Audits and Analysis

You cannot know where you want your KCRM investments to take your business unless you know where your business stands now. This is where the audit and analysis step helps.

The audit provides a snapshot of the present state: A customer knowledge audit provides the basis for planning, aligning and implementing KCRM by taking both explicit and tacit knowledge about customers and business partners, and business processes into account. The first audit can then be used as a reference point for evaluating future investments in building networked knowledge and relationship capital

An audit involves three phases 1.Initiation 2.Reference measure and method selection, and 3.Execution of the audit. These consist of 7 steps: defining the audit goal, assembling an audit team, identifying all relevant constraints, defining customer clusters or segments, determining the ideal state, selecting audit dimensions and method, and finally executing the method to document customer knowledge assets.

Customers can be classified into three broad categories: 1. Customers that are most valuable(MVCs- those who give most of your business at present those you want to retain, reward, and provide the highest level of service), those who are most grow able(MGCs), and those with zero or negative long-term value to your business(BZCs-ones whom a business is better off without).

Different customer clusters are treated differently. MVCs, MGCs, and BZCs must be identified, differentiated, addressed, and interacted with differently to maximize their value to your business. Additional value can be delivered to MVCs and additional value can be extracted from BZCs.

 The capability classification framework can help document knowledge assests in a trackable format.Functional, regulatory, positional, and cultural capabilities can be documented using this framework to facilitate future comparisons and for tracking progression over time.