Customer relationship management systems and applications

CRM

Customer Relationship Management at Cincom Systems

Cincom Systems has been in business over 40 years and is considered a global leader in the areas of product configuration, manufacturing-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and quote-to-order platforms for streamlining the capturing of orders into ERP systems. Cincom Systems is a privately held company that has according to a recent Hoover's inquiry, 900 employees and $200M in Sales and a broad cross-section of selling and services channels they operate in (Cincom, 2010). Located in Cincinnati, Ohio and still managed daily by founder Tom Nies, the company has five divisions of enterprise software it sells through both indirect and direct sales forces (Kayser, 2005). The applications sold by these five divisions include call center management, medical records management, manufacturing business systems (Little, Kenworthy, Jarvis, Porter,1995) software development tools including the SmallTalk programming language (Kayser, 2005), and services management applications. Taken together these five divisions have generated over 10,000 clients globally in the last four decades, with the Manufacturing Solutions Business Unit generating the majority of new customers and revenue (Kayser, 2005) (Cincom, 2010). Customers include ATK Ordinance, Cubic Corporation, Harris Corporation, Cincinnati Fan, Siemens, Rolls Royce Marine and others. Cincom's core strength is in creating customized solutions for highly complex manufacturing workflows that require system and process integration. The company has cultivated partnerships with IBM, Oracle, SAP and other enterprise software companies that are also in use at shared customer locations. Cincom's expertise in enterprise software has also led to the development of an internal CRM system that was designed when sales cycles in this industry were more predictable and based on capital expense approval cycles. The sales cycles of the enterprise software industry however are changing drastically due to Software-as-a-Service and Cincom's CRM systems are in the middle of a transition as the company seeks to stay competitive in 2010.

Assessment of CRM at Cincom Systems