RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

Most organisations have to try and balance the needs, or expectations, of both their customers and suppliers. Customers prefer to receive a variety of services, or products, when they need them. However, suppliers may have limited availability of the products that are needed to support the customers. It is therefore essential that the best balance is maintained by the organisations, in order to maintain good relationships with both customers and suppliers.

Migrators provide consultancy in a number of different areas concerned with managing the needs of customers and suppliers. These range from providing advice and consultancy relating to managing the expectancies of organisations, their suppliers and customers; to supporting the preparation and tendering phases of a number of major projects; to managing customer expectations. The Assignments  pages provide examples of work undertaken in this area.

Bid Preparation
Responding to the early stages of tenders can be time consuming, with the potential customers requiring increasing amounts of data. Requests can be made for product enquiries, more formal requests for information, or pre-qualification, even before the Call for Tender is issued. If initial responses lack data, further negotiations can become protracted, with additional technical and management data required. This can prolong the tendering stages and even contract negotiations. Therefore, care needs to be taken to provide quality documentation which will  help to ensure success.

Migrators have been involved with all sides of major contracts and therefore understands the complexity and special  needs of responses, relating to the preparation of proposals and supporting data. Migrators can provide consultancy and support to the bid processes of major contracts. Migrators can help to efficiently manage the time, resources and data involved in the bidding process. Migrators provide a variety of consultancy and related services in this area, including

	Advising on response levels for pre-proposal enquiries
	Evaluation of tender requests and proposals
	Preparing and scheduling bid teams
	Review and auditing of proposals and supporting data
	Support to contract negotiation and contract initiation

Customer Retention
Retention of existing customers is very important. Research indicates that it can cost many times more to obtain a new customer than to retain an existing customer. Customer retention can be achieved by ensuring that customers continue to use existing services, as well as ensuring they partake in new services when introduced. Both of these can be helped by the provision of discounts, bonuses or special services, to existing customers. High levels of customer retention will help to reduce costs as well as provide customer loyalty and further customer recommendations.

Migrators are experienced in supporting the retention of customers. They have been involved in supporting these processes in a number of different industry sectors, including Telecoms, IT and. Finance. Migrators provide a variety of consultancy and related services in this area, including:

	Assessment of Call Centres and Customer Management Systems
	Assessment of data warehousing and MIS/EIS support tools
	Assessment of new products and their development
	Evaluation and integration of Client Relationship Management products and tools
	Evaluation of Customer Loyalty schemes

Outsourcing
Organisations are outsourcing an increasing amount of their existing services to other, specialist, organisations. Care needs to be taken to ensure the results from the outsourced services are in line with expectations. It is also important to ensure that ownership of the tangible items relating to the service, such as data, systems, hardware etc. is clearly stated. Rules and requirements for entry, exit and exception criteria must also be agreed and understood.

Migrators have significant experience in the provision of consultancy and support to the introduction and development of outsourcing agreements. Consultancy has included preparing organisations for outsourcing, assessing and improving outsourcing contracts. Migrators provide a variety of consultancy and related services in this area, including:

	Advising on the preparations and transfer of systems for outsourcing
	Establishing and improving Service Level Agreements
	Identification and analysis of business needs

Preparing Contracts
Contracts with suppliers are becoming increasingly complex, especially for large, or long term, contracts such as the provision of services, or major development projects. Current contract preparation can include a number of stages, even before the Call for Tender is issued for suppliers. There is also a need to ensure that all the necessary elements of the contract are included in the preparation of Calls for Tender. This will include the requirements themselves, together with any special terms or conditions. Preparation of a quality tender will improve the quality of bids received and can make selection of suppliers and contractor negotiation easier.

Migrators have provided support to all aspects of tender preparation, right up to contract agreement and the start of work. Migrators work closely with their clients to ensure that all preparations are undertaken and are ready when needed. Migrators provide a variety of consultancy and related services in this area, including:

	Evaluation and recommendation of proposals
	Identifying business needs and assessing requirements
	Review and auditing of Calls for Tender and preparatory data
	Supplier identification and assessment
	Support to product enquiry and pre-proposal processes

Migrators also provide other consultancy services.  Select the appropriate link for other consultancy services. 

Management of Change                    e-Business
      
Virtual Management                         Communications

Business Research                          Corporate Culture

To find out more about Migrators customer  Assignments, click the link. 

To find out more about the way Migrators Consultants  work, click the link