The Role Of Technology And Crm

THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY AND CRM Providers, large and small, are plying the market with alluring CRM technology. Software that integrates operational and customer-facing systems, mines data and provides decision support can seem irresistible. Quantum leaps in both productivity and customer intimacy seem possible. At last, the internet can become a significant revenue generator versus a black hole of expense. Unfortunately, many companies fail to articulate strategy and implement business process changes in advance of CRM technology investments. They accept the “plug and play” promises of software firms and then struggle with systems integration and organizational issues. For example, a financial services firm invested in campaign management software that held the promise of automating the delivery of “the right product offer to the right customer at the right time”. Previously, the company had executed product driven direct mail drops (same offer/many customers/same date) with declining response rates. The campaign management tool promised orchestrated offers of many types to many customers on an ongoing basis through multiple channels achieving higher response rates. However, even as the tool entered installation and testing, major organizational issues emerged: Who determined the priority of customers and offers? Was funding of offers incremental or provided by the units whose products were featured? If offer priorities skewed toward a particular product, did that product unit’s profit plan increase? Did other units get profit relief if their products had lesser priority? Or could they drop “bootleg” offers outside of the strategy? If the call center generated much of the volume, did the retail branches get profit/quota relief as business generation migrated? The larger message from the above discussion is that technology is an enabler, merely mortar and/or lubricant around a carefully crafted CCM. Organization alignment and decision-making protocols must happen to support technology use. Evaluation of proprietary technology development versus purchase, select investments and isolated pilots are all advisable in the CRM arena. Further, with the recent technology sector meltdown, due diligence around the stability/integrity of partners has never been more crucial.

CRM DEFINED CRM starts with a simple premise: the individual customer is the primary focus for the organization. Not markets. Not products. Not services. Positive value exchange

is sought on the premise that by treating individual customers differently based on their specific characteristics and needs, customers are more satisfied, loyal and, ultimately, more profitable. A second tenet of CRM is the concept of building relationships and delivering value over time. Purchase events are viewed as a subset of interactions between a customer and a company, all of which can influence that customer’s lifetime value. Finally, inherent in CRM is the notion of Proactive management of interactions and communications with a customer. Simply stated, CRM is not a one-time effort. Rather, it is the continuous and deliberate evolution of relationships. Successful CRM is founded upon aggressive collection, interpretation and use of data. It forces intense organizational coordination regarding people and processes. And it requires continual organizational learning and flexibility to respond to change. Done poorly or superficially, CRM may result in a few tactical wins or merely drive up cost and organizational stress. However, done properly, CRM can create relationships where customer and company walk in harmony.

THE CRADLE AUTOMATION

OF

CRM:

THE

SALES

FORCE

The timeline goes something like this: in the early 1990’s, a handful of software vendors realized that companies specifically those with field sales forces needed help. The more business they closed, the more information they had to keep track of about their customers. Meanwhile, salespersons had various means of recording this customer information and communicating critical account news back to the home office. And those who left simply took their little black books along with them, forcing company to locate and re-collect customer data, starting at ground zero. Likewise salespeople needed better tools to help them manage their accounts, track opportunities, establish and monitor the sales pipeline, and organize their contact lists.

CONTRIBUTION OF SALES FORCE AUTOMATION IN CRM 1. SALES AND TERRITORY MANAGEMENT Which salespeople are assigned to which accounts? Who’s already reached quota? What’s the pipeline look like in the southwest? Sales managers overseeing tens or hundreds of sales teams can’t possibly keep abreast of every active sales initiative, let alone the individuals in their organizations. Sales management tools enable

them to do just that, offering data and reporting options to give sales managers and executives on- demand access to sales activities- before, during, and after the order. 2. CONTACT MANAGEMENT Contact management is the subset of sales force automation that deals with organizing and managing data across and within a company’s client and prospect organizations. Contact management software can contain various modules for maintaining local client databases, displaying updated organization charts, and allowing salespeople to maintain notes on specific clients or prospects. Many also allow users to query remote databases for supplementary information or to synchronize laptop- local data with a corporate customer database. 3. LEAD MANAGEMENT CRM vendors claim that the capabilities described in the previous section push sales prospects through the pipeline more quickly. But who’s in the pipeline, anyway, and how long will they be there? Lead management also known as opportunity management and pipeline management aims to provide foolproof sales strategies so no sales task, document, or communication falls through the cracks. Thus salespeople can follow a defined approach to turning opportunities into deals. Many lead management products not only track customer account history but also monitor leads, generate next steps, and refine selling efforts online. 4. CONFIGURATION SUPPORT Because many of these tools allow a salesperson to input client and prospect information into an easy-to-use tool, CRM products have evolved to leverage this information by providing product- specific configuration support to companies who must “build” products for their customers. Such companies- computer technology vendors, appliance manufacturers, and telephone companies among them- no longer undergo the painstaking process of factoring in complex customer attributes and requirements to build a solution from scratch. 5. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT As field salespeople know all too well, a lot more than customer data is necessary for selling, and the more information available, the better. Organizations have a plethora of information an account rep can use sometime during the sales lifecycle.

Accessible internal documents can provide the sales force with the information it needs to understand a variety of components in the sales lifecycle. Rendering salespeople better informed and more productive increases the likelihood that they’ll close more business. And this type of productivity is bound to enhance the customer relationship, not to mention the corporate bottom line.