Increasing quality time with your customers

As an experienced provider of Office Solutions collaborating the usage of IT Infrastructure to serve industries as wide and varied as banking, the public sector, telecommunications, education, consulting and hospitality, Ricoh (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd realized the urgency to increase its customer responsiveness level. "We needed information integration as our operations grew," explained Ricoh Malaysia managing director Lim Eng Weng. "This synchronization is further made complex, as our operations are nationwide. We wanted to give clients the information they needed and add value by helping them solve problems using our products and services," he added.

To overcome these challenges, Ricoh Malaysia is infusing its operations with its own mobile Customer Relation Management (mCRM) solution, which is expected to be fully operational in June 2004. The mCRM solution will decrease the time taken to respond to the customer from the standard two days to within 24 hours. "With mCRM, all of our teams have ready access to corporate resources and customer information," said Lim. The quality of information is consistent, up-to-date and integrated with the various departments such as accounts, shipping, customer service, technical support and frontline stores. The solution is expected to help increase Ricoh Malaysia's productivity level by 20 per cent and trim its overheads.

For example, Lim said the average Ricoh Malaysia sales representative spends 35 per cent of their time with customers and the remaining 65 per cent in the office, doing paperwork. "We want our sales team to spend more time with customers, strengthen and cement customer relationship. We will empower them with the right tools and have them help solve customer problems using our products, services and solutions. With mCRM, we hope to fulfill customer request at every visit instead of the usual three steps, which means more time, to satisfy customer's request."

"We aim to have our representatives leave customers' premises with an invoice with every visit. They no longer need to return and collate information, type letters and make another appointment at the office to see customers - which is our current norm." According to Lim, being mobile enables Ricoh Malaysia's sales force to send and receive information to headquarters, especially when closing transactions with customers.

Evolving customer values

Changing customer values, emphasis and perception was another decisive factor, which convinced Ricoh Malaysia to adopt mCRM. "We discovered our customers preferred to interact with a human and not with an interactive voice response system. They rate us highly when we solve their problems, compared to corporations that provide a self-help, technical-support website. Their expectation is to have Ricoh Malaysia solve problems with our products and transfer this burden to customers."

As such, the ability to help customers will be key in differentiating Ricoh Malaysia. "Our teams will need access to customer information and corporate resources in a real-time and up-to-date manner, " said Lim, adding such ability will position Ricoh Malaysia to do 'business at the speed of thought'.

Furthermore, he envisages the mobility element as critical to shorten the time-to-market period. The deployment, so far has "forced" Ricoh Malaysia to streamline its current operational processes. "Any reduction in time, cost and effort is already good news," said Lim, adding the supervision level has been magnified. "We can monitor individual performance in our sales and customer support team. The new mCRM system alerts the respective manager when sales or customer support performance level drops. Managers can pro-actively offer help before the performance levels worsen." Individual performance assessment becomes more effective as the mCRM's built-in reporting tools can help Ricoh Malaysia structure "the right incentives for its employees".

Deployment status

The entire project is being deployed in three stages and meant for 150 sales, customer and technical support representatives at Ricoh Malaysia nationwide. Phase 1 saw 20 representatives testing the system and the current Phase 2, 40. The last phase will see it extended to the remaining 90 employees by mid next year.

The mCRM solution is a customized version of SalesLogix Sales, suited to Ricoh Malaysia's requirement. It includes Ricoh Enterprise e-Mobile, a thin-client application for use in GPRS/ GSM-based mobile devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) that accesses a central database. This application's advantage is that information is stored in a centralized server but must be linked to the central database to complete every transaction. The mobile communication cost incurred may be high.

The customization also sees the development of Ricoh Enterprise Smart Mobile, a fat-client application for PDAs. Information is stored in the PDA and needs to be synchronized with corporate headquarters at least once a day. However, the information is lost if the PDA is destroyed, damaged or stolen.

The mCRM deployment is expected to make use of various devices - sleek and stylish PDAs for the mobile sales team and ruggerised PDAs, fitted to be shockproof and encased with a non-slip, protective cover for its customer and technical support teams.

First mover advantage

While Lim acknowledged the local mobility scenario is still in its infancy, Ricoh Malaysia can't afford to adopt a wait-and-see attitude. "We estimate it'll be two years before the mobility concept becomes a corporate reality in Malaysia," he said likening it to email, which began as a novelty but has grew to become an acceptable business communication form. "We want to use mCRM when everyone is just beginning to understand it. This explains our urgency in implementing mCRM."

However, Ricoh Malaysia paying to play the role of an early technology adopter -capital expenditure on the mCRM solution runs high - approximately RM500,000 with items such as software licenses, customization, man-hours and hardware taking 80 per cent. Despite the costs, Lim opines Ricoh Malaysia's first mover advantage in mCRM will offer an unassailable position. "Our teams can present customers with an integrated and consistent view of information - from product information, account history to order tracking." Such information can also be shared, a vital cog in face of initiatives to transform the nation into a knowledge-based economy.

Learning experience

"We advice local corporations to consider two elements when considering mCRM based on our experience. Firstly, consider the corporation's scale of operation and business. It makes economic sense for large corporations to invest heavily in mCRM. Large corporations can justify the capital investment needed in mCRM as such businesses have higher returns per customer and can afford to adopt a long term view," he said. Smaller sized corporations may consider using mCRM from application service providers (ASPs) who charge on a pay-per-use basis.

Secondly, corporations must consider its transaction frequency and information volume. "If both are high, mCRM can help streamline operations, effectively reducing cost and increase sales productivity." For example, Ricoh Malaysia has diverse products and services, catering to a nationwide clientele in many sectors such as financial, services, logistics, Government, telecommunication, education, consulting and tourism. "With limitations on our human resources, mCRM becomes crucial to help us find new customers and service existing customers."

Although the mCRM deployment journey has been lengthy, Lim is satisfied with its progress. "mCRM to us means having the ability to tackle whatever the customer needs in front of the customer, from solving problems to fulfilling information request. Any corporation that wants to do that must have integrated processes, supported by a reliable mobile communications provider."

If your organisation seeks a similar enterprise mobility solution, please contact us at
1-800 82 1919 - we, together with our partners, will work with you to develop a solution best suited to your business needs.