To be able to apply a real CRM strategy, the first thing to do is to form an accurate customer information system. StraMar Central is a product designed for making of the customer information system in StraMar. It is used in every StraMar implementations. StraMar Central is able to add value to the institutions described below:

* The ones without a central customer information system.
* The insurance companies following the customer information on policy basis without a single customer information system.
* The institutions without a customer prospect information system.
* The institutions having a customer information system and willing to apply a CRM based approach
* The institutions willing to approach to their customer more closely than the existing system and following more detailed information about the customer.

  StraMar Central provides the institutions with an integrated CRM infrastructure to the existing system, as well as to the existing customer information system.
StraMar has a wider approach to the customer as a concept. Business partners and service providers, channels and internal customers are all included to the customer concept. The channels with sub-channels and the organizational structure and company staff with teams and groups, as internal customers are all included in the system. Private and corporate customers can be followed separately as well as the customer groups. For example, a firm belonging to a holding can be followed as a customer while the holding can be followed as a group together with the included firms. StraMar follows a customer together with the defined related customers, it can also follow the authorities and partners in the corporate customer. An authority of a corporate customer can be a prospect as well as a customer itself. Therefore, authorities, partners and relations are all followed with customer/prospect numbers.

  Segmentations Criterias
  In today’s market, companies feel the necessity to know their customers more deeply and therefore they are willing to collect information about hobbies, education, financial status and special days, besides the classical information. This creates the necessity to use detailed systems to follow this new set of information. To be able to know the customer portfolio more closely, the companies need to create customer segmentation using some segmentation criterias.

  StraMar Central enables the company;
* To follow the necessary customer information together with the segmentation criterias.
* To follow corporate and individual customers with different criterias.
* To change the information and use new criterias without changing the software coding.
* To define the new information and criterias with the validity rules, statistical tables, messages and help texts using SFSScript Language.

  Customer Prospect Management
  StraMar enables the company to follow the customer prospects as well. The customers and customer prospects are all followed in an integrated system with redundancy controls and corporate/individual separation. Customer prospect entry can also be done using different screen. The proposals given to prospects are followed with StraMar Sales, visits, interviews and related activities with StraMar Activity, and finally all kinds of forms (visit form, questionnaire etc.) with StraMar E-Form.

  Redundancy Control System
  To enter a customer more than once with different codes creates the risk of not being able the see all the information about that customer under a single customer number. This will also affect the service quality given by the call center and sales representative. An institution, unable to develop systems to eliminate this risk, cannot be considered as an institution that formed a CRM infrastructure. The redundancy control can be used at different levels on StraMar Central, for the contacts and the customers. The information that can be collected about a contact or reference without any Contact Us is different than the information that can be collected about a customer. For example, when a person is a contact, the date of birth information cannot be reached but after becoming a customer this information can be easily obtained. The companies can form their redundancy control system in every level, contact, prospect and customer, and determine the redundancy control criterias by themselves. After the definition of these criterias, determined for corporate and individual customers separately, the system can prevent the input of duplicate customer entry or can limit the authority that can enter such an input and can give warning messages. This control can also be done in institutions in which the sales representatives and channels work with different portfolios without reaching each other’s data. The redundancy control can still be done in such organizations giving necessary warnings when duplicate entry occurs and showing all the information if the customer is in the same portfolio and showing only a certain set of information about the customer and portfolio if the customer is in a different portfolio. In this latter case, the use of the data is limited.

  Integration of Individual Customers and Corporate Customers
  In many companies, the individual customers are followed by different departments/representatives and corporate customers with different ones. The authorities and partners in a corporate company are also potential customer prospects or customers. To be able to follow this relationship without creating any duplicate entry and without effecting the distribution of the authorities among individual and corporate departments gives the company many advantages.

  Following the References
  StraMar Central has many advantages for the companies using direct sales organizations in the use of references. The possibility of a reference to become a customer or to become a visited or unvisited prospect cannot be neglected. It is also possible that the taken reference is present in another portfolio. Taking into account all possibilities, StraMar Central brings a systematic approach to reference following.

  Authorization of Customers Portfolios by Sales Representatives
  StraMar Central has many advantages to companies with plenty of sales representatives and also sales teams. StraMar learns and follows the organization with hierarchies and changes. (Please see Sales Management) StraMar recognizes a user when he/she connects to StraMar Central, with his/her title and duty. When sales representatives connect to the system (if the system is set this way), they cannot see each other’s customer and prospect portfolios. Each sales representative works in his/her defined portfolio with the defined authorities. The company has also the option of not defining authorizations for customer portfolio. This property is parametrical in StraMar Central.

  The managers or authorities in head office units can reach the customer portfolios with defined authorities.

  Assignment of New Customer Prospects to Sales Representatives
  The assignment of new customer prospects obtained on Internet or another external source to some sales representatives can be done with StraMar. Besides, the customer prospects that are not approached for a certain period of time can be taken from the existing sales representative and given to another one. StraMar Central provides the necessary control and follow-up systems.
Customer Portfolio Transfer Among Sales Representatives
StraMar Central enables the company to transfer the customer portfolio of a sales representative to another sales representative.

  Authorization of Customer Portfolio by Channels
  Internal Channels (for example regional offices of the company or branches) can be connected to StraMar Central. External Channels (agencies and brokers) can also be connected with StraMar e-Channel. The system can distinguish the channel of the user connected to the system and create authorization for the portfolio based on the related channel. This brings the property to prevent a channel to reach the information of another channel.

  Customer Search Properties with Different Criterias
  It is possible to search customers or customer prospects in the system with different criterias. Name, surname, telephone number, e-mail address, credit card information and so on... A different search criteria defined on StraMar Central can be included to the system.

  Relations
  The relations among customers and contacts can be followed bilaterally. The special accounts described above can also be followed automatically with relations among special account owners.

  Data Quality
  In the customer entry, redundancy control phases are present to prevent duplicate entry to customer database. The required fields and default values can also be defined with necessary controls. The data quality losses generated from user faults can be therefore prevented.

  Customer and Representative History
  The data about the customers and representatives is kept historically to be able to show the historical changes.

  Documents and Pictures of Customers
  StraMar also enables the user to keep the up-to-date visual data about the customer including signature, photo and logos as well as the authorization documents including the signature statements.  Black Lists The black list information and the warnings coming from different sources can be followed easily and this limitedly shared information can be shared organization wide.

  Following of Customer Groups
  The customer groups can be followed like single customers. The customer groups can be assigned to sales representatives and can be analyzed.