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.

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:

1. Define your infrastructure requirements
2. Name the required interfaces to groupware, ERP or other essential software
3. 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
4. Name the major modules you require such as sales, marketing and support and the most important processes required
5. Work with an experienced consultant or use online services to make a list of 20 vendors
6. 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.

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.

 The process of selecting CRM software has been discussed and described many times and in great detail. My recent experience has been however, that there are some basic and simple guidelines which are often ignored. Projects do not necessarily fail as a result of this, but many projects are much more costly than they need be and user satisfaction is often not as good as it might be. My next posts will handle these topics.

• The business case: Can my company benefit from a first or replacement CRM system?
• The project brief: What must the project achieve?
• Project organization: Who should be involved in the project?
• Researching the market
• Preparing a RFP, defining the requirements
• Working with consultants
• Creating a short list
• The final choice
• Design and Programming Specification

Keep watching!

ist das Thema “Organspende”. Eine Veranstaltung des Deutschen Managerverbands in Stuttgart am 25.3.2010.

 Anmeldungen und weitere Informationen:  “Anmeldung Organe spenden Leben“

Let’s assume that sales efficiency is increased if sales are up without higher cost of sales. Of course, there are a number of factors which can produce this effect, for example new or improved products or effective marketing campaigns. Again let’s assume that all conditions remain stable and the only change is the introduction of CRM Software. What improvements can be made? How about these:

1. Increased revenues and increased share of wallet through faster sales cycles
2. Cost efficiencies through lower cost of sales and better customer coverage
3. Increased customer satisfaction levels leading to return business
4. Greater innovation as a result of better customer contacts

My next four posts will approach these points in detail.

Mittelständische Unternehmen benötigen kostengünstige Lösungen für die Steuerung von Marketingkampagnen mit Eigenschaften wie

• Kampagneneditor
• Zielgruppenauswahl
• Erzeugung von Test- und Kontrollgruppen
• Automatische Responsegenerator mit Regelwerk
• Beachtung von Negativlisten und Kanalsperren
• Budgetplanung und -kontrolle

Leider sind diese Eigenschaften nur in sehr teueren Lösungen zu finden. Diese Marktnische wäre noch zu besetzen!

Relativ wenige Aussteller trafen auf relativ wenige Interessenten, doch waren die meisten Aussteller mit dem Ergebnis der Messe zufrieden. Wirklich Neues war nicht zu sehen oder zu hören und das ist vielleicht auch eine Erklärung für die mangelnde Messe-Begeisterung. Nach mehr als 2o Jahren CRM ist das Thema nicht mehr neu, die vortragenden Experten nicht mehr jung und die Ideen weitgehend unverändert.

Flat-Rates für DSL, für Telefonie und andere Dienste sind erfolgreich und werden von der Kundschaft gut angenommen. Die Software-Industrie schläft noch – Dienstleistungen werden meist nach Aufwand angeboten nach dem Motto “das Risiko trägt der Kunde”. Es gibt zum Glück erste Zeichen eines Umdenkens – der CRM Anbieter cobra zum Beispiel bietet neuerdings ein Komplettpaket für Neukunden mit Lizenzen, Anpassung und Installation zum Festpreis an. So muss es sein!