APPLICATION OF E-CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT AND A NOTE ON CRYPTOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION As internet is becoming more and more important in

business life, many companies consider as an opportunity to reduce customer-service costs, tighten customer relationships and most important, further personalize marketing messages and enable mass customization. This has paved the way to introduce Customer Relationship Management (CRM) by using E-Commerce called E-CRM.

We can define E- CRM as activities to manage customer relationships by using the Internet, web browsers. The challenge hereby is to offer communication and information on the right topic, in the right amount, and at the right time that fits the customer’s specific needs.

E- CRM is a concept derived from E-commerce. It uses net environment i.e., intranet, extranet and internet. It concerns all forms of managing relationships with customers making use of Information Technology (IT) to integrate internal organization resources and external marketing strategies to understand and fulfill their customers needs.

OBJECTIVES OF E- CRM Effectively managing differentiated relationships with all

customers an communicating with them on an individual basis.

Companies can supercharge profits by acknowledging that different groups of customers vary widely in their behavior, desires, and responsiveness to marketing.

 To reinforce the reliance of customers and create additional customer sources, firms maintain the relationship in two general categories B2B(Business-to-Business) and B2C(Business-to-Customer or Business-to-Consumer) so that the implementation of CRM should come from respective viewpoints.

It increases customer loyalty and customer retention by improving customer satisfaction, E-loyalty results in long-term profits for online retailers as they incur less costs of recruiting new customers.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CRM & E-CRM

Customer contact made through fax, retail store & phone.

Views differ based on the audience, and personalized views are not available. Individual personalization requires program changes.

 More time involved in implementation and maintenance is more expensive as the system exists at different locations and on various servers.

Internet, PDA technologies, email, wireless are used for customer contacts.

Personalized individual views based on purchase history and preferences. Individual has ability to customize view.

 Less time involved as Implementation and maintenance can take place at one location and on one server.

CRM E- CRM

FACTORS TO BE CONSIDERED FOR SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF E- CRM

Organization Objectives  Focus on All Business Aspects Define the Business Problem Establishing Proper Metrics Business Processes not Technology Implement Change Using Skilled Managers Choose the Right Vendors Ease of Usage 

APPLICATIONS OF E- CRM With the creation of Sales Force Automation (SFA), the

trend of the upcoming Internet can be seen as the foundation of what we know as E- CRM today.

Data collection, aggregation and customer interaction is easy due to its application because customer preference information is gathered quickly using website, email questionnaire and after proper analysis they are able to satisfy their needs accordingly.  

Due to improved communication technology, different departments in company implement (intraorganizational) or work with business partners (interorganizational) more efficiently by sharing information.

Companies use the Internet to acquire products or supplies for in-house production. This is known as e procurement used to achieve cost efficiency.

 

Usage electronic chat as a means of technical support and customer support. This helps any company to save time and effort.

Maintain a central server or email list as a method of distributing information.

Building sales and sales revenue by increasing the area of operation and reducing operating costs, hikes the efficiency of the supply chain management.

CRYPTOGRAPHY

Cryptography is the science of information security. The word is derived from the Greek kryptos, meaning hidden.

The origin of cryptography is usually dated from about 2000 BC, with the Egyptian practice of hieroglyphics which consisted of complex pictograms.

The first known use of a modern cipher was by Julius Caesar (100 BC to 44 BC), who did not trust his messengers when communicating with his governors and officers.

For this reason, he created a system in which each character in his messages was replaced by a character three positions ahead of it in the Roman alphabet..

During the classic age, the originator of an encrypted message shared the decoding technique needed to recover the original information only with intended recipients, thereby precluding unwanted persons to do the same.

Now, cryptography is heavily based on mathematical theory and computer science practice; cryptographic algorithms are designed around computational hardness assumptions, making such algorithms hard to break in practice by any adversary.

It is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties (called adversaries). More generally, it is about constructing and analyzing protocols that overcome the influence of adversaries.

Applications of cryptography include ATM cards, computer passwords etc..,

OBJECTIVES OF CRYPTOGRAPHYo Confidentiality (the information cannot be understood

by anyone for whom it was unintended)o Integrity (the information cannot be altered in storage

or transit between sender and intended receiver without the alteration being detected)

o Non-repudiation (the creator/sender of the information cannot deny at a later stage his or her intentions in the creation or transmission of the information)

o Authentication (the sender and receiver can confirm each other’s identity and the origin/ destination of the information)

TYPES OF CRYPTOGRAPHY Conventional key cryptography: In this, same

key is used both for encryption and decryption of the message

Public key cryptography: An asymmetric scheme for which a pair of keys is used. Encryption key is called public key and decryption key is called private key. The main advantage is that only who has the decryption key is allowed to read the message and no one can modify it.

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