Student Instructions
This assignment is designed to have you apply the concepts that you are learning through the online modules to a real industry. It will help you better understand the factors which affect sales. This assignment will help you develop research, critical thinking and communication skills.
Assignment
In this assignment you are to read the attached case on LePetomane Personal Care Products and conduct original internet based research to answer the questions presented in the case document.
Your assignment answers are to be based on the information provided in Module 6, and Assignment 3 case document. You may also incorporate previous information provided in the case from Assignment 2.
In your answer you are to submit a list of CRM features you feel LPCP would benefit from (based on the case information) and then conduct original internet research on 3 real life CRM providers and compare their real-world CRM offerings with the requirements you have developed for LPCP. Lastly, you are to recommend one of those three providers for LPCP, providing the reasons for why you feel they would be the best options for LPCP
What is to be submitted
Your report should contain the 5 sections, each section should be labelled clearly with a section header. Target length of sections is noted below.
Title Page (1 Page)
Your name, subject, section, date, the professor’s name, assignment title.
Q1 List of Features & Reasons
Refer to questions in the case.
No set length – but explanations should be sufficiently detailed to answer assignment questions.
Q2 CRM Comparison Chart
Refer to questions in the case.
No set length – but explanations should be sufficiently detailed to answer assignment questions.
CRM System Recommendation (approx. 1 page)
No set length – but your recommendation should be sufficiently detailed to explain your choice clearly.
Information Sources
- Note and provide links to any websites used in your research.
Evaluation
The report will be graded out of a maximum of 100 marks as shown on the following marking scheme.
| Marking Scheme | Marks |
| Title page with required information | 5 |
| Q1 List of Features & Rationale | 35 |
| Q2 CRM Comparison Chart | 35 |
| System Recommendation | 10 |
| Information Sources | 5 |
| Grammar Counts: your ability to write in proper essay form i.e. grammatically correct sentences, error-free spelling, organization and clarity of thought | 10 |
| 100 |
Submitted Document
Your report must be double-spaced in 12
pt. font with a one-inch margin. The report will be submitted online and should be either in MS word or pdf file format.
The report style is to follow MLA format.
Note: Reports submitted with multiple spelling errors will not be marked. Please proofread & use a “spellchecker” to ensure that all words including names and technical terms are spelled correctly.
Submission
Your report must be submitted electronically into Black Board. Details on how to submit will be posted on Blackboard.
Plagiarism:
Plagiarized assignments will receive a mark of zero on the assignment and a failing grade on the course and a permanent note of plagiarism on their academic record. Please note: even you use work you previously wrote yourself, it is still considered plagiarism if you do not cite it properly in your paper.
Assignment 3 Case
A CRM System for LePetomane
Tony Fu, VP Sales of LePetomane Personal Care Products (LPCP) has heard about CRM systems from his newly hired Ontario College Graduate, Hedley Lamarr. Fu considers Lemarr one of his best hires ever. Hedley has suggested that he review the options available to LePetomane for a CRM system.
Tony is pondering some the factors related to his company and some of the features he would like in a CRM system He’s asked Hedley to review the features he would like (refer to “Tony’s wish list” below) as well as develop a list of additional features she feels are important for LPCP to have in a new CRM system.
You are to play the role of Hedley in this case.
LPCP Key Facts:
Annual Sales: $286,000,000 Cdn
Total Employees: 250
Sales Team: 26
LPCP has a large Canadian operation, with a head office in the GTA and regional sales offices in Vancouver, Montreal, and Halifax. The head office has a finance department consisting of Accounts Payable and Receivable teams. They also have a full customer service team whose job includes acting as an interface between sales and customer order entry / processing.
Also situated in their head office is an 8 person consumer & trade marketing team whose responsibilities include understanding their consumers as well as LPCP’s customers
LPCP operates a manufacturing facility in Scarborough Ontario and a large warehouse and shipping facility in Markham Ontario which is also the site of their head office. Some of LPCP’s products are manufactured locally, some are imported from suppliers in China.
LPCP Sales team
LPCP operates a sales force that consists of both account managers (12 total) and field sales representatives (24 total). In addition to the sales team, there are also 5 support staff including sales assistants and analysts whose role is help sales people perform account analytics and better understanding their accounts.
Sales account manager’s primary role is to manager large accounts. Large accounts fall into two main groups: retail accounts and professional accounts.
Retail accounts include major national retailers that buy from LPCP and then resell the products to consumers. Example would be: Walmart, The Bay, Costco, and Canadian Tire and regional players like Western Canada’s London Drugs among others. Retail accounts typically buy LPCP consumer targeted products but a some also buy some of their professional high quality / high price products. Retail account annual sales range typically between $1 to $20 million.
Professional (Salon) accounts also consist of both national accounts like: Leading Spas of Canada, Super-clips, Great Clips , Beaner’s and hopefully soon: Von Shtupp Spas. The 2,500 Salon accounts almost exclusively purchase the professional lines of LPCP.
The job of the 24 field sales representatives is to primarily call on local small accounts. A great deal of the personal care industry is centered around small independent shops or small (local or regional) chains. If they are one of the 10 reps that live in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal or Halifax, they manage these local chains from those regional offices. The balance of the sales reps work out of their home office and travel, meeting and providing feedback and setting goals with their small customers.
Tony’s Wish List
Based on what he’s heard about CRM systems, Tony thinks the following features would be beneficial: internal and external capabilities, ability to integrate data from internal and external sources, and analytic capabilities. In addition, Tony also expects the system to meet the company’s current needs plus have some room to expand as LPCP expands.
Assignment Questions:
Tony has asked Hedley to create a list of 3 different real-life CRM options. Your answer should be based on the information provided in Module 6 and this case document plus information provided in Assignment 2.
What exactly you need to do:
Answer the following questions:
1) Features & Reason List
Review the information provided in the cases as well as Module 6 and develop your own list of features that you think the LPCP should have in their CRM system and explain (based on the facts presented) the reason you think that feature is important for LPCP’s system.
Your answer should be in the format of “feature” followed by “reason”. For example:
Feature: Analytic ability
Reason: LPCP sales reps are required o do sales analytics for the account plans and for customer presentations.
Tony’s suggestions above are only a partial list. You must look at the rest of the company facts and add to that list. In addition to Tony’s requests, list as many features as you believe are relevant based on the information in Module 6 and the cases.
2) Provide Options and Comparison of Features
You are next to conduct original internet research (via Google or other search engine) and find 3 different providers of CRM systems. The exact companies you select are your choice. There are several companies listed in Module 6, or you can just google “CRM companies”.
After you have selected the 3 providers, you need to cross reference (compare) the CRM features that you developed in Q1 (above) with the actual software features that the provider offer.
Present your answer for Q2 in the form of a table with features (from Q1) in the first column on the left side, followed by the providers listed in a row across the top.
| System Features | Supplier A Web address: suppliera.com | Supplier B Web address: supplierb.com | Supplier C Web address: supplierc.com |
| Feature A | Yes | Yes | No |
| Feature B | No | Yes | Yes |
| Feature C | Yes | No | No |
| Feature D (New feature) | No | No | Yes |
| Feature E (New feature) | No | Yes | Yes |
As you review the list of features that CRM providers offer, please add any new features to the list that you feel would be good to have but did not think of in Q1.
Please note: when I mark this section, I will be checking the websites of the suppliers you have selected.
3) CRM Recommendation
In this section you are to provide a recommendation to Tony for which the supplier LPCP should hire for their CRM system plus an explanation for your overall reasoning. For Example: Supplier C is the best choice for LPCP because Reason 1, Reason 2, Reason 3…
As part of your answer for this section, you must take into consideration which features you listed are most important to LPCP and reference that in your answer.
Note: Do not just do a numerical tally and say: “Supplier A meets 10 features but Suppliers B & C have only 9, so I recommend Supplier A”. All features are not of equal importance and you must recognize that in your recommendation.
When you are graded here, your grade will be weighted toward your explanation of why you selected that specific supplier you did based on what features you felt were most important.
CFlex CRM 400 Assignment 3 Rubric
| Criteria | Points | Comments | Mark |
| Title page: Contains name, course, section, date, professor name, company name | 5 | ||
| Q1 List of Features & Reasons: Internal vs. external focus, ability to handle large & small accounts, internal and external focused, analytics ability etc | 35 | ||
| Q2 CRM Comparison: Identify 3 real world CRM suppliers, and develop chart of features from Q1 and compare that to whether they offer those features. | 35 | ||
| System Recommendation: Your recommendation to Tony for a system supplier with reasons based on the criteria they meet. | 10 | ||
| Information Sources: Links to all websites and other sources used in MLA format. | 5 | ||
| Grammar and MLA Formatting: Writing is clear, using proper Englishgrammatically correct, follows MLA format and other format rules in assignment document. | 10 | ||
| Total | 100 |
