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.
Tags: CRM Projects
Selecting ten vendors out of the 140+ vendors in the (German) market is not a task for beginners. The tendency is to go for the big names, but this does not necessarily get you the best solution for your requirements. Many of the lesser known suppliers have excellent products and may match your needs better than a product purchased on the basis “the product has so much functionality, we will find what we need in their somewhere” (this is a quote from a recent prospect). Firstly, this may not be the case and secondly, disposing of unwanted functionality can be an expensive business.
These are the steps you need to take:
- Define your infrastructure requirements
- Name the required interfaces to groupware, ERP or other essential software
- Decide if you wish to be a small customer of a large vendor or an important customer of a smaller vendor or if this is a factor at all
- Name the major modules you require such as sales, marketing and support and the most important processes required
- Work with an experienced consultant or use online services to make a list of 20 vendors
- Reduce the number to 10 and off goes your RFP
Use the responses to the RFP to form your opinion about the product and the quality of the reaction to your request. Qualified vendors or partners will suggest that they need to know more about your application before sending you a reply. This is in fact correct and a sign of competence, but you cannot spend time with up to 20 suppliers. The RFP, as explained in a previous post, must allow suppliers to show their strengths and not just be a list of check boxes.
On the basis of the reactions you may want to invite around 5 suppliers to a presentation. It is better to have these people demonstrate one or two processed in detail than to give a general tour of their product. Any skilled sales person can make a good impression if he just shows the chocolate side of his product. Invite users to attend the presentations.
This process will enable you to select a maximum of 3 suppliers to run a preliminary workshop with you, the aim of which is to give you deeper knowledge of the product and the implementation partner and for the partner to be able to estimate the project costs and effort.
Tags: crm, CRM Investment, CRM Software
Here we need a distinction between the well known consultancy organizations such as Accenture, Bearing Point or Deloitte and freelance consultants or small specialized companies.
Large companies will tend to talk to large organization, so let’s start there. Accenture and similar organizations will tend to give the impression that due to their size, they have specialists for everything. To a certain extent this is true, but it is generally surprising how few specialists for each topic there are and it is also true that there will be virtually no people with in depth knowledge of several products, so be sure to look carefully at the qualifications of the staffing proposed. Of the three main project phases
- requirements definition
- product selection
- implementation
these organizations are well suited to assist in phases 1 (maybe) and 3 (recommended), but should not be involved in phase 2. Large organizations are interested in selling large numbers of consulting days and this is more likely with a product such as SAP than of say Pivotal CRM, so it is not difficult to guess which product will be recommended.
Freelancers and small partnerships may well be involved in phase 2. Do not expect these consultants to know all the CRM Products in detail. They will know however, which suppliers have a good track record in your line of business and will be able to assist you in the selection process. The selection and the responsibility for the selection remains with the buyer. These smaller organizations may will be involved in phase 1 if the number of potential users is not too high.
Tags: Accenture, crm, Deloitte
Once again I have met with a person charged with creating an RFP for a CRM System for a medium sized company. This person, straight from university, has a very difficult task and is unlikely to come up with the best document for the company having received no input on the real needs of his employee. This happens surprisingly often. I would not delegate the purchase of a new car for myself to a person who does not know my needs and preferences!
What is the solution? I am now repeating myself but try this:
- Develop the business case
- Define the processes to be implemented or improved to meet the business goals
- Define the hard facts which may limit the choice of product (required interfaces, infrastructure for example)
- Transfer the process requirements to the RFP, not lists of functions
- Speak to the implementation partners before requesting an offer. An offer from an unknown source is worthless to you and to the supplier
- Ask your preferred implementation partner to show you how your processes will be implemented with their product. This will produce some surprises
- Make a short list
The rest is more difficult. I will go on with that later.
Looking down the empty aisles during the CRM exhibition in Mainz, it seems that CRM is no longer a theme which attracts visitors. This gave me time to go and visit other vendors and hear what they had to say. Not much to my surprise, I heard the same story many times over, only the product name changed. The various CRM products have become so similar to each other, that there really is no need to visit a fair. The products do differ under the surface, but trade fairs are not the place to get under the surface.
The major products are becoming toolkits for the development of individual CRM applications, so companies need to look more at their potential project partner than at the software manufacturer. Smaller products such as cobra CRM PLUS are there for those looking for an out-of-the-box solution. instead of adding more and more unnecessary functions to the products, companies such as cobra should be expanding the technology base to allow customers to install distributed applications.
Tags: cobra, crm, crm plus, CRM Software
Knowing what you need is the key to making the best selection, but how do you go about defining your requirements? Frequently an unhappy employee is charged with checking the functions of the products on the market in order to come up with a set of ideas. This is just not the way to go and will lead to a choice of a product with the most functions but not necessarily the best fit.
Start with the business case and clear business aims which may be anything from reducing sales and marketing costs to increasing customer satisfaction. Évidently, this is a management task, so management must be involved.With these aims in mind, look for the processes which may be installed or improved in relation to your goals. In a few days I will add a document to this blog with ideas on how to find the processes and listing a selection of the most important items. There is too much information for a post.
Sometimes this process will show that no complex solutions are required, a solution based on address and contact management may be adequate. Alternatively you may find that your requirements are not available in any standard products, meaning that customizing becomes a major issue. Whichever way it goes, it should be possible to relate each process to the business aims and subsequently to select the most suitable solution.
It can offer help to look at your company from the customer point of view. Even if the business aims are limited to increasing increasing sales efficiency customers should register an improvenmt in sales service.
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Tags: CRM Applications
In the past few weeks, I have been concerned with a number of companies starting a new CRM project. In a surprising number of cases the process has been something like this:
- Check the internet for possible suppliers
- Download product descriptions and request informations from suppliers
- Watch online demonstrations
- Attempt to read the mass of information gathered
- Give up, prepare a list of requirements and start over
This is evidently not the right way to go about it. Not only is it time consuming and unproductive but it can also lead to false results. It is absolutely essential to determine requirements before looking at any products at all. Products are around to improve and optimize business processes, not to define them.
The process could look like this:
- Define the requirements
- Build a business case
- Prepare a document describing the required processes (NOT functions)
- Select a number of potential suppliers on the basis of product reputation and market positioning
- Ask these suppliers to show how the processes could be implemented with their products
If you have no resources for defining the requirements, then go to a qualified consultant (preferably not a potential supplier). This may be appear costly, but time saved will more than compensate this. Even reading this blog may help!
Tags: crm, RFP, Sales, Vertrieb
In the past few years, I have been responsible for evaluating an immense number of RFPs for CRM systems of all shapes and sizes, a necessary but often frustrating task. Why frustrating? The RFP must be constructed in such a way that product differences really become visible. This is very often not the case. Several approaches are recognizable.
- The RFP has been prepared by external consultants who have a clear interest in a particular product, but need to make their recommendation appear objective (frustration level high)
- Consultants have been involved who do not have vested interests in a product but prefer a solution which enables them to continue consulting while the product runs (frustration level medium)
- Consultants have been involved who are assisting the company to find the best fit solution as objectively as possible (excellent but seldom, no frustration)
- Listing all possible CRM functions in order to choose the product with the most functionality (frustration level high, since most suppliers can tick the boxes with a little imagination)
- Describing the current situation and asking for suggestions (frustration level low, but usually difficult due to lack of adequate information)
This sounds hard on consultants, but to be fair, the selection task is not easy. Recommending a product without product experience is risky, but at the same time experience cannot cover all products available and will limit the choice to a small number of major suppliers. Most suppliers will form an opinion regarding the type of RFP and will invest effort accordingly. In order to receive a maximum of information, the RFP must not be weighted towards a specific solution and must allow comparative strengths and weaknesses of suppliers and products to appear.
A good RFP will contain a clear statement of the current position, the reasons for the introduction of a new and will ask for information on
- Technology
- Functionality
- Interfaces
- The manufacturer
- The project partner
- Project methodology
In each section questions are separated into “must have”, “should have” and “nice to have” questions. This is not so easy as it sounds, since most products allow customization which makes it difficult to make a yes/no answer possible. A “must have” could be for example an interface to Lotus Notes. The above list will be extended in much more detail in later posts.
Better than a list of functions is a list of business processes with a brief description. This enables suppliers to take a clear position. Take care to ensure that each step in a process is simple enough to allow a simple answer. Details follow in the next posts!
Tags: RFP
The project brief should clearly state the aims and the focus of the CRM Project. It will be designed for internal use and will not be a basis for the pre-selection of possible suppliers and may not even provide “Make or Buy” guidelines. Admittedly, no-one today seriously attempts to go for a “Make”, so this is more theoretical.
Where does this piece of string start? Is it a good idea to look at available products and see what may be of use, or is it better to examine the user requirements in relation to the project brief? Though it can be helpful to have a rough idea of what CRM-Suppliers have to offer, there is for me no question that the starting point is the requirements analysis.
Most suppliers will offer lists of functions. Not surprisingly, these lists will be very similar, allowing only the distinction between “smaller” solutions (cobra CRM PLUS, CAS Genesys World) and “larger” solutions (Oracle, SAP, Pivotal, Microsoft, Salesforce). Within a group of similar products, what really differentiates the products is the ability to realize and support specific business processes. A seemingly simple requirement, such as the need to have different data entry masks for company data depending on user login, can put some players off the screen. These differences only become visible, when the required processes are known and defined.
The starting point must be the definition of the required processes in adequate detail to reflect the way in which users will work. There is no need to fear that this will result in requirements which no supplier can fulfill. Sales, marketing and support processes are common to most companies. The way in which these processes are implemented is however very different from company to company and is absolutely critical for the future application. These differences make companies individual.
Tags: CRM Suppliers, Project Brief
It is frequently stated that a large percentage of CRM projects fail. That is something which I cannot confirm in my own experience, but I have found that very few projects have clearly defined aims. This places the Project Manager and the Steering Committee in a tricky position as there is no way of setting realistic milestones and checkpoints. This could be the subject of a book, but to keep this post readable on this blog, here is simply of list of quantifiable and controllable possible goals for a CRM Project, assuming that the scope of the project and the resources available are also defined. This list relates to B2B projects.
Internal Considerations
- Leads
- Decreasing the cost of lead generation by improved marketing efficiency
- Reducing the time and effort required to qualify leads
- Improving the qualifying process and the conversion rate of leads to opportunities
- Sales
- Reducing the time sales persons require for administrative tasks (activity planning, writing visit reports, producing proposals etc.) and information searches
- Improving the communication between internal and field sales
- Reducing the effort required to organize or re-organize sales areas, sales teams
- Activity Management
- Individual users will not directly benefit from CRM Activity Management, the advantages are in team work and communication. The advantages to be defined relate to improved communication and reduced overhead.
- Opportunities
- The value of opportunity management is frequently overrated, but there are efficiency gains to be made for sales management.
- The use of sales strategies (Target Account Selling, Miller Heimann) can be supported by a well designed CRM System. However, more important than the creation of data entry forms is the way in which the strategy is lived by the sales force. CRM can only support this process by reducing the administrative overhead (see “Sales”)
- Marketing
- Operational Marketing (I would like to patent this term) can be simplified using CRM Software for Mailings, Event Organization (Invitations etc.) and by linking campaign and lead generation processes. This needs to be carefully designed.
External considerations – the real CRM objective
All of the above relates only to internal improvements. Most important though is that customers should feel the effects of a new CRM System. They should find well informed contacts and be impressed by the ease with which staff deal with any kind of situation. In my opinion this should be the real reason for installing or improving a CRM System. Here quantifiable goals could include service quality, customer satisfaction, speed of delivery and customer retention.
Tags: Project Brief
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