Opinion: The CRM Edge

Competition in print media is building up. Apart from the mainstream
magazines, a host of niche titles continue to be launched regularly. According
to industry estimates, over 100 magazines have been launched in the last two
years, averaging around four per month. To remain both competitive and maintain
leadership position in these changing times, media organizations have to adopt
IT as a strategic business tool. In a growing market, it is important to not
just acquire new customers but also retain existing readers. In fact, this
remains a key challenge for all media companies today. A media organization can
no longer afford to be complacent to customer needs and services. Today, if you
are not able to serve customers as per their expectations, whether in terms of
content, fulfillment or support, it is quite likely that customers will switch
to the competition. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and related IT tools
are central to a 'customer-centric' media organization that enables them to
sell, support and retain customers; react quickly to the dynamic media industry
environment and accelerate new product introductions, all far more efficiently
than traditional means.

India Today was one of the very few media organizations, which adopted CRM as
a core process in its business operations and strategy.
Though India Today had a home grown legacy system managing customer
support in place as early as 1992, it was one of first few media setups to have
successfully deployed a full-fledged CRM platform (Oracle/PeopleSoft) in 2005
for all its 'customer facing' functions. During the implementation, it was
made very clear that best practices of packaged solution shall be adopted to
enable streamlining of internal processes in the marketing, trade sales,
distribution, subscription and customer care areas.

Today, the CRM solution at India Today provides a comprehensive, real-time
solution that manages all our customer interactions-from marketing to sales to
service. In print media business, where subscription sales (or pre-paid
business) provide a very stable revenue stream, right marketing strategy holds
the key to successful business.

Through the CRM platform, our marketers are able to identify and measure the
success of their marketing activities, know what offers are most successful,
anticipate customer needs and preferences, and identify potential opportunities.
Not only this, the marketing department is able to track competitions' schemes
and advertising, promotions. CRM tools also facilitates content and cover
analysis for providing valuable feedback to editorial on changing consumer
tastes and preferences.

Post CRM implementation at India Today, the entire organization is now not
only able to get a common 360 degree view of all our customers and their
interactions but customer care and sales agents are able to pinpoint
opportunities to cross-sell and up-sell.

Once the sale is made, integrated service management lets our Customer Care
Department deliver higher service levels while controlling costs. The
'maker-checker' rules based escalation workflow ensures repeat complaints or
service calls are not routed to the same agent. Entire customer history is
maintained which helps in carrying an objective root cause analysis of customer
churn. 

Related CRM tools help in quick assessment and decision making support
through detailed reporting on subscriptions on hand and subscription campaigns
being executed.

Business at India Today has grown multifold over the past 12-18 months with a
new magazine or a supplement being launched almost every month. This would not
have been possible without a robust CRM platform in place with a ready
'go-to-market' framework. The system has already seen many successful new
product launches, new distribution channels, new market territories and, above
all, new business rules.

Anup Mandal

Head, IT India Today