The Relationship-Based Enterprise: Powering Business Success Through Customer Relationship Management (Hardcover)

by Ray McKenzie (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"A winner! Fresh new perspectives on the age-old challenge of attracting and retaining customers." -- Barry Shuler Senior Vice-President, IR Strategy & Planning, Marriott International

Product Description
Business and information companies have been investing the majority of their time and resources into technologies that will develop and maintain close relationships with their customers. The key to online success is a company's relationship with their customers. It is critical for companies with online presence to sustain each relationship in order to survive at all. Billions of dollars are being spent on defining, identifying, anticipating, recognizing, and managing customers. This book provides a comprehensive and holistic view of CRM, as well as an operational approach to implementing CRM. Authored by one of the leading experts and consultants in the area of strategic planning, the book offers a conceptual roadmap supported by practical, real-life answers based on experience of senior DMR Consulting practitioners and insights from their clients. It focuses on using new technology and business techniques to continually discover customers, engage in ongoing two-way dialogue across all customer touch points, and manage all of this with discipline. A new company model is emerging - the extended enterprise. It reduces time and cost of doing business, strengthens partnerships, and develops more productive customer and supplier relationships; CRM is the leverage point. This book will show managers how CRM can produce a coherent relationship-based business strategy that leads directly to improvements in the bottom line.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 367 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies; 1st edition (January 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0070860815
• ISBN-13: 978-0070860810
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,350,088 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful, January 14, 2001

By	Jean-Marc Nantais (Canada) - See all my reviews

This book not only does an outstanding job of defining CRM (finally) and uncovering the basic concepts involved in CRM but also provides simple, well-organized frameworks for even the uninitiated to pursue. It takes senior management away from the current "IT silver bullet" thinking about CRM and positions it at the business strategy level.

At times, the book seems like a voice crying in the CRM wilderness. However, given the simple and powerful concepts, clearly derived from significant real life exposure, the book will probably provide tomorrow's CRM management gospel.

This book is required reading for marketing and IT executives, and for everyone who wants to be prepared for the new economy - especially for organizations trying to combine "bricks and clicks".

-- Jean-Marc Nantais, Director, Corporate Marketing, Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE)

7 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Avoid this book, unless yo have ample time, energy &patience, June 29, 2001

By A Customer

This is one of the worst books I have read on any topic recently. It is a bad "me-too" product on CRM. The writer obviously thinks that he invented some "great new" concepts, the main one being the "Relationship-Based Enterprise". But I think this is a terribly hollow concept which is presented in such a "romantic" way in the book. Pages 14 through 95 are about this romantic presentation of the concept. But the point is exactly the same as in pp.1-9. After reading all that nonsense, you end up thinking "why did I have to go through this torture" because the same stuff was already said in pp1-9.

His other great invention is defining CRM as "conversations". Eureka!!!! I suggest he should re-read Peppers&Rogers "1to1 Fieldbook" where he can find both concepts and they are much clearly elaborated there. Oh, I was forgetting, there is another great invention too: The three D's. So, if marketing has four P's why shouldn't CRM have 3D's. There you go, our writer has invented that also. They are Discovery, Dialogue and Discipline. The first two are actually Peppers&Rogers' Identify and Interact. The last one, would you believe, is about management. You may say shouldn't it be an 'M'? Yes, but then you wouldn't have the sexappeal of the 3D's.

This is a me-too book, which, for the sake of being novel, takes up existing ideas and concepts, presents them in such a confusing way so that the reader may think they are so complicated and then goes to use graphs and diagrams to elaborate these normally straightforward but made-confusing points. Just pathetic! I am really furious because of spending my energy and forcing my patience for reading a book I do not still know what is about. Was it Marketing 101, Consumer 101, or CRM '0' ?

3 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book! I have experienced this subject firsthand., January 18, 2001

By	Jonathan S. Harbour (Phoenix, AZ) - See all my reviews

Customer Relationship Management is a topic that permeates DMR Consulting, a vision at the core of the company's outlook toward long-term relationships with customers. During the period of time I have been employed with DMR, I have experienced a phenomenon not common with other companies, a concept that is a case in point for the topics of this book, what I call "Employee Relationship Management" (ERM). Whether this term is real or not, CRM is clearly not an acquired trait of DMR, but rather an inherent trait attained through years of hard work. I believe the topics of this book were written from long experience, because I have felt the key points of this subject firsthand as an employee of DMR. DMR obviously considers ERM at least as important as CRM, since profit is not the primary consideration at the bottom line, at fiscal end. This book is about people, first and foremost, seconded only by value. Providing the complete solution, and not just a singular service, is a key aspect of CRM, and of DMR Consulting.