InformationWeek

Customer-relationship management and business-intelligence technology has made it easier for businesses to gather and analyze customer data. That makes it more important for marketing, sales, and customer-service people to understand what that data says about their customers. "Marketing today is more than just good salesmanship. You have to be much more of an analyst and an interpreter of data," says Ken Robb, VP of marketing at Brodbeck Enterprises Inc. in Platteville, Wis.

As marketing campaigns target smaller and smaller customer segments, the people running them need to truly understand and analyze customer data. Brodbeck, which runs a chain of supermarkets in the Midwest, has been gathering data from customers who use frequent-shopper cards. But rather than using the information for a broad campaign, the company uses it to offer targeted letters and coupons to individual households. And that requires fine customer analysis.

Robb says that once the marketing department decides to go one-to-one, there's no turning back. Customers start demanding personalized attention and expect businesses to understand their buying behavior. "It's, 'Don't try to sell me another brand that you know I probably won't be interested in,'" he says.

CRM software has also had a dramatic effect on the job of the customer-service rep. When customers contact a call center, the reps who pick up the phone can now know at a glance who the customers are, and their history with the company. That leaves representatives in a much better position to do more than simply react to customer complaints: They can solve the customers' problems and suggest more appropriate products and services.

And while some employees may fear technology's reach, customer-management technology hasn't taken power away from reps, companies say. Instead, it's armed them with the shipping, sales, and support information they need to do their jobs. "There's a much greater sense of your own ability to be successful with a customer when you have all of that information at your disposal," says Graham Sheldon, VP of strategic business systems at Cadence Design Systems Inc. in San Jose, Calif., which is using Onyx Software Inc.'s CRM package in its Orcad software division. "There's a sense of calm."