Executive summary
The goal - With customer loyalty comes a competitive advantage
Electronics consumers are a fiercely loyal group. But they want to be treated with respect and look for value in their brand relationship. The electronics sales and service solution from IBM and SAP can help you enhance that relationship. Our solution uses Web-enabled customer relationship management (CRM) methods that can help you lower costs, improve long-term customer loyalty and increase margins.
The advantage - Shape customer demand
The electronics sales and service solution can help you transform your marketing, sales and service business processes with improved customer relationship management capabilities. The solution can include:
- Contact center optimization services.
- Field support and product maintenance outsourcing.
- A sales growth roadmap development and implementation.
- Service after sales transformation, including:
- Warranty management.
- Repair center.
- Spare parts and logistics.
- Service lifecycle management.
The benefits - Know your customers. Know your market.
The electronics sales and service solution from IBM and SAP can enable your company to improve customer loyalty, which can help increase revenue. Our solution is designed to help:
- Target specific customer segments with focused marketing campaigns, appropriate cross-selling and promotional pricing.
- Personalize offerings to individual customers for greater returns.
- Determine your high value customer segments—use advanced quantitative tools to understand those customers' needs and quickly get the right products to market.
- Base decision making on accurate, up-to-date customer data.
- Derive insights into customer purchasing patterns, uncover hidden niches, identify inhibitors to success and recognize changing industry trends.
- Improve your overall reputation in the marketplace with responsive, relevant marketing and exceptional customer service.
Business view
The goal - Connect to your customer
Are you looking to improve customer loyalty and increase sales for your electronics business? The electronics sales and service solution from IBM and SAP employs Web-enabled customer relationship management (CRM) methods to gather and analyze customer information—for insight that can help your company improve long-term loyalty.
The advantage - IBM knows relationships
With our team of SAP specialists and electronics industry experts, IBM has helped electronics companies implement successful CRM solutions.
- IBM has 4,200 dedicated electronics specialists worldwide who have led thousands of electronics projects.
- The IBM Electronics Center of Competency works to deploy state-of-the-industry best practices and capabilities for consumer electronics, microelectronics, medical devices and industrial equipment.
- We have been recognized by SAP Senior Executives as the leader with over 70% of SAP's Fortune 500 clients.
- IBM is the only systems integrator to win the SAP Award of Excellence every year in every country it has been offered.
The benefits - Transform the conversation
The electronics sales and service solution from IBM and SAP can empower your electronics business to manage the breadth of your customer relationships—spanning sales, service, customer contact, customer insight and analytics. Our solution can help improve customer loyalty and satisfaction while reducing the costs associated with marketing, sales and customer service. We can help you:
- Understand current customer needs to quickly get your products to market before customer needs change.
- Provide sales and marketing staff with accurate, accessible data to more efficiently target customer purchasing patterns and recognize or anticipate trends.
- Establish an ongoing dialogue with your customers by using the Web to communicate directly—help them get the answers they want, when they want them.
- Improve your understanding of customers' needs—recognizing customer preferences and buying patterns allows you to build individual customer solutions across your business channels and divisions, as well as to cross-sell and up-sell.
- Achieve a new level of service by exceeding expectations—offer your customers the information and services they want before they ask.
The approach - A real-world transformation
A well-known electronics company needed a solution to:
- Establish enterprise relationship management.
- Focus more on the customer.
- Transfer information smoothly.
- Provide access to the latest information quickly, easily, transparently and globally.
Using the electronics sales and service solution, the company received the following benefits.
- Improved communication with key contacts to respond to customer inquires more quickly and effectively.
- Greater cost efficiencies from one data repository for customer and product information for the sales and marketing team.
- Improved customer service through more effective call centers.
- Smooth information transfer across global business silos.
The financial advantage - Don't forget the bottom line
The electronics sales and service solution from IBM and SAP can help your electronics business improve ROI with a potential increase in:
- New sales from 5 to 15 percent.
- Sales from existing customers by 10 to 20 percent.
- Customer satisfaction by 15 percent.
- Customer retention by 3 to 5 percent.
Our solution can help reduce:
- Customer complaints by 5 to 10 percent.
- Service after sales costs by 5 to 10 percent.
In fact, IBM has implemented SAP for its own internal operations, resulting in a total cost of ownership reduction of almost US$11B.
Technical details
The issues - Integration and transformation
With data scattered across multiple silos and platforms, it might seem like there is no easy way to integrate these systems efficiently. Electronics sales and service solution from IBM and SAP can integrate disparate systems to help keep costs down. Our solution works with your extended enterprise, helping you to meet the demands for fast, accurate data.
The benchmark - Leaders who play well together
The electronics sales and service solution from IBM and SAP uses proven and award-winning technology.
- IBM is the leading systems integrator involved in joint development of SAP industry-based solutions. Together, IBM and SAP have completed over 16,000 business installations in 138 countries.
- The WebSphere® software platform has been integrated with SAP solutions to provide the ability to develop and deploy advanced Web-based front-end applications.
- IBM WebSphere software platforms are used worldwide.
- Approximately 40,000 developers are building WebSphere applications.
- Nearly 35,000 customers worldwide use WebSphere software platforms.
- The IBM Electronics Center of Competency works to deploy state-of-the-industry best practices and capabilities for consumer electronics, microelectronics, medical devices and industrial equipment.
The components - An end-to-end, flexible and scalable solution
The electronics sales and service solution from IBM and SAP can help your IT department integrate disparate systems and reduce costs using tools, such as:
- IBM Systems technology—powerful, scalable servers designed to reliably support both your applications and the software used to integrate them.
- IBM WebSphere MQSeries®—integrates over 35 platforms and provides the base messaging functions for servers and clients to enable application programs to communicate with each other.
- IBM WebSphere Application Server—extends the functions of the operating system by integrating diverse business systems, such as databases and transaction processors and extending them to the Web.
- SAP CRM—has helped the best-run companies in more than 25 industries make the most of customer relationships by capitalizing on customer insight and improving front-line efficiency and effectiveness.
Our solution features:
- Integration with industry- and market-leading CRM application ISVs.
- Integration of legacy and IT systems to streamline access to near real-time database input and output.
- The ability to link various departments and divisions virtually seamlessly to give your call center, sales force and other departments in your organization access to the data customers want, updated in near real time.
The implementation - Transformation in action
A well-known electronics company needed to provide accurate data quickly and easily to employees in order to improve customer service. The company used the electronics sales and service solution from IBM, which included the following tools.
- IBM Systems technology
- IBM WebSphere MQSeries
- IBM WebSphere Application Server
Using our solution, the company realized the following benefits.
- Improved communication to get answers to customers more effectively.
- Greater cost efficiencies from one repository for customer and product information.
- Improved customer service through more effective call centers.
- Smooth information transfer across global business silos.
The cost of ownership - Enabling CRM without compromise
The electronics sales and service solution can help you build a cost-effective IT infrastructure for your electronics business. Our solution is designed to:
- Integrate with existing legacy systems to help leverage previous investments.
- Enable scalability and flexibility for potential future growth.
- Translate data smoothly, helping reduce downtime by minimizing the chance of data getting lost.
- Reduce training costs because users only have to learn one system.
