Blarney
Stone Enterprises
3
. Additional technology Initiatives
Like all companies, Blarney Stone is always looking for ways to improve
efficiency in its business operations. Having successfully launched
sites to promote its own manufactured products and third party Irish
products, it started to look at other available technologies to drive
the business forward.
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CRM
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Customer Relationship Management is an information industry
term that refers to computer systems which help an organisation
manage its customer relationships in a systematic way. CRM seeks
to create one central view of a customer by optimising how information
is shared between departments and to provide employees with
the information necessary to know their customers and understand
their needs |
The focus
on forming and maintaining hands on customer relations had already
proved to be a major winner for the company. To carry this ethos forward
and effectively manage its ever-growing population of customers and
suppliers, Blarney Stone looked at a range of Customer Relationship
Management (See CRM Sidebar) solutions. CRM software would allow the
company to hand over the management of their existing customer databases
to complex profiling and powerful marketing products.
After
reviewing various products and looking at pricing, the company decided
that much of what a CRM solution could provide, was already engrained
in their marketing and business practices at a fraction of the cost.
“The prices we were being quoted for CRM solutions were way beyond
our budget, it just didn’t make sense,” reported Declan.
“Our existing approach to our customers had served us well and
we felt that automation of this process would not provide the comfortably
close feeling our customers enjoy. I had a request last week from
a judge in Boston, asking for an Irish made blue linen shirt. His
email was not responded to in 5 days and he demanded a response reminding
us that we were supposed to be his friends!”
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Search
Engine Optimisation
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Search Engine Optimisation allows a company’s
web site to have more exposure on the Internet .
When users are looking for products, like those
offered by Blarney Stone Enterprises, they would
use Search Engines such as www.google.com
or www.yahoo.com.
Blarney Stone want their products and web site
to appear at the top of the search results rather
than buried under a plethora of other sites. Optimisation
ensures they have more exposure to potential customers.
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Achieving
that level of rapport with customers, would not be possible with an
automated CRM system, so the company decided to continue with a manual
response to enquiries. The database is also used as a source of information
when proactively building marketing campaigns and targeting specific
customers with tailored promotions. The company has a policy of not
sending unsolicited emails to its customer population, it does however
monitor individual buying trends and forwards promotions it feels
may be of interest to their customer base. Blarney Stone has also
looked at software to automate their inventory and purchasing processes.
Again their existing procedures, although labour intensive, are sufficient
to deal with the existing levels of stock movement and shipping requirements.
Each week’s levels are manually recorded and sent to the buying
office to replenish stocks. Furthermore, keeping the personal touch
with their supplier network allows the buyers to closely monitor relationships
and act immediately regarding any issues that may arise.
Blarney
Stone did have to employ the services of an outside
agency to finely tune their site and ensure its inclusion
on major search engines. They selected Webbusters (www.webbusters.com),
an Internet services provider based in Dublin who provide
web development, usability, virtual webmastering, online
marketing and email marketing. Webbusters modified the
site to optimise its exposure to the most popular of
the web’s search engines (See Search Engine Optimisation
Sidebar).
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Impression
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term impression, in web advertising, refers to the number of
times an ad is viewed. Some web sites will rotate between a
series of banner ads. Each time someone views this site and
your particular ad is on display, the impression counter for
this ad is updated. Programs such as Central Ad, can keep track
of all ad impressions and how many times they were clicked on
by end users. |
Webbusters
conducted an in-depth environmental analysis for Blarney Stone,
examining the giftware marketplace from both a local and global
perspective. Key competitors were also scrutinised, along with their
strategies and activity in the online environment. This provided
a crucial base going forward for the formulation of an effective
eMarketing strategy. Using an in house method to measure the visibility
of the web site across the major search engines and directories,
the site was modified in order to provide a high rank with popular
search engines such as Google.com and Yahoo.com.
Blarney
Stone also invested in banner advertising with Ireland.com
and has profited from a steady stream of interest.
For the last week in September 2001, buyfromireland.com
received 545,7000 page impressions (See Impression
Sidebar).
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