Leading consultancy firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), has identifed CRM as a major thrust area for the Indian market. It has tied up with a clutch of CRM module developers including Oracle. Senior executives of Oracle are expected to make presentations to executives of PwC later this month and following this the consultancy firm is expected to start making presentations to top corporates in the country, primarily those from the financial services and the FMCG sectors.

``So far everybody has been looking at putting in place systems which help smoothening processes which take place after an order for aproduct has been placed. CRM basically looks at the pre-sale part. It looks at what the customer wants and after having made contact with him to ensure that he comes back again,'' said a senior PwC official.

There are three stages in which the CRM package is implemented. The first stage is putting in place a data warehouse. This captures details of the targeted customer base and provides a company with information on the customers that it needs to get in touch with. A data warehouse is something which several corporates have already put in place.

The second stage of the exercise is sales force automation. ``After having identified the customer, how does one ensure that he is converted to the product. Sales force automation facilitates this conversion. Each sales force member through latest communication practices like Intranet or Internet communicates virtually online with the strategists at the head office. This enables further analysis and better monitoring of the sale process. You could have asituation where a salesman moves with a notebook directly communicating with his head office and eliminating doubts about a product in a customers mind,'' said the official.

``The beauty about sales force automation is that the gains through this module lead to a direct impact on the company's bottomline,''he added.

The third stage of the exercise involves installing call centres. ``Having made the sale, it is imperative for a company to make itself available to a customer for complaints and suggestions, if any. There is a need to ensure that a customer hears a voice when he makes a call as the growing feeling internationally is that the human touch is a necessity and too many things should not be automated,'' said the official.

Through automated devices, the call centre records the calls of all customers at a central place, forwards these calls for a reply and the answer is provided to the customer, instantaneously. ``All he needs to do is make a call and the company takes care of even the charge forthis call. Several global powerhouses have in fact started setting up their central call centres in India and it is time that Indian companies start doing the same,'' said the official.

India is a favoured destination for setting up call centres owing to cheaper installation costs and availability of human resources. An Indian company would for example, have a multilingual answer mechanism so that a customer is answered in the language he is comfortable with. A global company would have English, for example, as the language in which a query is answered.