NYU STERN / PROJECTS / FINDING CRM



FINDING crm: digital solutions for luxury WATCHES retail



Co-developed with Krista W., LaChere N. & Jennifer G.



This project proposes a structured framework to:


  1. Identify CRM needs for luxury watch retailers by auditing all the processes involved in the end-to-end consumer experience and back-end retail experience

  2. Investigate appropriate CRM technologies and effectiveness based on a designed scorecard

  3. Implement CRM system across all business touch points.


All imagery, numerical data & brand names have been changed/excluded as per the NDA to retain the confidentiality of the client



Approach:





At the growth stage of our luxury watch retailer, gaining and retaining consumers is a critical aspect of their development. As a consultant, we helped the retailer strategically decide how can they develop a best-in-class CRM system to future proof the business and marketing strategy for future programs.


We started with a deep understanding of the retailer's universe conducting informational interviews with key stakeholders and shadowing store specialists during important sales. This led to the development of our future client journey map that helped us identify critical technology requirements and our recommendations for features, partners, and an evaluation framework.





Research:





When we started our project, the client took us through the current consumer journey. We realized that the existing CRM system wasn’t fulfilling the unique needs of the retail experience. While it did record client information through an unfortunately tedious process, it lacked the ability to use these insights to create actionable relationship-building opportunities.


During our experience shadowing the store specialists, we also observed that the POS system, while fully ingrained in the retail workflows, still operated in isolation with limited connectivity to other internal tools. There was an opportunity loss here of integrated communication between systems to enable a seamless sales experience.


Through our many chats with the client, the opacity in the existing services and repairs workstream was also highlighted where consumers currently have limited insight into the progress updates of their purchases.


What was common between all three elements of our research was the need for a disruptive new CRM that could streamline all three processes and change the business by driving client relationships for repeat purchases, increasing sales specialist efficiencies, and improving the overall client experience pre, during, and post-sales.



Deliverable:





In order to evaluate the CRM vendors, we defined a clear weighted scorecard evaluation framework to remove individual biases and objectively identify the best-in-class product for our use case. The five most important criteria the team identified were:

  1. Relevant Retail CRM Experience
  2. Quality Of The Proposal
  3. Proposed Project Team
  4. Cultural Fit
  5. Company Profile & Reliability


Additionally, a Request For Information (RFI) packet was developed that would be circulated to external vendors after internal finalization and alignment from the retail headquarters. The RFI was meant to solicit vendor proposals which would be evaluated based on the designed scorecard. After a round of interviews and video demos, the final vendor would be chosen to execute the project.


As the project continued in the hands of the retail team, we defined short and long term milestones and shared our vision for what the future looks like once this initiative is implemented.




For the complete proposal and concept, please feel free to reach out to me and we can discuss the idea and approach in more depth.


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