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Facts and KPI for sales organisations

Sep 9

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

Sales DashboardSales people need data when visiting existing customers (see “ERP meets CRM”), the level of detail depending on the products concerned. A sales person selling for example to retailers or wholesalers will be more interested in purchase patterns than a person selling CRM software. All sales people will be interested in certain factors such as share of budget and order frequency and size.

In well organized companies there will be a sales plan per customer, so what the sales person really needs to know, is whether or not the sales are above or below plan. In this case it is only necessary to know if sales are on plan or not. Detailed information is only required when there are deviation from plan or when new requirements arise. A display as shown above will tell the sales person at a glance if all is OK or if there is need to examine things in more detail.

During the planning phase of a new CRM installation, I would strongly recommend an analysis of sales data required and close attention to the presentation of the data. In many cases a simple red-yellow-green indicator could be informative and time saving.

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CRM-Expo in Nürnberg

Sep 6

Gepostet von David Duncan in CRM | Keine Kommentare

Not long now till the CRM-Expo in Nürnberg. A limited number of free entry tickets are available from CRM Blog alias crmquergedacht. Just comment this post and request your ticket. You will receive an E-Mail requesting your postal address.

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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

What is missing in CRM Software?

Aug 20

Gepostet von David Duncan in CRM Software | 2 Kommentare

Sometimes giants can learn from dwarfs. Comparing enterprise software is small scale solutions, it is surprising how often the enterprise solutions lack basic functions supplied by their smaller relations. Manipulation of addresses for example is much better in a product such as cobra CRM PLUS or SalesLogix than in solutions von SAP or Oracle. One would think that entrprise solutions supply ergonomic solutions for a simple process such as creating a new task based on a completed task and showing later the chain of events. Try doing this, you will be surprised how little functionality is around.

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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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Why CRM Software has not developed over the years

Jul 29

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

The last two posts have been pointing to the limitations of CRM software. It is true that software functionality has not changed much since the first CRM solutions were offered, but usability and flexibility has shown a massive improvement.

Why do the applications not develop? Basically the tools customer oriented users require are not that complex and are limited in number and type. The tools are available and have been for some time. A tool alone will not help you however, just as little as owning a hammer will drive a nail into a wall. There is nothing wrong with the hammer, but you need to know what to do with it. The same applies to CRM Products. As stated in a previous post, there are solutions available for almost any CRM requirements, but first you must know your requirements.

These are the steps you need:

  1. Define your business aims with regard to your growth plans and planned customer base. Then define your strategy for reaching these aims from the point of view of the customer.
  2. Define your business processes in relation to your business aims. Business processes in sales and support are not in any way complex, but they do need attention to detail and need to interface to back office functions. Sales processes must remain flexible. Back Office processes tend to be more strict.
  3. Translate your processes to software requirements that support your information flow and work processes. Do not let your IT-Department talk you into making a check-list of functions and certainly not into a technology oriented selection process. Your processes are important.
  4. After all this, go ahead with the software selection process. Let suppliers show you how their software can support your process. In the short list stage it may be worthwhile investing in the development of a module from all short listed companies.

Many CRM projects start with having an IT-oriented employee research information on existing solutions and the development of a list of requirements based on the functions offered by products favored by that person (or team). This is the wrong track. Start a step 1, not at step 4!

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CRM as it could be

Jul 22

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

Contrary to popular practice, CRM consulting is about putting the customer at the center of your business, not about internal efficiency. In most of the cases I have been recently involved in, customers have been primarily concerned with the improvement of existing internal processes. This makes life easy for the consultant or software sales person, but will probably neither lead to reduced costs nor to increased sales.

Finding and retaining customers is becoming increasingly difficult as loyalty is no longer to be expected and competition increases at all levels. To be successful, it is essential to look at your company from the customers point of view. Is your company behaving the way in which your customers expect? Are you supplying sales and support services which your customers expect? Or is your company more concerned with internal efficiency than with customer needs? You do not need a CRM product to increase sales efficiency – most sales people require little more than a good contact management tool, CRM becomes effective when you prospects and customers notice an improvement.

CRM is not software and in fact most available solutions can support your operation. CRM is about knowing your customer’s requirements and putting a strategy in place to find, develop an keep them. Are you looking at your CRM Software with regard to this aim?

Generally, software suppliers will suggest a workshop to define your requirements. That is generally correct, but whether before or after the sale, these workshops will always be conducted with regard to the limitations of the software offered. Sales people know that your budget is limited and will avoid suggesting improvements which, due to software limitations, will be too costly

You must define your aims and requirements without reference to a product. If you are unable to do this with internal resources, find a consultant who is not tied to a product. However, you are still the only person who can define your business aims.

There is no need to fear that you will then not find a suitable CRM product to meet your needs. There are enough excellent solutions on the market.

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New CRM Posts each Thursday – watch for news and comments

Jul 21

Gepostet von David Duncan in CRM | Keine Kommentare

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