1large Organizations Are Commonly Divided

¶ … 1Large organizations are commonly divided into three levels: corporate, business unit and functional levels, and marketing has a role in all three levels by looking for ways to add true customer value. If a company has established a corporate or organizational goal to "establish and maintain customer focus," in 200- words, please describe:

How might customer relationship strategies be established and executed at the business unit and functional level?

Creating successful customer relationship management (CRM) strategies at the business unit and functional levels needs to start first with a thorough understanding of the unmet needs of those prospects and customers the company has the products and services to serve. The fundamentals of excellent CRM strategies center first on thoroughly understanding the unmet needs of customers (Maklan, Knox, Ryals, 2008). Capturing these unmet needs to fuel new product development while also serving as the foundation of future customer relationship management strategies requires an integrated CRM system that can organize and make the data accessible for future campaigns (McAfee, Brynjolfsson, 2008). The development of marketing plans, strategies and tactics at the business unit and functional level rely on a single system of record, or a single logical database structure that contains all the necessary customer information for attracting, selling to, and retaining them as customers (Gee, Coates, Nicholson, 2008).

Once this single version of the truth has been created and a CRM system defined and launched for use by marketing, sales pricing, services and senior management teams, the business unit level marketing strategists can use the system for continually working to create new selling and marketing strategies.

This includes the development of highly personalized e-mail blasts that are tailored to customers' preferences based on the analytics applications used to evaluate customer-facing data (Jackson, 2007). For the functional department, comparable customer-facing strategies can be created and measured for results. The differences in business unit relative to functional area are the breadth and level of granularity these strategies are executed to. Functional areas typically have much more tactical approaches, looking at shorter-term objectives while business units will be more concerned with a longer-range and more strategic orientation to their customer-facing strategies. Strategies at the business unit level with regard to CRM would be the launch of a new product and the data mining of customer information to see who would be the most likely to purchase the new product. At the functional level however the specific aspects of one area of the product launch would be the primary focus.

QUESTION #2: The Internet has grown from a stand-alone business/marketing strategy to a channel that must now be integrated into a company's overall marketing strategy and programs to fully leverage its impact. Using a minimum of 200 words, please answer the following: What role might the Internet play in an organization's customer retention initiatives?