Marketing and E-Business

Just as the term e-business no longer refers to the simple practice of conducting business on the Internet, the expression e-CRM has evolved from just an online point application to a more comprehensive, ongoing strategy to enhance the end user's overall experience. Today e-business not only encompasses the exchange of goods and services online, but also has grown to include customer service and business collaboration. In turn, e-CRM, developed as a complement to a business's overall CRM strategy, has morphed to become an integrated online plan that includes Web analytics, content management, self-service, and collaboration. Now that e-CRM takes a more holistic view of the customer, the employment of appropriate online technologies will only move it closer to replicating the real-time interaction in the offline world that produces happier customers, sustained loyalty, and increased sales.
With the onset of the Internet came a push for companies to establish a global presence. In fact, a recent Frost & Sullivan report valued the global CRM marketplace at $11 billion last year. In addition, this report listed the interactive marketplace as one of the main drivers of this growth--tallying a 30 percent increase between 2000 and 2001. Since the online world has become such an integral part of day-to-day business and because it appeals to such a mass, global universe of consumers, businesses are constantly searching for innovative, yet cost-efficient, methods to reach these relatively faceless individuals. …