Teratech Problem Definition and Solution

Problem Solution: TeraTech

Introduction

TeraTech is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions provider with a five year history of being the dominant player in the new arena of developing the complete pictures of industry customers then evaluating those relationships across both products and services within the pharmaceutical industry. The purpose of this paper is to first understand the situation at TeraTech, and through the use of the situation background, first, identify the issues and opportunities, along with all current stakeholder perspectives. Then describe the definition of the problem, and define the desired end-state goals. Taken together, this information can then support a better defined problem statement. Understanding the problem is the key element in establishing and implementing a successful solution.

Describe the Situation

To be successful in increasing sales and profits, an organization must take steps to sustain customer relationships and improve the complete business processes. Improving business processes can be done by scanning the environment to identify the social, economic, and competitive forces that might affect or influence the business. “These forces have an effect on the marketing activities of a firm in numerous ways. The process of continually acquiring information on events occurring outside the organization to identify and interpret potential trends is called environmental scanning” (Kerin, Hartley, Berkowitz, and Rudelius, 2006).

Environmental scanning provides information on market trends and helps explain why a trend is occurring. Environmental scanning also provides information on demographic changes, culture and its effects on marketing activities, macroeconomic conditions, consumer income, and changes in technology. Retrieving this information will help a marketer identify the best ways to market a company’s products and meet both the current and emerging needs of customers.

Sustaining customer relationship can be done by understanding the future needs of customers and providing for those needs. This can be achieved through the process of forecasting. Understanding buyer behavior is important for marketers, especially those that market to organizational buyers. “Understanding organizational markets and buying behavior is a necessary prerequisite for effective business marketing” (Kerin et al, 2006).

For TeraTech, sustaining customer relationships, increasing sales and increasing profits are their main goals. TeraTech must identify the different forces that will influence their organization as well as influence customer buying behaviors. TeraTech must also be able to forecast current and future customer needs in order to satisfy their customers. TeraTech needs to devise ways to identify customers and their needs, thus allowing them to create effectively a product that will meet current and future needs. Most of their customer comments, as stated in the customer feedback report, revolve around dissatisfaction with the current product support and service. The current CRM product does not meet the customer needs and if TeraTech had conducted environmental scanning prior to developing the current tool, they would have been successful in predicting future needs of analytical and modeling tools.

Issue and Opportunity Identification

The following information is from the TeraTech scenario and is a brief description of some of the important events that led to the identification of the issues and opportunities that are listed in Table 1. There has become more competition for TeraTech recently. Competitors within the pharmaceutical industry are now offering CRM technology that goes beyond basic functions by adding modeling and analytical tools. Due to the rapid changes in technology, customer needs are not being met with the current TeraTech CRM product. After running the CRM system for two years, TeraTech is currently not meeting the Return On Investment (ROI) and sales targets that were expected. The marketing team has not been able to make use of the data located within the sales and customer service teams. Therefore, the marketing department wants to take into consideration expanding TeraTech’s product to include analytical tools. If TeraTech integrates into their current CRM product new “analytical capabilities and a tool that will be able to assist integrating customer data, this could create opportunities with customers in the pharmaceutical and other industries” (ProQuest database, 2004). Specific issues for TeraTech include the following:

• TeraTech sales rates were down in the last quarter due to customer dissatisfaction.