Sony Latin America breaks down communication barriers: improving the company's touch points and data collection capabilities enhances marketing, sales, and service efforts.(BEST PRACTICES FOR CUSTOMER-CENTRIC ORGANIZATIONS)

CRM Magazine, March, 2005 by Beasty, Colin

With five call centers and some 260 e-business Web sites spread throughout Latin America, Fernando Taralli, new-business development director for Sony Latin America (SOLA), faced quite a dilemma in transforming the company's customer relationships south of the equator. "We were providing CRM for the entire Latin American region, for both our Web sites that we sell through, and our call center operations. We provide a platform for all of our offices across the region, so it was quite an interesting challenge for us," Taralli says.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

SOLA made the investment in CRM to align with a much larger corporate strategy. The company began transforming its business to be more customer-centric, although Sony refers to the new initiative as...