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CRM Software vs. Microsoft Excel

Sep 2

Gepostet von David Duncan in CRM, Customer Relations, Marketing | Keine Kommentare

 

In a discussion today with a major PC systems integrator, I was told that the company worked quite happily with Microsoft Excel and Word  for CRM purposes and had no plans to make any changes. This was bad news for someone offering CRM consultancy, so I followed up with some questions.

The sales and marketing organizations are producing good results. Sales activities are largely not documented, but a well organized ERP application provides reliable information on goods and services purchased. A simple ticketing system provides a record of service activities. The company has a stable customer base. Sales processes are simple and are supported by the ERP-System.

In this particular situation, there really would be little gained by introducing a CRM system. There is no need for sales persons to produce offers or take orders while on the road. News letters and customer correspondence can be produced and sent with Microsoft Office products. A Sharepoint depository holds all customer records.

The situation would change however, if the owner/manager were not coordinating and guiding operation himself, thus ensuring a high quality of customer service. If further management levels were introduces this would also change the scenario as would a period of rapid growth. In this case the strategy of the company is to maintain and protects its customer base and to grow only through the sale of more services to a slowly growing number of customers.

So what am I trying to say? Basically that CRM sales persons should be aware that CRM systems are not per se essential for a successful operation. This will depend on the size and processes of the organization. Particularly in the case of an owner managed company, the owner will (normally) be the first to notice when the operation is not running efficiently.

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Mind the gap: ERP meets CRM

Aug 26

Gepostet von David Duncan in CRM, CRM Projects, CRM Software | Keine Kommentare

Travelers on the London Underground are used to taking a big step when the train carriage stops at a curved platform. A similar mismatch exists when ERP and CRM systems need to be interfaced, but the solution is not so simple.

Most solutions for CRM Users involve either the import of data to CRM from ERP or direct access to the ERP systems, but this is not what CRM users really want. CRM users need:

• indicators, when things go wrong or not according to plan and

• aggregated figures or KPIs with the ability to drill down when needed.

ERP manufacturers have tried to create their own integrated CRM applications, for example SAP or SAGE, only to find that CRM apps must be considerably more flexible than ERP systems and that a tight integration makes the CRM System inflexible. More on this in a later post. The solutions of these companies now supplied are in fact not tightly integrated at all, they only appear to be.

Of course, this can be done by importing large volumes of ERP data, but this redundancy is not beneficial to performance or flexibility. A better solution is to insert a middle layer of multi-dimensional data so that CRM Users can use simple dashboards for their data access.

Typically products such as SAP Netweaver or BW are in a position to supply suitable data, but BW projects tend to be long and complex and make it difficult to keep up with sales people who change their requirements often dependent on market and sales conditions.

The most economical and practical solution is to introduce a middle layer and to use products such as QlikView or Dundas Dashboard to present and manipulate data. There are more products available, but it happens that I have recently been involved in evaluating these two.

It is surprising that CRM integrators often ignore this middle step. Controllers would never think of going directly to raw data during the financial planning process.

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Check out the new downloads at CRMquergedacht

Aug 20

Gepostet von David Duncan in CRM | Keine Kommentare

New (German language) downloads available at CRMquergedacht

Two views of Social Media in relation to CRM

Aug 12

Gepostet von David Duncan in CRM | Keine Kommentare

Sites such as Facebook and Twitter have generated considerable hype and this seems to have given CRM Product Managers an opportunity to produce new ideas, not without reason.

 Not only the number of users, but also the average amount of time spent per user on social networking sites has climbed substantially in the past year. So it is not surprising that Social CRM is being pushed as one of the top ten technologies for 2010! We have however seen a number of hypes which have not had the expected results, so let’s look at the situation more carefully.

What is Social CRM? Certainly nothing new, since Customer Relationships have always been relationships whether based on person to person contacts, on telephone calls or print media. What we do have is a new set of tools, though unfortunately no-one in the CRM Software industry seems to know how they should be used.

There are two ways of looking at the situation, one from the point of view of a sales organization looking for information on prospects or customers and one from the point of view of the prospects and customers. For B2C sales and marketing, the relevance of social media is self evident, here I am more concerned with B2B.

Sales people will be interested in gathering information on the contacts they know or in finding new contacts. A surprising amount of information is out there to be found in facebook, xing, youtube etc., so it is to be hoped that CRM software will soon offer tools which gather information from these sites more or less automatically. Ideally this information will include any posts relevant to the suppliers products or services.

To quote from Siebel (http://blogs.oracle.com/socialcrm/)

 Sales users are able to get a quick view of activities in their social networks such as recently published content and posting from other members

Prospects and customers will (hopefully) wish to have access to product and other information. Whether or not suppliers provide this information by their web site, in blogs or other social sites is in my opinion not an issue for CRM software. The software should provide however for capturing any access to this information for lead generation.

To quote from Siebel ()

To date, the number of qualified leads coming from social media seems to be low, but this will change as the new media come to be used for more than chat and self-expression.

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New CRM Posts each Thursday – watch for news and comments

Jul 21

Gepostet von David Duncan in CRM | Keine Kommentare

Check this out – Pivotals Social CRM Solution

Jul 19

Gepostet von David Duncan in CRM | Keine Kommentare

This is a pragmatic approach to linking CRM with Social Web: http://www.cdcsoftware.com/en/PivotalCRM/Products/Social-CRM.aspx

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CRM on your iPhone or Blackberry?

Jun 18

Gepostet von David Duncan in CRM, CRM Software | Keine Kommentare

Once again iPhone-Hype is everywhere and CRM-suppliers are quick to offer interfaces. The approach differs from product to product – some provide online access to the database, others download date to the phone. The most common use is to check or find customer names or contacts when on the road, but most apps go further with a variety of functions. E-Mail and Call are of course to be expected on a phone, but some products provide access and edit functions for activities, opportunities or orders.

While the access to address and contact data is certainly useful, it is worth thinking if further functions are worth what they cost. This will vary from application to application and certainly from industry to industry, but in many cases the small display and limited data entry speed on the iPhone (Blackberry is faster for most users) limit the practical usage.  it is probably better to turn to a notebook witha  larger screen and a real keyboard – it may not be trendy, but it does encourage more careful use.

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International CRM applications

Jun 16

Gepostet von David Duncan in CRM, CRM Software | Keine Kommentare

International companies will tend to centralize IT-applications where possible and it appears that CRM-solutions are now being targeted.  This may seem reasonable but there are many arguments against centralization in this area. One recent example I found in a large pharmaceutical concern. A regional manager was looking for a CRM-solution for his agents in the Middle East, the agents being anything from a one-man company to a specialized sales organization with up to 15 employees. The manager was told by his IT, that the only CRM-solution allowed in the company was SAP. I need not comment on that. The manager was determined to find a solution and in fact did – the solution he found was not declared as a CRM-system.

The point is, that CRM-solutions are only effective when the local sales processes can be supported and a one-man company just does not have the same processes as the German operation with many thousands of employees and a gigantic sales force.

Adapting an enterprise application to suit local conditions has two major disadvantages:

  • the cost of customizing is extremely high, and
  • the massive customizing produces an application nothing like the original.

It is in fact often more effective and much less costly, to install suitable products in each country and to generate interfaces as required.

It is also absolutely essential to analyze and react to local requirements, even within Europe methods and processes change from country to country. Further, requirements vary according to the size of the sales operation. One memorable near-fail of a project occurred for example when a company in the automotive industry assumed that all vehicles could be identified for their lifetime by the registration number – the system designers were based in the UK.

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How to define B2B customer value

Jun 15

Gepostet von David Duncan in CRM, Customer Relations, Marketing | Keine Kommentare

In most cases, in Germany at least, customers are categorized as A, B or C customers based on the volume of business. At first, this appears logical but at a closer look more factors should be regarded:

  • business volume in relation to the customers total budget
  • the customers growth plan
  • marketing prestige

Just looking at achieved business volume is a very one sided view of a customer. More important is the size of the customers budget, assuming that there is no reason why you should not expand your share. Some customers will clearly grow rapidly and these need to be handled with particular care since this is a chance to establish contacts and loyalties which will keep competitors out when the company grows and more people are involved in purchase and development decisions. Some companies have a lighthouse function in their industry which makes them a generator for new business if they can be referenced.

Basically, there is nothing wrong with an ABC analysis, but the process for the classification needs to be well and clearly defined and classifications should be reviewed at least annually.

The main argument against the ABC classification, is that C customers tend to be ignored. This would lead to problems, since the rule that 20% of customers create 80% of revenue will always apply. Cutting away the C customers will only reduce revenue – it will not change the 20:80 relation!

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The importance of call scheduling for CRM

Jun 11

Gepostet von David Duncan in CRM, Customer Relations | Keine Kommentare

The importance of information gathered during a customer call cannot be exaggerated. This means that calls to customers should be carefully planned and the results recorded in way which allows later analysis of the information gained.

Good sales persons will know how often they should visit their customers and have a good knowledge of customers attitudes and requirements. However even the best sales person will sometimes forget a call and information not stored online is not available for analysis. A well designed CRM system will provide means for suggesting calls to be made on the basis of the date of the last visit and the potential of the customer. Going into more detail, a CRM-System can support sales people by offering a customer-specific check-list of important points and will make the job of entering call data simple.

This is basically a very simple process and is often, exactly for this reason, overlooked during application design. Some of the most succesful companies guide the frequency and content of customer visits very closely – CRM in practice!

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