| Activity Accounting |
A system that defines and reports the activities, costs, activity characteristics and outputs of each department, cost center or group of employees in an organization. |
| Activity Based Budgeting (ABB) |
Activity Based Budgeting (ABB) is a common sense, systematic method of planning and budgeting the resources of an organization. In essence, ABB is Activity Accounting in reverse, e.g. start ABB at the bottom of the Activity Accounting spreadsheet. Define the cost per output target and planned activity workloads to determine headcount and expense budgets. |
| Activity Based Management (ABM) |
Activity Based Management (ABM) is common sense, systematic method of planning, controlling and improving labor and overhead cost. ABM is based on the principle "activities consume costs". While traditional cost systems focus on the "worker", ABM systems focus on the "work". The basic building block for ABM is Activity Accounting. |
| Activity-Based Costing (ABC) |
Activity Based Costing (ABC) is a systematic, cause & effect method of assigning the cost of activities to products, services, customers or any cost object. ABC is based on the principle that "products consume activities". Traditional cost systems allocate costs based on direct labor, material cost, revenue or other simplistic methods. As a result, traditional systems tend to overcost high volume products, services and customers and undercost low volume. |
| Application Service Provider (ASP) |
Application Service Provider (ASP) offers an outsourcing mechanism whereby they develop, supply and manage application software and hardware for their customers, thus freeing up customers internal IT resources. |
| Application Software |
Software applications that are intended for end-users, such as database programs, word processors, and spreadsheets. Application software runs on top of system software. |
| Artificial Intelligence |
A broad term describing the field of developing computer programmes to simulate human thought processes and behaviours. |
| Audit Trail |
Manual or computerized tracing of the transactions affecting the contents or origin of a record. |
| Auditability |
A characteristic of modern information systems, gauged by the ease with which data can be substantiated by trading it to source documents and the extent to which auditors can rely on preverified and monitored control processes. |
| Authentication |
1.The process of verifying the eligibility of a device, originator, or individual to access specific categories of information or to enter specific areas of a facility. This process involves matching machine-readable code with a predetermined list of authorized end users. 2. A practice of establishing the validity of a transmission, message, device, or originator, which was designed to provide protection against fraudulent transmissions.The process of confirming a user’s identity; commonly done through the use of passwords or digital certificates. |
| Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) |
The specialized telephone system used in incoming call centers. It is a programmable device that automatically answers calls, queues calls, distributes calls to agents, plays delay announcements to callers and provides real-time and historical reports on these activities. May be a stand-alone system, or ACD capability built into a CO, network or PBX. |
| Available To Sell (ATS) |
Total quantity of goods committed to the pipeline for a ship to or selling location. This includes the current inventory at a location and any open purchase orders. ATS is the quantity compared to the Goal and ROP to determine the replenishment need. |
| Balanced Scorecard |
A business model developed by Kaplan and Norton as a tool to measure organisational performance against both short and long-term goals. The balanced scorecard is designed to focus managers attention on those factors that most help the business strategy and so alongside financial measures, it adds measures for customers, internal processes and employee learning. Some organisations have used the balanced scorecard model in setting and measuring knowledge management strategies. |
| Benchmarking |
The continuous process of measuring producers, services, and practices against strong competitors or recognized industry leaders. It is an ongoing activity that is intended to improve performance and can be applied to all facets of operation. Benchmarking requires a measurement mechanism so that the performance "gap" can be identified. It focuses on comparing best practices among dissimilar enterprises. |
| Best Practice (Good Practice) |
A process or methodology that has been proven to work well and produce good results, and is therefore recommended as a model. Some people prefer to use the term good practice as in reality it is debateable whether there is a single best approach. |
| Blog |
A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger." Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in cronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominantly. |
| Bounced Email |
Email that the Internet has been unable to deliver to a recipients address after several tries is returned (bounced) to the sender. This can happen for a number of reasons and the header of the bounced message may have one of these clues: user unknown (check your spelling), host unknown (check your spelling), network unreachable (gateway or network backbone problems), users mailbox quota is exceeded, connection timed out (software problem on the destination mailserver), or connection refused (problem with destination mail server). |
| Broadband |
A high-speed, high-capacity transmission channel. Broadband channels are carried on coaxial or fiber-optic cables that have a wider bandwidth than conventional telephone lines, giving them the ability to carry video, voice, and data simultaneously. |
| Business Intelligence |
Business Intelligence refers to the type of granular information that line-of-business managers seek as they analyze sales trends, customer buying habits and other key performance metrics of an organization. |
| Business Metrics |
Business Metrics is a set of traditional and nontraditional business measurements - such as judging product and service quality, rating customer relationships and measuring employee satisfaction and commitment - that are seen as critical for improving a companys bottom line. |
| Business Process Management (BPM) |
Business Process Management defines, enables, and manages the exchange of enterprise information through the semantics of a business process view that involves employees, customers, partners, applications and databases. It has to be capable of modeling a process, brokering that process, delivering it with straight through processing (STP), and then managing it, all within a single environment. Because of its far reaching implications for the ability of enterprises to adapt, it is much more than a technology fad but a management issue that needs to be on senior managements agenda, driving the IT support of the business. (Source: Aberdeen Group) |
| Business Process Reengineering (BPR) |
A systematic, disciplined improvement approach that critically examines, rethinks, and redesigns, and implements the redesigned mission-delivery pro-cesses to achieve dramatic improvements in performance in areas important to customers and other stakeholders. BPR is also referred to by such terms as business process improvement (BPI) or business process development, and business process redesign. While the term can be applied to incremental process improvement effort, it is more commonly and increasingly associated with dramatic or radical overhauls of existing business processes. |
| Business-to-Business (B2B) |
As opposed to business-to-consumer (B2C). Many companies are now focusing on this strategy, and their sites are aimed at businesses (think wholesale) and only other businesses can access or buy products on the site. Internet analysts predict this will be the biggest sector on the Web. |
| Business-to-Consumer (B2C) |
The hundreds of e-commerce Web sites that sell goods directly to consumers are considered B2C. This distinction is important when comparing Websites that are B2B as the entire business model, strategy, execution, and fulfillment is different. |
| Call Center |
A call center is a central place or network of places where customer and other telephone calls are handled by an enterprise. Typically, a call center has the ability to handle a considerable volume of calls at the same time, to screen calls and forward them to someone qualified to handle them, and to log calls. Call Centers are used by mail-order catalog organizations, telemarketing companies, computer product help desks, and any large enterprise that uses the telephone to sell or service products and services. |
| Callback |
A user authentication scheme used by computers running dial-in services. A user dials in to a computer and types a logon ID password. The computer breaks the connection and automatically calls the user back at a preauthorized number. |
| Category Management |
The management of product categories as strategic business units. The practice empowers a category manager with full responsibility for the assortment decisions, inventory levels, shelf-space allocation, promotions and buying. With this authority and responsibility, the category manager is able to judge more accurately the consumer buying patterns, product sales and market trends of that category. |
| Change Management |
The practice of steering a company in a new strategic direction and keeping all involved people and projects aligned with the new goals as the organization, jobs, technology and processes are uprooted. |
| Channel Conflict |
This occurs when a companys old economy supply chain competes with its new economy supply chains. |
| Coaching |
A one-to-one relationship that aims to bring about individual learning and performance improvement, usually focusing on achieving predefined objectives within a specific time period. The role of the coach is to create a supportive environment in which to challenge and develop the critical thinking skills, ideas and behaviours of the person being coached, so that they might reach their full potential. |
| Collaborative Working |
A generic term that simply means teamwork or a group effort. It also has a more specific meaning in knowledge management, where it is often used to describe close working relationships involving the sharing of knowledge. |
| Competitive Advantage |
A widely-used term in the private sector to describe something that differentiates a company from its competitors in the same industry and makes it more likely to gain profits than the others. |
| Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) |
Combining data with voice systems in order to enhance telephone services. For example, automatic number identification (ANI) allows a callers records to be retrieved from the database while the call is routed to the appropriate party. Automatic telephone dialing from an address list is an outbound example. |
| Content Management System (CMS) |
Content management systems support the creation, management, distribution, publishing, and discovery of corporate information. Also known as ‘web content management’ (WCM), these systems typically focus on online content targeted at either a corporate website or intranet. |
| Customer Analytics |
Customer Analytics comprises all programming that analyzes data about an enterprises customers and presents it so that better and quicker business decisions can be made. CRM analytics can be considered a form of online analytical processing (OLAP) and may employ data mining. (Source: SearchCRM.com) |
| Customer Capital |
The value of an organizations relationships with its customers including the intangible loyalty of its customers to the company or a product, based on reputation, purchasing patterns, or the customers ability to pay. |
| Customer Experience |
An experience can be described as the emotional effect on a person during the course of an action or an event. The Customer Experience is the emotional response of a customer or prospect when interacting with a company during a business transaction. As any marketer will testify, customers are becoming increasingly difficult to woo. Customers want low prices for quality products and services, they want to purchase them efficiently and conveniently and what’s more, they want personal service through and beyond the purchase process. Companies are recognizing that the key to sustained and profitable business growth is the customer. As such, many are depolarising their operations and migrating from a product-centric to a customer-focused business. These companies are also consolidating their brand to offer a "360-degree" Customer Experience so that the customer gets a consistent brand message at every angle. The net effect of these efforts is an improved, consistent customer experience across all touch points, better customer service, increased market share and customer loyalty. |
| Customer Experience Management (CEM) |
Management of Customer Experience |
| Customer Service |
Customer service is an organizations ability to supply their customers wants and needs. ACA Group sums up what excellent customer service is: "excellent customer service is the ability of an organization to constantly and consistently exceed the customers expectations." If an organization is going to consistently exceed customers expectations, it has to recognize that every aspect of its business has an impact on customer service, not just those aspects of the business that involve face-to-face customer contact. Improving customer service involves making a commitment to learning what your customers needs and wants are, and developing action plans that implement customer friendly processes. |
| Customer-Centric |
Refers to a strategy or focus, which is closely aligned with CRM and the fusion of a company;s people, process and technology. A Customer-Centric strategy is meant to measure and monitor all accessible and valuable customer information. |
| Data Cleansing |
The process of ensuring that a company s CRM data is consistent, accurate and recorded correctly. Data Cleansing is often performed on existing legacysystems that have duplicate records or that are plagued by poor querying and reporting due to dirty data. It is also a critical component of any new CRM implementation in an effort to ensure that the new system starts with clean data. |
| Data Management |
An ability to solve the problems associated with storing, managing and extracting information from the numerous data sets being used by an organization. |
| Data Mart |
A repository of data that serves a particular community of knowledge workers. The data may come from an enterprisewide database or a data warehouse. |
| Data Migration |
Also referred to as Data Conversion or Data Import. This process involves moving data from an old system into the new CRM system. Existing data from the old system will be cleansed and mapped to the new CRM system prior to starting this process. |
| Data Mining |
An information extraction activity whose goal is to discover hidden facts contained in databases. Using a combination of machine learning, statistical analysis, modeling techniques and database technology, data mining finds patterns and subtle relationships in data and infers rules that allow the prediction of future results. Typical applications include market segmentation, customer profiling, fraud detection, evaluation of retail promotions, and credit risk analysis. |
| Data Modeling |
The practice of analyzing an enterprise’s data and identifying the relationships among the data. |
| Data Scrubbing |
The practice of monitoring a data warehouse and removing data that is not trustworthy or timely. |
| Data Warehouse |
A Data Warehouse is a consolidated view of your enterprise data, optimized for reporting and analysis. Basically its an aggregated, sometimes summarized copy of transaction and non-transaction data specifically structured for dynamic queries and analytics. In data warehousing, data and information are extracted from heterogeneous production data sources as they are generated, or in periodic stages, making it simpler and more efficient to run queries over data that originally came from different sources. Data is turned into high-quality information to meet all enterprise reporting requirements for all levels of users. Interactive content can be delivered to anyone in the extended enterprise – customers, partners, employees, managers, and executives – anytime, anywhere. |
| Database Marketing |
The process of building, maintaining and using customer databases for the purpose of contacting and transacting business. |
| Database System |
A collection of programs that enables you to store, modify, and extract information from a database. There are many different types of DBMSs, ranging from small systems that run on personal computers to huge systems that run on mainframes. The following are examples of database applications: From a technical standpoint, DBMSs can differ widely. The terms relational, network, flat, and hierarchical all refer to the way a DBMS organizes information internally. The internal organization can affect how quickly and flexibly you can extract information. |
| DBMS |
DBMS stands for Database Management Systems. Companies need to process a large amount of data. Manual storage of this data wastes a lot of time while retrieving it. It also requires tedious clerical hours to arrange the data in the form required by top management. Storing this data in a way to facilitate easy access is very important and that is why computers are used in organizations. This is possible using DBMS. DBMS, besides allowing you to store large amounts of data, allows you to retrieve information easily whenever and in whichever format it is desired. |
| Decision Support System (DSS) |
Software that speeds access and simplifies data analysis, queries, etc. within a database management system. |
| Demand Chain Management (DCM) |
Same as Supply Chain Management, but with emphasis on consumer pull vs. supplier push. |
| Digital Certificates |
Digital Certificates are issued by a trusted third party known as a certification authority (CA). The CA validates the identity of a certificate holder and "signs" the certificate to attest that it hasnt been forged or altered in any way. |
| Direct Marketing |
Direct marketing is broadly defined, in media terms, as any direct communication to a consumer or business recipient that is designed to generate a response in the form of an order (direct order), a request for further information (lead generation), and/or a visit to a store or other place of business for purchase of a specific product(s) or service(s) (traffic generation). A leading trade magazine Direct Marketing goes a bit further: "an interactive system of marketing that uses one or more advertising media to effect a measurable response and/or transaction at any location, with this activity stored on a database." The goal is to provide the customer information relative to their needs and interests. A recent Bear Stearns profile on the direct and interactive marketing industry offers a helpful way of looking at it as a cyclical process with six distinct phases: The creative and design phase...where a marketing plan and media channels are selected; Data compilation...where both internal data, such as customer lists...and outside data from a database company or list broker are assembled in preparation for phase three, which is.... Database management...where the information is purged, enhanced and standardized; Database analysis...which further focuses on an optimal target market; Next...execution and fulfillment...where customer inquiries and orders are acted upon...and that information is passed on to selected media channels; and... And finally...response analysis...where the results of the campaign are examined for effectiveness before this cycle begins again. As we move into the 21st Century direct and interactive marketers will continue to focus on customer acquisition, service and value in traditional as well as new media. |
| Dirty Data |
A common problem found in applications that employ databases. Dirty data may include incorrect or missing data values, and duplicate records, which can lead to problems such as inaccurate queries and reports. Dirty data may be the caused by badly managed data imports, poor entry standards for end users, poor coding or customization of the CRM system. When implementing a CRM system, one critical component is to ensure that your existing data is cleansed and properly migrated to the new system. |
| Document Management |
Systems and processes for managing documents including the creation, editing, production, storage, indexing and disposal of documents. This usually refers to electronic documents and uses specific document management software. |
| e-Commerce |
e-Commerce denotes all business activity carried out on the web including programs and systems for the management of commercial activity on the Internet. Also used for programmes that facilitates and simplify the carrying out of such activities. |
| eCRM |
Is the acronym for electronic Customer Relationship Management. This is the online version of Customer Relationship Management utilising and interfacing business processes and data with offline, back end systems. eCRM consistently manages personal relevant and productive interactions, a means to build successful relationships with customers, vendors, employees, investors, and others using new technology. |
| Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) |
A strategy in which the grocery retailer, distributor and supplier trading partners work closely together to eliminate excess costs from the grocery supply chain. |
| Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) |
Computer-to-Computer transmission of business information in a standard format. For EDI purists, "computer-to-computer" means direct transmission from the originating application program to the receiving, or processing, application program, and an EDI transmission consists only of business data, not any accompanying verbiage or free-form messages. Purists might also contend that a standard format is one that is approved by a national or international standards organization, as opposed to formats developed by industry groups or companies. |
| Email Marketing |
The promotion of products or services via email. When used correctly, and ethically, email marketing is one of the most effective forms of online advertising. |
| Employee Internet Management (EIM) |
Employee Internet Management is about creating a safe and productive e-enabled workplace. Finding the right balance of personal and professional use of the Internet, conserving resources, protecting individual property and safeguarding your organisation against legal liability. |
| Employee Relationship Management (ERM) |
It is a process that recognises employees of an organization as individuals and continually monitors the needs and rewards that bring out their unique best. In terms of technology ERM delivers streamlined administrative functions to a companys operations, productivity tools to its managers, and communication improvements throughout the enterprise. |
| Enterprise Relationship Management (ERM) |
An enterprise-wide strategy and solution that impacts a companys back office. It is designed to improve the management and flow of these operations by integrating and automating back office departments and processes. |
| Enterprise Resource Management(ERM) |
The practice of providing users with efficient access to an organization’s network resources. ERM enables the enterprise to control and track the systems and resources that each user has access to and provides consistent standards for creating and changing passwords. |
| Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) |
ERP stands for “enterprise resource planning.” The definition of enterprise resource planning is, essentially, an integrated software solution used to manage a company’s resources. Business planning systems have been evolving for decades, and ERP, enterprise resource planning, is the current generation. |
| Field Sales |
Refers to a companys sales force that normally works outside of the main offices. These employees often lack continuous PC connection with their companys network and therefore perform many of their tasks offline. They require access to customer data and CRM functionality, as well as the ability to easily synchronize their CRM systems with the companys main CRM system. |
| Field Service Management (FSM) |
Because of a number of factors relating to both market intransigence and supplier challenges, field service has tended to move slower than other sectors within the customer relationship management market. But the opportunities today are growing—and are more present than ever—for suppliers to meet the needs of user organizations with new capabilities that encompass the mobile workforce, making the FSM solution a more complete offering. |
| Front Office Solution |
Software applications designed to assist organizations with the management of tasks and processes related to customer-facing departments. This is usually a CRM solution, but may include any other applications used in the customer lifecycle. |
| Human Capital |
The knowledge, skills, and competencies of people in an organization. Unlike structural capital, human capital is owned by the individuals that have it rather than the organization. Human capital is the renewable part of intellectual capital. |
| Inbound & Outbound CRM |
Inbound CRM covers the experience customers have when they initiate contact with a business through any channel – whether through call centre, IVR or the Internet. Outbound CRM is when a business initiates contact with a customer for the purposes of maintaining its relationship with that customer. |
| Informatics |
A term that is used in a variety of ways. Some regard it as the study of the impact that technology has on people. Some take a broader view and consider it to be the science of information and information technology. Others regard it as being broader still, referring to the creation, recognition, representation, collection, organisation, transformation, communication, evaluation and control of information in various contexts. |
| Information Communication Technology (ICT) |
Technology that combines computing with high-speed communications links carrying data, sound and video. |
| Information Technology (IT) |
A term that encompasses the physical elements of computing including servers, networks and desktop computing which enable digital information to be created, stored, used and shared. |
| Intangible Assets |
The non-physical resources of an organisation. An example might be the reputation linked to a brand name such as Mercedes or Microsoft, or the loyalty of customers to a company such as Marks & Spencer. These assets are not generally accounted for in an organisations financial statements, but they are of great value to the organisation. |
| Intellectual Capital |
The value, or potential value, of an organisations intellectual assets (or knowledge assets). An attempt by organisations to place a financial value on their knowledge. Intellectual capital is often defined as the combination of three sub-categories: human capital, structural capital and customer capital. |
| Intranet |
A computer network that functions like the internet, but the information and web pages are located on computers within an organisation rather than being accessible to the general public. |
| IP Contact Centre |
IP stands for Internet Protocol. An IP Contact Centre is a multi channel contact centre, designed to support customers using IP based telephony. Traditional specialised hardware such as ACD, PBX and IVR are replaced by applications on the IP Network. This results in a framework that is more flexible and provides a better platform for unified queuing and incorporating IP-based new media (web, collaboration, chat.) |
| ISO |
International Standards Organization. An organization within the United Nations to which all national and other standard setting bodies defer. Develops and monitors international standards, including OSI, EDIFACT, and X.400. |
| IVR |
An automated telephone information system that speaks to the caller with a combination of fixed voice menus and realtime data from databases. The caller responds by pressing digits on the telephone or speaking words or short phrases. Applications include bank-by-phone, flight-scheduling information and automated order entry and tracking. IVR systems allow callers to get needed information 24 hours a day. They are also used as a front end to call centers in order to offload as many calls as possible to costly human agents. In such cases, it does not replace the agent, but helps to eliminate the need for them to constantly answer simple, repetitive questions. |
| Java |
An object-oriented programming language, developed by Sun Microsystems. Similar to C++, Java is smaller, more portable, and easier to use than C++ because it is more robust and it manages memory on its own. Java was also designed to be secure and platform-neutral (meaning that it can be run on any platform) through the fact that Java programs are compiled into bytecodes, which are similar to machine code and are not specific to any platform. |
| Just-In-Time (JIT) |
A manufacturing philosophy based on arrival of each component of a product just in time as it is assembled. It cuts non-value added tasks, cuts inventory, eliminates delay, and requires near-zero defects and fast setup times, particularly for repetitive, discrete manufacturing. |
| Knowledge Audit |
A method of reviewing and mapping knowledge in an organisation including an analysis of knowledge needs, resources, flows, gaps, users and uses. A knowledge audit will generally include aspects of an information audit but is broader than an information audit. |
| Knowledge Management |
Knowledge management software enables customer service and help desk organisations to access and deliver answers via phone, email and the web. Essentially, it manages an organisation’s knowledge of its customer base so critical information is readily available to operatives. |
| Knowledge Mapping |
A process to determine where knowledge assets are in an organisation, and how knowledge flows operate in the organisation. Evaluating relationships between holders of knowledge will then illustrate the sources, flows, limitations, and losses of knowledge that can be expected to occur. |
| Knowledge Repository |
A place to store and retrieve explicit knowledge. A low-tech knowledge repository could be a set of file folders. A high-tech knowledge repository might be based on a database platform. |
| Live Help - Chat Software |
Real-time communication between two users via computer. Once a chat has been initiated, either user can enter text by typing on the keyboard and the entered text will appear on the other users monitor. Used for live technical support, customer service and pre-sales. |
| Local Area Network (LAN) |
A data communications network spanning a limited geographical area, usually a few miles at most, providing communications between computers and peripheral devices. |
| Logistics |
The function of sourcing and distributing material and product in the proper place and in proper quantities. |
| Marketing Automation |
A subset of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) functions that focuses on the definition, scheduling and tracking of marketing campaigns. It includes the identification of target markets, advertising delivery, budget definition, results analysis and other related activities. Most of the times it refers to an emerging category of software tools that focus on applying software technology to aid in marketing. Specific tasks tackled by some of these programs include: Lead Management, Campaign Management, Data Mining and Intelligent Marketing Assistance. |
| Marketing Segmentation |
Marketing segmentation describes the division of a market into groups which will respond differently to promotions, communications, advertising and other marketing variables. Each group or "segment" is targeted by a different marketing mix. Market segmentation for marketing of products and services is an effective way to gain customer acquisition. |
| Material Resource Planning (MRP) |
The practice of calculating what materials are required to build a product by analyzing a bill of material data, inventory data and the master production schedule. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is an outgrowth of MRP. |
| Metrics |
A set of traditional and non-traditional business measurements such as rating customer satisfaction and order throughput time. A critical aspect of a CRM strategy and solution is the definition, tracking and reporting of a companys metrics. |
| Microsegmentation |
Microsegmentation is a marketing strategy that narrows and refines a market into ever-smaller segments sharing many common traits - such as people whose household income is more than $100,000 or who bought at least two high-ticket items last year. This helps create tightly focused direct marketing messages to smaller groups of would-be customers. |
| OLAP Database |
Acronym for "Online Analytical Processing Database." A relational database system capable of handling queries more complex than those handled by standard relational databases, through multidimensional access to data (viewing the data by several different criteria), intensive calculation capability, and specialized indexing techniques. |
| Online Profiling |
Online profiling involves collecting and analyzing customer Web site data - information that can be used to personalize and customize an end users Web experience. Network advertisers use online profiles to track end users across multiple Web sites. The practice is controversial and may ultimately be subject to federal regulation. |
| Open Source |
Software built by programmers who think technology should be distributed without charge. Open source programs, such as the Linux operating system, post their source code for free so that anyone can use, modify and improve them. |
| Organisational Culture |
In short, the way we do things around here. An organisations culture is a mixture of its traditions, values, attitudes and behaviours. Different organisations can have very different cultures. In knowledge management, an organisations culture is extremely important - if it is not based on qualities such as trust and openness, then knowledge management initiatives are unlikely to succeed. |
| Partner Relationship Management (PRM) |
PRM, a subset of CRM, is the application of Relationship Management strategies and technologies to the unique needs of indirect sales channels. CRM and PRM systems help businesses develop and sustain profitable customer and partner relationships. (source: CRM Guru) |
| PDA |
Personal Digital Assistant: a small hand-held computer that in the most basic form, allows you to store names and addresses, prepare to-do lists, schedule appointments, keep track of projects, track expenditures, take notes, and do calculations. Depending on the model, you also may be able to send or receive e-mail; do word processing; play MP3 music files; get news, entertainment and stock quotes from the Internet; play video games; and have an integrated digital camera or GPS receiver. |
| Private Branch Exchange (PBX) |
An in-house telephone switching system that interconnects telephone extensions with the outside telephone network. It may include functions such as least cost routing for outside calls, call forwarding, conference calling and call accounting. Modern PBXs use all-digital methods for switching and may support both digital terminals and telephones along with analog telephones. |
| Quick Response (QR) |
A strategy widely adopted by general merchandise and soft lines retailers and manufacturers to reduce retail out-of-stocks, forced markdowns and operating expenses. These goals are accomplished through shipping accuracy and reduced response time. QR is a partnership strategy in which suppliers and retailers work together to respond more rapidly to the consumer by sharing point-of-sale scan data, enabling both to forecast replenishment needs. |
| RDBMS |
It stands for Relational Database Management Systems. The functionality of RDBMS is the same as DBMS except that the features offered for data storage and retrieval are very advanced. These systems are based on mathematical SET theory. A RDBMS ensures that the data stored in the database is accurate and relevant. Excellent security features are offered by these systems. RDBMS packages are used in medium to large-scale organizations, especially, those where data has to be made available on distributed networks. These systems have capability to store a very large amount of data and have quick data retrieval mechanisms. They also have elaborate database administration for handling multi-users, storage, and failures.An RDBMS uses SQL (Structures Query Language) to access data from database. This is a standard language commonly used across different RDBMS. |
| Real Time |
The processing of data in a business application as it happens - as contrasted with storing data for input at a later time (batch processing). |
| Relationship Marketing |
Relationship Marketing involves the understanding, focusing and management of ongoing collaboration between suppliers and selected customers for mutual value creation and sharing through interdependence and organizational alignment. |
| Return On Investment (ROI) |
The calculation of how much money will be saved or earned as a result of the investment in a CRM solution. An ROI analysis should be prepared at the start of a CRM initiative. After a predetermined period of time has past from the date the CRM solution was launched, measurements are made to compare the benefits gained against the implementation costs. |
| Sales Force Automation (SFA) |
Software to support sales reps. The software gives sales representitives access to contact details, appointments, sales opportunities, customer purchase history, order management etc. It is likely to be integrated with Customer Relationship Management systems and Opportunity Management Systems. |
| Sales Methodology |
A sequence of steps or predefined process put in place by management that is meant to increase the departments sales effectiveness. It promotes the tracking of customer activities and communication and the regular updating of the opportunity pipeline. This is meant to provide management with better insight into the pipeline and more accurate forecasting. |
| Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) |
The process of sending secure financial transactions over the Internet. Transactions are conducted and verified using a combination of digital IDs between the purchaser, the purchasers bank and the merchant. |
| Self-Service |
Self-service technology "turns the monitor around" and empowers your customers and employees by giving them a self-directed way to interact with your business. |
| Service Management |
As an evolving field, service management is a management approach in which management procedures are focused upon the characteristics of service and the nature of service competition.(Grönroos, 1990) Service management is a total organizational approach that makes quality of service, as perceived by the customer, the number one driving force of the operation of the business. (Albrecht, 1988) |
| Spam |
An electronic message is "spam" IF: (1) the recipients personal identity and context are irrelevant because the message is equally applicable to many other potential recipients; AND (2) the recipient has not verifiably granted deliberate, explicit, and still-revocable permission for it to be sent; AND (3) the transmission and reception of the message appears to the recipient to give a disproportionate benefit to the sender. |
| Structural Capital |
An organisations captured knowledge such as best practices, processes, information systems, databases etc. Often described as the knowledge that remains in the organisation after the employees have gone home for the night. Structural capital is one component of Intellectual Capital. |
| Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) |
SRM is similar to customer relationship management in that it involves the review and improvement of three different aspects of purchasing: - Purchasing processes - strategic sourcing, contract negotiation management and measurement and the "req to cheque" (order to payment) process. IT can assist in the implementation and management of these business processes, but they must be reviewed and - Operational systems - e-commerce (e-procurement, B2B marketplaces and e-negotiation tools) are a key component of SRM. They enable organisations to tie their purchasing processes more tightly into their supply base. E-commerce can enable more efficient |
| Supply Chain |
A set of approaches utilized to efficiently integrate suppliers and clients (comprised of stores, retailers, wholesalers, whareshouses, and manufacturers) so merchandise is produced and distributed at the right quantities, to the right locations, and at the right time, in order to minimize system wide costs while satisfying service level requests. |
| Tacit Knowledge (or Implicit Knowledge) |
The knowledge or know-how that people carry in their heads. Compared with explicit knowledge, tacit knowledge is more difficult to articulate or write down and so it tends to be shared between people through discussion, stories and personal interactions. It includes skills, experiences, insight, intuition and judgement. Note: Some authors draw a distinction between tacit and implicit knowledge, defining tacit knowledge as that which cannot be written down, and implicit knowledge as that which can be written down but has not been written down yet. In this context, explicit knowledge is defined as that which has already been written down. |
| Taxonomy |
A hierarchical structure used for categorising a body of information or knowledge, allowing an understanding of how that body of knowledge can be broken down into parts, and how its various parts relate to each other. Taxonomies are used to organise information in systems, therefore helping users to find it. |
| Territory Management |
This feature is found in the sales module of a CRM solution. It allows companies to more effectively manage sales personnel, distribute leads and align resources with opportunities. |
| Text Mining |
Text Mining is about looking for patterns in natural language text, and may be defined as the process of analyzing text to extract information from it for particular purposes. Text mining recognizes that complete understanding of natural language text, a long-standing goal of computer science, is not immediately attainable and focuses on extracting a small amount of information from text with high reliability. The information extracted might be the author, title and date of publication of an article, the acronyms defined in a text or the articles mentioned in the bibliography. |
| Uniform Resource Locator (URL) |
A string that supplies the Internet address of a website or resource on the World Wide Web, along with the protocol by which the site or resource is accessed. The most common URL type is http://, which gives the Internet address of a web page. |
| Unix |
A computer operating system built by Bell Labs in 1969 as an interactive time-sharing system. Unix was the first standard operating system that anyone could improve or enhance and is used in workstation products from many companies. |
| Value Chain |
A series of activities, which combined, define a business process; the series of activities from manufacturers to the retail stores that define the industry supply chain. |
| Value-Added Network (VAN) |
A company that acts as a clearing-house for electronic transactions between trading partners. A third-party supplier that receives EDI transmissions from sending trading partners and holds them in a mailbox until retrieved by the receiving partners. |
| Vendor-Managed Inventory (VMI) |
The practice of retailers making suppliers responsible for determining order size and timing, usually based on receipt of retail POS and inventory data. Its goal is to increase retail inventory turns and reduce stock outs. |
| Voice Over IP (VOIP) |
Voice Over IP, a term that originally described the transmission of real-time voice calls over a data network that uses IP, but currently is used to describe “anything over IP,” for example, voice, fax, video, etc. |
| Voice Recognition |
The conversion of spoken words into computer text. Speech is first digitized and then matched against a dictionary of coded waveforms. The matches are converted into text as if the words were typed on the keyboard. There are three types of voice recognition applications. Command systems recognize a few hundred words and eliminate using the mouse or keyboard for repetitive commands. This is the least taxing on the computer. Discrete voice recognition systems are used for dictation, but require a pause between each word. Continuous voice recognition understands natural speech without pauses and is the most process intensive. |
| VoiceXML |
An extension to XML that defines voice segments and enables access to the Internet via telephones and other voice-activated devices. AT&T, Lucent and Motorola created the Voice XML Forum to support this development. For more information, visit www.voicexml.org. |
| Web Analytics |
Web analytics refers to the measurement, analysis and reporting of Web site usage by visitors. The information helps site managers better understand the effectiveness of their site initiatives and helps them optimize their Web site. This optimization process could occur in a number of ways, including site content, media and promotional mix, merchandising, functional efficiency (such as measuring the effectiveness of internal search tools), site process designs and much more. |
| Web Mining |
Web mining is the application of data mining or other information process techniques to WWW, to find useful patterns. People can take advantage of these patterns to access WWW more efficiently. Web mining can be divided into three categories: content mining, usage mining, and structure mining. Web content mining is an automatic process that extracts patterns from on-line information, such as the HTML files, images, or E-mails, and it already goes beyond only keyword extraction or some simple statistics of words and phrases in documents. Web structure mining is a research field focused on using the analysis of the link structure of the web, and one of its purposes is to identify more preferable documents. The intuition is that a hyperlink from document A to document B implies that the author of document A thinks document B contains worthwhile information. Web servers record and accumulate data about user interactions whenever requests for resources are received. Analyzing the web access logs of different web sites can help understand the user behavior and the web structure, thereby improving the design of this colossal collection of resources. |
| Web Services |
Web services is Internet or other IP-based network applications built with four emerging standards: XML, simple object access protocol (SOAP), Web services description language (WSDL), and universal description discovery and integration (UDDI). That allows the applications to talk to each other—no human intervention needed. What Web services is all about is interoperability of applications, be they written in Perl or Java or Windows or whatever. |
| Web-based CRM |
Customer Relationship Management application that provides full access to users over the world wide web, ensuring data security and integrity. |
| Wi-Fi |
Short for wireless fidelity. This is another name for IEEE 802.11b. It is a trade term promulgated by the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA). "Wi-Fi" is used in place of 802.11b in the same way that "Ethernet" is used in place of IEEE 802.3. Products certified as Wi-Fi by WECA are interoperable with each other even if they are from different manufacturers. A user with a Wi-Fi product can use any brand of Access Point with any other brand of client hardware that is built to the Wi-Fi standard. |
| Wide Area Network (WAN) |
A WAN is a data communications network that covers a relatively broad geographic area and often uses transmission facilities provided by common carriers, such as telephone companies. WAN technologies function at the lower three layers of the OSI reference model: the physical layer, the data link layer, and the network layer. |
| Workflow |
The automation of a process or series of processes through the linking of tasks and activities. The CRM software automatically routes tasks, notifications and records to predefined or user selected destinations such as users, departments, or business units. |
| World Wide Web (WWW) |
An Internet client-server hypertext distributed information retrieval system that originated from the CERN High-Energy Physics laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland. On the WWW everything (documents, menus, indexes) is represented to the user as a hypertext object in HTML format. Hypertext links refer to other documents by their URLs. These can refer to local or remote resources accessible by FTP, Gopher, Telnet, or news, as well as those available by means of the HTTP protocol used to transfer hypertext documents. The client program (known as a browser) runs on the users computer and provides two basic navigation operations: to follow a link or to send a query to a server. |
| XML |
eXtensible Markup Language. A subset of SGML constituting a particular text markup language for interchange of structured data. The Unicode Standard is the reference character set for XML content. XML is a trademark of the World Wide Web Consortium. |
| Virtual Private Network (VPN) |
A private network that is configured within a public network (a carrier's network or the Internet) in order to take advantage of the economies of scale and management facilities of large networks. VPNs are widely used by enterprises to create wide area networks (WANs) that span large geographic areas, to provide site-to-site connections to branch offices and to allow mobile users to dial up their company LANs. For years, common carriers have built VPNs that appear as a private national or international network to each customer, but, in fact, are sharing the same physical backbone trunks with many customers. VPNs have been built over X.25, Switched 56, frame relay and ATM technologies as well as IP networks. For added security, encryption is often used. Encrypted connections over the Internet are also very popular for linking remote offices and mobile users; however, for top secret communications, the maximum security is still only afforded by networks of totally private lines. |
| Customer Relationship Management (CRM) |
CRM is a business approach that integrates People, Processes and Technology to maximize the relations of an organizations with all types of customers. The true value of CRM is to transform strategy, operational processes and business functions in order to retain customers and increase customer loyalty and profitability. |
