Evergreen Investment Essay

Case Summary This case talks about an American mutual fund company that was facing problems  ·with its CRM system. Sales agents felt that they derived little value from it and also it was time consuming. The company is investigating if it could solve this problem by introducing mobile CRM to be accessed wirelessly on blackberry devices. But what are the key factors that have contributed to the success of mobile CRM initiative at Evergreen? Evergreen investments’ background Evergreen investments are the America’s 25th largest asset management company and 32nd largest investment management in the world. It is headquartered in Boston and Charlotte. The company entrusted with $250 billion in assets, over 350 investment professionals and over 3 million investors. CRM in the past In the past, the company use company-supplied laptops to gain access to CRM system, send Emails to customs and expend reporting and commission tracking. At the same time, the company use mobile phones to give their customs a voice call. Scheduling client calls is another way to build a link with customs. It include informal face-to-face meet. And also, client calls can make company knows the actual sales pitch, discuss market topics with customs, meet new faces and call back-up for data. At last, company update any information in CRM, and participate in evergreen conference call at fixed period. Issues in the past Although the company uses CRM to gain some success, their issues still exist. On the one hand, this method required too much time. The company needs to dial up the Internet, using multiple passwords and entering lengthy data, all of which are time consuming. On the other hand, some information is unavailable when they needed. More specifically, when the company meets the customer, laptops were unavailable. Moreover, the company required the use of internal sales consultant to help them handle the business with customers. At last, entry CRM is not easy, the company usually required 1 day per week and sometimes data is unreliable. Mobile CRM In order to improve the CRM system, the company introduces mobile CRM to be accessed wirelessly on blackberry devices. Blackberry main menu allows for easy access to CRM. Its clicking track wheel allows drill down into any sales number. Initial screens display YTD, MTD, previous day’s sales, or large orders. It enables more detailed data, reports, customer information, and other tasks. Detailed customer screens show single customer information including contact details and sales summary. On the basis of this mobile CRM, the Evergreen Investments’ design greatly improved and the productivity increased as well. The key factors to success The success of the company using mobile CRM due to three factors, easy to use, reliability and updated. More specifically, using the simple method can build an easy way to contact between customers and company. It also makes the company more effective in terms of CRM. In addition, the CRM system should be reliability for both customers and company, which resulting a trusted relationship between customers and company. At last, the company should update their data about their customers. The updated progress should be easy and fast. Potential threats Even if the company uses mobile CRM with an exact way, they may face some potential threats as well. People do not need to come to office, they just need a mobile phone and work wherever they want, which could lead to the low efficiency. They need to handle the relation between family and work. And also this kind of work pattern is not easy for managers to manage their company.