The conventional models of Customer Relationship Management are limited to gathering and storing all existing data on a company’s customers. Customer Intelligence goes much further: it analyzes all of this information in detail, and it presents tangible conclusions for management. Customer Intelligence today is the only technological tool that helps make decisions about customers based on scientific data.

A practically unknown tool in Spanish companies until very recently, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) has grown in recent years to the point where today it is present in the majority of our country’s large companies.

A recent study made public by Daemon Quest reveals that 60% of the millions invested in CRM by Spanish companies has not achieved any of the expected results. The explanation is simple: the CRM solutions on the market are limited to putting the amalgam of a company’s existing customer data into order, without offering additional clues that tell management how to interpret that data, and, more importantly, how to make decisions based on the data. Today, conventional CRM models do not allow us to draw exact conclusions about the profile of a company’s customers, about its potential market, its geographical location, about the results of its sales policy, or about how accurate its strategy is compared to the competition.

The report published by Daemon Quest makes these models’ shortcomings clear. Based on data from the consulting firm IDC, Spanish companies have invested 70.318 billion euros in CRM solutions. Of that figure, 42.07 billion euros (60% of the total) have ended up in complete failure. In other terms, the CRM tools used by a multitude of Spanish companies have not served to achieve the underlying goal: helping leaders to know their customers and make decisions based on entirely provable realities.

The study is precise in its conclusions: a mid-to-large company (with 250-1,000 employees), that manages information on an enormous amount of customers, can invest between 721 million and 1.623 billion euros in the launching of CRM strategies.

The problem with conventional CRM is that it stops at the middle. In current society, the excess of information is a pressing problem for management, whose decision-making task is complicated by the high volume of data and variables they must manage. CRM only increases that volume, without facilitating decision-making in any way. The conclusion is that a company that wanted to combine data in order to establish decision-making guidelines finds that, after an investment of millions, nothing has been established. The information is centralized and the company is in the same place it started: not being able to make decisions based on rigorous analysis.

CRM bases its principles on putting in order the sea of data that can exist on a customer, spread out over different areas of the company: billing, marketing, calls to a call-center, and requests over the Internet, complaints, or orders… This process only brings the company a very high volume of information which in and of itself does not achieve anything.

The trend of investing in CRM has seen an enormous boom in recent years. According to data from diverse consulting firms, 98% of Spanish directors are thinking of implementing some type of CRM in their company. If these expectations end up occurring, the failures associated with this model will increase. In Europe, the losses generated by insufficient CRM models are over 14 billion euros.

Customer Intelligence

Customer Intelligence techniques are the solution to the limitations of the classic CRM models. The key is in going beyond the mere unification of customer data that current CRM systems propose. Customer Intelligence, used in Spain exclusively by Daemon Quest, is not limited to recovering, combining, and ordering all the information a company has on its customer portfolio, but rather it meticulously analyzes this information, providing absolutely provable data, in order to help directors make strategically vital decisions for their company.

Customer Intelligence presents company leaders with a true x-ray of their company in a scorecard that indicates, with “alarms”, the dangers that could be threatening the company: in what area it might be losing market share or not gaining enough, what office or salesperson is performing below expectations, in what specific sectors or segments the risk of customer abandonment exists… These analytical CRM models also facilitate up-to-date information about which customers are most profitable for the company, what profile they fit, and where to find potential customers who have not yet been obtained. In short, it’s not about telling the director what to do, since that is his or her own prerogative, but rather putting all the necessary elements, analyzed and detailed, in his or her hands, in order to facilitate as much as possible the decision-making that affects the company’s customer policy.

Customer Intelligence is the only valid solution to truly knowing customers, and its costs are infinitely less than those of CRM, since it allows us to achieve the ultimate goals of any CRM strategy at a reasonable price, make the customer portfolio as profitable as possible, and loyalize it effectively.

Beyond conventional CRM models, customer intelligence is based on the use and practical application of analysis and science. At Daemon Quest, the only Spanish company to apply Customer Intelligence solutions, whose staff combines marketing professionals with high-level scientists, all studies are done according to the client’s needs. Any question a company asks itself that has to do with its clientele can be investigated by the team of professionals at Daemon Quest.

The standards on which our company habitually works are the following:

• Customer Portfolio Analysis. The goal of this study is to know in-depth the customer portfolio, its composition, and its situation, in order to make the most of it. From this study, we answer key questions such as who, based on empirical data, are the best customers, what sector they belong to, how they should be segmented, which are at risk of abandonment, what leadership possibilities the company has in each market niche, and what the possibilities are of creating specialized products according to the activity and type of customers.
• Cross Selling Analysis. This study’s conclusions are based a fundamental and evident principal: it is much simpler to sell to a customer you already have than to find a new one. Some information that is essential to improving service to portfolio customers, and to designing the best loyalization strategy for the company, is obtained through this analysis: how many customers are being shared with the competition, which customers are potential buyers for other products, which belong to a single community that can share interests and products, and, in some way, how they can be grouped.
• Analysis of the potential market. By means of this study, another fundamental aspect is covered in carrying out a marketing action that fits the customer’s needs: knowledge of the market that has yet to be exploited. Potential market analysis gives company directors details on the penetration the company has achieved in the different sales areas it is present in. 
• Analysis of the sales network or geomarketing. This is one of the best complements in making strategic decisions about the sales network. This study offers the company’s leaders an exhaustive analysis about the functioning of its own network, its representatives, and its personnel’s performance. It allows us to know what the sales network’s activity is like, identify the best way to access the potential market, detail the competition’s position, and all of that by means of maps which clearly reflect everything from an eventual expansion (opening offices, weaker areas for the competition…) to the hypothetical territorial consequences of a merger (offices and shops that overlap each other).
• Underlying these analyses is a sophisticated technological framework that uses the most powerful tools on the market (Datamining, Geographical Information Systems, statistical analysis such as CHAID, regression and Cluster, and Datawarehouse), but is presented to the customer as an affordable, simple, and entirely manageable product. All of the information is summarized in a clear and concise manner, through an Internet portal where any director can visualize his or her company on-line, and all the information its customers generate, in a simple and ordered way, and always based on absolutely reliable data.

By accessing one of the links to their own portal, the Daemon Quest customer gets a perfect visual map of their situation in all activity sectors that are strengths in each Spanish province, or a list with names of customers who only buy sporadically, or a chart of the evolution of sales at any of its offices or delegations…

The Customer Intelligence solutions proponed by Daemon Quest provide management tools that are absolutely unique on the Spanish market today. The extreme competition our country’s companies face, whatever sector they may operate in, makes Customer Intelligence, far beyond the classic CRM models, a vital instrument for any company director who faces daily decisions related to customers, that is, the very heart of the company’s revenue.

Until very recently, the majority of our country’s business leaders have relied on two questionable and subjective elements in decision-making: experience and intuition. The made-to-order Customer Intelligence solutions developed by Daemon Quest avoid the high margin of error these two elements are subject to. They leave aside intuition and other emotional factors – necessary in a good director, but not sufficient – and focus on the data, on completely contrastable information. They allow the manager not only to decide, but also to offer the company a key quality in the current context: the ability to foresee. Knowledge, decision-making power, and the ability to anticipate are essential factors today for the success of a company and its leaders. Customer Intelligence brings invaluable help in combining these factors.