CPM Corporation Announces Strategic and Tactical Planning Model To Improve CRM Success and Increase Market Share.

Business Editors

EAST PEORIA, Ill.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 2, 2000

Customer Potential Management Corporation (CPM), a healthcare customer relationship management (CRM) leader and Internet developer, announces its CRM Planning Model, a blueprint for achieving greater CRM success. Designed to include corporate goals and objectives and guide healthcare marketers beyond the "Let's do something on cancer for Cancer Month," approach to relationship management, CPM's CRM Planning Model illustrates how to identify the best opportunities for increasing market share and maximizing return on a CRM investment.

By comparing a healthcare organization with its overall market, this approach helps providers determine where significant opportunity gaps exist. However, for this planning methodology to succeed, it must be embraced not only by marketers and planners, but also by top-level executives and financial officers, planning, and operations. "The simple fact is that no organization can fully utilize the capabilities of a CRM solution without an annual plan, and no annual plan is going to work unless it has support and guidance from the top," says John Hallick, CPM president.

What's happened, Hallick explains, is that healthcare followed other industries on the CRM bandwagon, but lacks the proper CRM marketing plan to fully use such a system. While the development of a CRM marketing plan that supports overall corporate goals and objectives is not complicated or mysterious, it can generate large payoffs in increased market share, patient retention and loyalty.

The CRM process, which consists of a comprehensive database, online analytical processing (OLAP) tools, and communications management software, must be in place before a strategic CRM market plan can be created. By using these physical CRM components, healthcare marketers and planners have the opportunity to discover the best service areas in which to invest their efforts and resources.

The use of CPM's patent-pending Consumer Healthcare Utilization Index(TM) (CHUI) within a CRM solution also offers superior predictive segmentation for forecasting individual need for services. A CRM market plan can provide:

-- Overall evaluation of products and services for value and

efficiency.

-- Greater potential for increased market share and revenue.

-- Greater potential for improved patient loyalty and

satisfaction.

-- Improved patient wellness and quality of life.

-- Ability to track programs and refine on an annual basis.

Not only does a total CRM plan offer healthcare organizations the chance to discover the potential for meeting customers' needs; it also helps find any marketplace gaps that may exist. Identifying the largest profitable market openings and developing a strategy for gaining market share is known as "gap analysis." This looks at the gap between what the marketplace is consuming and what the organization is providing. The largest gaps are the best place for providers to find key service expansion opportunities. Gap analysis allows a healthcare organization to:

-- Identify the size of the market by total number of customers,

programs, service categories and products.

-- Analyze current market share of patients and competitors by

product and service area.

-- Identify the gap between what organization provides and the

total market opportunity by using the major diagnostic codes

or MDC's.

By identifying the best customers within significant opportunity areas, healthcare organizations are better able to develop pertinent communications and long-term relationships. While cluster groups are most commonly used for market segmentation, CPM's CHUI (TM) system predicts the likelihood that an individual will use specific healthcare services classified by the 25 MDCs, selected DRG's (ICD-9 codes) or medical service areas. Using CHUI(TM) scores allows healthcare marketers to specifically target the appropriate type of communication to the appropriate type of patient, resulting in one-to-one market segmentation.

Once an organization has completed its market analysis and knows which customers to target, it must design and deploy a multi-level, multi-step communications campaign. The Internet, direct mail, and a call center are three CRM delivery channels.

Once the messages have been delivered, the CRM program tracks active and passive responses throughout the campaign. This tracking allows the hospital to:

-- Analyze shifts in market share and reassess the gap size.

-- Refine the program to meet changing goals and objectives and

modify messages and channels as necessary.

-- Re-measure the gap and develop the next annual plan.

To learn more about how CPM's CRM planning model can maximize the value of a comprehensive CRM solution, download our new white paper, "How to Develop and Implement a CRM Marketing Plan," at www.cpm.com or call 1-800-332-2631 for a copy.

About CPM

Customer Potential Management (CPM) Corporation is an international leader in solving social and business problems through integrated customer information marketing databases and marketing strategies. CPM's customer relationship management solution allows healthcare providers to manage their customer relationships through targeted, personalized communications, which build loyal long-tern patient relationships.

Since 1981, Customer Potential Management (CPM) Corporation has been redefining marketing with technology, helping clients market to a "segment of one" by:

-- Developing enterprise-wide data warehouses that can be

accessed via the Internet with appropriate security.

-- Matching the client's products or services with the needs of

their current and potential customers through behavior

prediction modeling.

-- Developing data-driven marketing strategies supported by

creative services to reach customers with direct marketing,

advertising, and integrated production.

-- Tracking response to marketing programs to measure their

impact and cost-effectiveness.

CPM's intelligent CRM pieces fit together seamlessly into an application framework that produces a single, top-level business strategy. CPM is headquartered in East Peoria, Illinois. For more information, contact CPM at [phone], or visit the company's web site at www.cpm.com.