5016_ASS 1 # DRAFT 1 # Process Improvement Plan # MBA-FPX5016 Operations Mgmt for Leaders
bout Tecnotree Incorporation
Tecnotree is a Finnish organization founded in 1978. 4 It is a full-stack digital BSS provider with an experience of over 40 years in deep domain knowledge, proven delivery, and transformation capability across the globe. 5 The organization aims at helping its customers prosper, innovate, and delight in a digital world. Tecnotree delivers omnichannel customer experience with signature Finnish design and quality excellence. Customers who use these products establish a dynamic ecosystem that offers highly relevant solutions to people. 6 They will anticipate the demand and easily bring partners, products, and services to the marketplace. Its digital BSS suite comprises products for digital customer lifecycle manager, digital lead and prospect manager, digital loyalty manager, digital my life dashboard, digital partner relationship manager, digital commerce engine among others (Tecnotree 2019).
In 2019, the organization announced a surge in Digital Micro-services Acceleration (DMA), Digital Experience Accelerator (DEA), and Digital Revenue Accelerator (DRA). 5 DMA uses open APIs to wrap existing legacy services. 7 This enables the creation of APIs on top with microservices orchestration and exposing and monetizing those metered APIs through an API gateway. 5 DEA includes customer 360 and Omnichannel Enablers which help CSPs develop an omnichannel customer experience connecting to legacy platforms as well as delivering new self-care capabilities. 7 DRA includes Digital Partner Relationship Manager which enables CSPs to onboard new partners, aggregate bundle, and sell partner offerings as well as manage complex multi-party settlements (Tecnotree 2019).
Customer Lifecycle Manager (CLM) In customer relationship management, the customer lifecycle is described as the progression of steps a customer goes through when considering, purchasing, using, and maintaining loyalty to a product or service (Mizuno 2020). The digital customer lifecycle manager is a product of Tecnotree that allows organizations to manage their customers digitally. This product supports omnichannel digital journeys for subscribers with a digital wallet and social media integration. It comes with an optional native mobile CLM application for mobile working. This supports the handling of dealers, resellers, and point of sale operations for businesses. Moreover, it comes with incentives and commissions management capabilities to boost sales channel performance.
There are five distinct steps of the customer lifecycle which include reaching, acquisition, conversion, retention, and loyalty (Mizuno 2020). They involve capturing the attention of the potential customer, entailing them of the company’s products, turning them to purchase the products, and keeping them as loyal customers. It is the objective of the customer relationship management that all customers move through the cycle repeatedly. Tecnotree is offering the digital CLM for organizations with the hope that they will retain their customers which will improve sales. Understanding the customer lifecycle is essential to the success of a business. Companies should improve and optimize all the stages in the lifecycle. Some of the metrics they can use to assess the lifecycle include:
Stage Metrics
1 Reach Impressions, Branded searches and Website Visits
2 Acquisition Leads and Inquiries
3 Conversion Lead Conversion Rates
4 Retention Renewal Rates
5 Loyalty Customer Satisfaction scores
In each stage, different metrics have to be used. The organization has to impress and visit websites to capture the attention of customers. They have to ensure that the customer has shifted their focus on the product. The digital CLM has to ensure that the organizations know the type of customers they need for their products. Organizations using this product will ensure that they have kept active leads and answered all inquiries by the customer. The digital platform allows customers to ask all questions regarding the product or service and a response will be provided by the organization through a notification chat (Eaton & Overcast 2020).
After continuous online communication between the customer and the organization using this service, the organization can negotiate for their process and plan for a business transaction. This entails shipment of products, purchase price, and all terms of sale for their products. The conversion rate is the rate at which potential customers take precise desirable action. The organization will check the renewal rates for the organization to ensure customer retention and analyze customer satisfaction scores that ensure customer loyalty. The digital CLM system can be tracked periodically and the business metrics can be compared with that of its competitors which help businesses address their competitive loopholes in their products or services (Stark 2016).
Digital CLM steps
Reaching is the first stage in which a customer develops awareness of a company’s product or service. This can be brought about by social media, advertisements among other sources of information. The objective of reaching out is to create an association between the brand and the customer. Acquisition depends on the organization that will use the website (Eaton & Overcast 2020). During this stage, potential customers learn more about the organization’s products and services and their terms of sale. They can visit the organization’s website where they will converse with sales representatives of the organization. The digital platform allows the customers to have direct conversations with the organization and all their queries are sent and the organization can offer their feedback via the client’s email.
The conversion stage is where customers purchase a product or service. The customers are provided with the terms and conditions before the purchase of the product. The organization using this Digital CLM has to ensure they comprehend the customer’s key purchasing criteria, then position products that will ensure they have a competitive edge over their competitors. After the customer has been acquired, the organization focuses on customer satisfaction. The organization will look into the customer frequently visited websites and offer complementary services via their site. This will ensure that the customer experience is improved and that terms of trade are simplified. 8 Customer retention is vital as studies reveal that it costs less to retain existing customers than acquiring new customers. In the customer loyalty step, satisfied customers renew their subscriptions continuously as they purchase the products and services of the organization. the organization benefits from these customers as they will refer the organization to friends and family (Eaton & Overcast 2020).
Importance of Digital CLM procedure
Organizations need to understand the customer lifecycle. It follows a cyclic pattern as the loyal customers get to be the sources of customers in the reaching stage. Customer retention is the end goal in developing strong brand loyalty and organizations need to continually offer relevant and timely messaging to prior customers. They help businesses maximize their revenue potential as they aim at making loyal customers their advocates (Eaton & Overcast 2020). As long as there are consistency, relevance, and messages that meet the needs of your customers, the transformation from an enquiring customer to a loyal customer is very swift. By understanding the procedure, organizations can understand their customers from a broad perspective.
Process analysis
Analyzing the changes in a process is important for organizations. Tecnotree corporation should ensure that they have properly analyzed the process to ensure that it will be flexible and adaptable for all organizations that use the system. The process should ensure the independence of the organization as well as confidentiality as some customers will pay for their services through the site. This process of digital customer lifecycle manager has to ensure that it is centered in the organization that uses it. This is to ensure that the organization using the system should have primacy in the design of the organization. Some systems will be process centered to the process owners in that they will have authority, responsibility, and accountability of the product and services they oversee. Tecnotree will therefore ensure that the organization using this platform have the authority to use the website as they wish (Mizuno 2020).
9 This process should be capable of three-sigma. A three-sigma refers to a process that operates efficiently and produces high-quality goods. The Digital CLM has to ensure an accuracy level that is higher than 93.333%. this is to ensure that the process runs at a sigma level close to six-sigma. The system has to ensure that revenues generated from customers using the site outweigh the cost by a high percentage. This is to ensure that the organization breaks even the initial cost of implementing the system and that Tecnotree will attract more companies that would wish to advance their technological capabilities. The system should also ensure that customers get to know more of the products offered by the organization at the lowest possible cost. Tecnotree should advance all its systems to six-sigma as it will attract more organizations.
A well laid Digital CLM process should ensure statistical control. 10 A statistical process control (SPC), is a quality control method that uses statistical methods to monitor and control processes. This ensures that organizations maximize profitability as they look at cutting expenses (Stark 2016). This system allows scrapping of waste services, that would cost organizations using this service as well as customers who will use the website to know more about the products. The organization will use control charts as well as focus on continuous system improvement as this will help in managing the organization’s operations. 11 The system should ensure the initial establishment process and regular production use of the process. This allows organizations to detect and prevent errors at an early stage. Organizations that will use the Digital CLM will ensure that they know all issues about customers.
Cause-effect analysis When an operation in the organization is not working as it should, the organizational team should ensure that they have explored all factors that may lead to the cause before arriving at a solution. A cause and effect analysis will allow the management to solve a problem completely. It ensures brainstorming and provides a map where all possible causes of the problem are shown rather than the obvious ones. The analysis helps management and other important stakeholders to discover the root cause of a problem, identify process bottlenecks as well as identify where and why a process is not working (Stark 2016). The information provided below will highlight a cause-effect analysis for Digital CLM for Tecnotree corporation.
Management · Slow decision making
Manpower · Lack of trained personnel
Machine · Server failure · Storage capacity
Method · Complexity in installing
Poor Digital CLM
Recommendation
The Digital CLM system is efficient in terms of production and operations. There are some loopholes that the organization needs to ensure they are dealt with accordingly to increase the system’s efficiency. The system should allow businesses that purchase it to have an easy time implementing and executing the system. Some of the system configurations will require the skills in the information system, software development as well as hardware compatibilities. The system by itself requires organizations to have a robust server system to host the website and all its components. This is a challenge for as most businesses require a smaller server system. Tecnotree should look into the server system that will enable all consumers to appreciate the power of the digital CLM. If the stated recommendations are put in practice, the organization using the system will receive maximum efficiency of six-sigma (Mizuno 2020).
References
Mizuno, S. (2020). Management for quality improvement: the 7 new QC tools. CRC Press.
Eaton, D. A., & Overcast, I. (2020). ipyrad: Interactive assembly and analysis of RADseq datasets. Bioinformatics, 36(8), 2592-2594.
Stark, J. (2016). 12 Product lifecycle management. In Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 2) (pp. 1-35). Springer, Cham.
Tecnotree (2019). 13 Products / Digital Customer Lifecycle Manager. Retrieved from < https://www.tecnotree.com/products/DCLM>
Appendix
Appendix 1:
13 Digital Customer Lifecycle Manager Procedure
Appendix 2:
13 Digital Customer lifecycle flowchart
Reach