
  2. Impossibility to get the full benefits of your CRM system
  
  From our business experience, we were wondering about the usefulness of a methodology that can use very basic information from your CRM system in order to allow:
  
  
  • Quantification of each target segment and each target market
  • Better knowledge on current customers and what make them buy
  • Better capacity to forecast
  • Strategic planning simplified
  • Better handling of sales effort
  • Driving successful integrated marketing campaigns
  
  We in fact developed such a methodology, We found it incidentally in the scope of our MBA project (a strategy assessment of a firm). The methodology is so powerful that the results obtained even surprised us. This is why we decided to publish this blog.
  
  From the breakthrough mentioned above, we crafted a method that we called the QF-CRM methodology. QF-CRM methodology stands for “Quantitative Factor Customer Record Methodology”. The methodology can help any company in any industry that want to achieve at least one of the following objective:
  
  
  • Quantification of any target segment and any target market
  • Better knowledge on current customers and what make them buy
  • Build a better forecast system
  • Craft a reliable Strategic planning
  • Want a Better handling of sales effort
  • Drive successful integrated marketing campaigns
  
  If you are interested by any one of the aspects motioned above, this blog is for you. We will try to answer your questions as long as the blog will be enriched. Don’t hesitate to contact us; a link to our e-mail address is supplied at the end of each article.

References

Our Customers said about our methodology:

"Didier and Edi conducted a broad assessment of our business in Europe. The insights and recommended actions presented were outstanding. They added clarity to future decision making. The QF-CRM methodology Didier and Edi introduced to our business case was unique"

Jack Zimmerman Senior Vice President and General Manager Europe of Current Analysis (July 9, 2005)

How to contact us

Should you have any question, we will be more than happy to help:

Didier Gaultier: +33 (0)6 80 96 68 90 didier_gaultier@yahoo.fr

Edi Perisic: +33 (0)6 64 97 27 44 perisicedi@yahoo.fr

You can contact us in English or French as you prefer.

Presentation of this Blog

Hello, my name is Didier Gaultier. Welcome on this blog about CRM and statistics.

I am going to present myself first. I am a Sales and Marketing professional, with 15 years of experience in the IT and Telecom industry.

I just finished an international MBA at IFAM business school. In the scope of any MBA, we have a thesis project to complete within usually three months. The subject chosen was “A New CRM Leverage methodology using advanced Statistics”.

IFAM decided that two students should be assigned to this project because of the quantity of work and the difficulty. My MBA Colleague Edi Perisic, accepted to join, and we created a Team project. During the project, we have made some breakthroughs that conducted us to register the methodology found and publish some part of it on this blog.

Very often Statistics are considered as a boring subject, our challenge is to make it live and interesting. If you are in any way involved in Marketing, Sales, or Finance, this blog may interest you and make you earn a lot of money. Good reading and thank you for being connected with us.

Didier Gaultier on the Web: Didier Gaultier - Twitter - Dailymotion - Digg - Wordpress - Google

MBA project awards and acknowledgements

My Colleague EDI Perisic and I are very proud to be part of the project that received the award of:

"Best MBA project 2005"

We would like to acknowledge in return our customer’s Senior VP & General Manager Europe who actively supported this project by helping us to collect the necessary data, invested some personal time, and encouraged us throughout this project.

We would like also to acknowledge Mrs. M.F. Joseph (IFAM’s Dean) who was our advisor for this thesis and for the very helpful and pertinent advises that she delivered to us throughout our research work and Mrs. Alexandra Joseph for her help on some strategy questions.

A special thank also to all our IFAM professors and for their help during this research, in Particular:

• Mr. Bernard Fevry (Finance),
• Mrs. Marie-France Derhy (Statistics),
• Mr. Christophoros Lambridis (Organizational Behavior and Human Resources),
• Mr. Philip Bloom (Global Business Policy).

Thank you also for all people that supported our work directly or indirectly, our classmates and our families.

About IFAM Business School

IFAM's Mission

IFAM’s mission is to make world business leaders of their students, by delivering the highest quality management education to a diverse and talented group of graduate and undergraduate students.

What make IFAM sure that they can fulfill their mission? Let's say that several attributes distinguish IFAM from many otherwise similar institutions. These include:

Its location in the heart of Paris, Europe's cultural, economic, and communications center.

• An academic tradition that combines scholarly excellence with continuing interaction with business leaders and current management issues.
• A culture that is based on merit and that is congenial to people of widely varying ethnicities, and national backgrounds.
• A tradition and commitment to the importance of a global perspective and ethical behavior in the conduct of business.

In order to fulfill this mission IFAM adopted several rules: excellence, coherence, focus, innovation, and communication. Those are the issues that win the race in the world that evolves from day to day.

MBA Programs

MBA programs of IFAM were one of the first to be developed in France.

IFAM seeks to prepare its graduate students for higher responsibilities in business and particularly for management decisions adapted to the international business world.

IFAM has created two MBA fulltime programs, entirely taught in English, to answer actual need of its undergraduate students as of those from other universities who want to get an international perspective to their education.

For more information please visit: http://www.ifam.edu/