A Study on CRM Practices for Public sector Insurance Companies

Organizations pursue a CRM strategy for the purpose of increasing business performance and value. However, firms face a multitude of organizational challenges associated with this endeavor. To reduce their risk of failure, it is suggested that firms undertake a deep analysis of organizational readiness prior to committing to a CRM initiative. Insurance sector is no exception to this fact. There is an increased need to concentrate on the various challenges thrown open by the public insurance firms in implementing CRM. Many insurance firms have invested into customer driven CRM but research indicates varying outcomes (Schmith 2004). While it is clear that there are significant issues involved in the CRM implementation and success and environment faced by the public sector. It is clear that business should have an easier time in applying CRM systems is the strategic value for public sector. With customers demanding more service and accessibility from administrators, public sector CRM software technologies have to offer best solutions for achieving process and cost objectives (Souder 2001). With results which go far beyond improved service delivery and include sustained cost reductions, increased customer knowledge and better employee morale, CRM software implementation and post product environments offer great upside value. Although there are material differences in public sector use of CRM strategy, they share at least one glaring similarity - they have much to gain from proven CRM software technology. As business methods cross over in the public sector, many government bodies are investigating how they can adopt and adapt various CRM models (Bleyer 2003). There is a need to understand the similarities and differences in public sector CRM to foster shared knowledge, business processes and planning functions to integrate disparate technologies and software platforms and then, of course, the organizational culture to support knowledge sharing (Peters 1997). For the public sector, there are clearly identified CRM processes which have resulted in increased profits and improved efficiency. These have focused on sales, marketing and customer service activities, which often operate along fundamentally different lines in various public sector insurance companies. Thus the present research paper makes an attempt to explore how public sector CRM methods can be adopted and subsequently adapted.