Articles

CRM in defense industry

Defense industry is the one which signifies the security standards of a nation. Defense industry has undergone some up’s and down's in its market since previous years. So, few of the players in industry has decided to go for CRM (customer relationship management) as their option to meet the customer requirements. Some of the key issues observe earlier in defense industry is like rebound of passenger traffic in air and parked commercial airplanes are increased rapidly, bankrupt in airlines, orders for new planes are decreased, spending on war for defense industry is increased and commercial airline industry is restructured.

As a result of this, defense industry is experiencing declines in its revenue growth and profit margins. So, to assess their competitive position and increasing customer base, these companies have focused on sales, marketing and customer service to compete with top players. According to a report there are 60 percent of companies in defense and aerospace industry have desired to improve their sales and marketing skill development.

With these transformations, the defense and aerospace industry has taken a turn to CRM which helps to manage their relationship with the customers. The defense industry manufacturers are focusing on CRM to achieve six core aspects like improving sales for effective business development, improve quality in product to configure sales cycle, deliver quality service to customers with superior standards, collaborating with independent service organizations and suppliers, drive customers to business development by improving marketing campaigns and increasing productivity from employees and knowledge sharing.

Most of the organizations in defense and aerospace industry have know that they are not customer driven and their customers are not having satisfying environment and don’t have potential to profitability. The process in defense and aerospace industry is for example, a customer might interact with dozens of manufacturers for his requirement to meet hundreds of products for its growth. But, there is no platform for manufacturer to interact with customers through sales representative. There is no face to face interaction with the customer to deliver customized and differentiated service which a customer expects.

There are four key factors to deliver quality and optimal experience to customers to prevent aerospace and defense manufacturers. Information silo which is the storage for customer data to scatter throughout the organization based on product and business line. Business processes that are not reflected for best practices means the business processes have not been designed by keeping customers in mind. Inability exists in deploying cross-applications for business processes which because of the cost and complexity of enterprises involved in integration of applications into business processes that effortlessly span multiple applications. Lack of real time intelligence in the defense and aerospace industry; whereas, manufacturers of defense and aerospace industry lack in real time intelligence in operational performance, market standards, customer preferences, satisfaction and requirements.