What Drives MDM Trends @ 2010?

Dears,

The answer to our Title Question is
Market pressures and organizational maturity drives new master data management (MDM) trends

My observation with some of the leading edge organizations seeking business transformation highlight shifts in the MDM trends of the past. Organizations flooded in data need to move beyond the clutter and get to the information. More data does not equate to more information. In order to make sense, MDM initiatives now move to align with a new set of focus – business transformation and optimization.

Seven key trends now drive the new world of MDM as we enter a new decade.

1. Master data management must go vertical to succeed in business. Customers no longer want horizontal solutions. MDM must tailor to industry specific requirements. Results must be relevant to how an industry works.
2. Structured and unstructured content will evolve into the MDM ecosystem. Customers seek tools to tie hierarchies and relationships back to unstructured data in the effort to achieve value in information.
3. Data in the cloud and SaaS will force hybrid approaches. Cloud based and SaaS models change where and how data becomes augmented. MDM systems must support hybrid models in real-time. Proven data integration must be a given not an afterthought. Data integration must be event driven.
4. Master data management styles no longer matter, just the results. Issue of styles get relegated to the IT owner. Business users seek results and actionable insights.
5. Data governance and stewardship more important than ever. Processes must align with use cases. Data hygiene needs to be omnipresent but not cumbersome
6. Social CRM creates demand for trusted profiles. Organizations now need to understand their advocates and detractors Today’s social and connected world requires more targeted marketing, sales, and service/support programs.
7. Business optimization and transformation will require MDM to cover more data types. MDM moves beyond customer, product, accounts, and employees. New forms of content such as location, images, video, and tweet streams will enter the equation.
Expect to see more details on each one of these trends in the coming year.
Question to you ?
Where are you with your MDM strategy? Have you deployed? Are you redeploying? Do these trends resonate with you? Let me know ..

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DC*

Art of CRM: Sun Tzu Way

Dears,

The Art of War, written by Chinese General Sun Tzu about 2500 years ago, has been flaunted as an excellent and timeless read for generals, statesmen, CEOs, market traders, athletes, salespeople, and even married couples. And now [queue-in the marching drum roll, please], I'll try to draw some parallels to CRM and Leadership.
One of my Favorite quotes “A losing general enters battle and then seeks victory. A wise general achieves victory and then enters battle.”--- Sun Tzu

The lesson of Sun Tzu applies not only to war, but to business. Often, an executive launches a product or service and then hopes that with enough time, sweat, money and luck, success will follow. A wiser approach is to develop a coherent plan to ensure success that can be understood and implemented by the team. A CRM system translates those seeds of an idea into assignments and tasks that guide a motivated team and bring in eager, happy customers.

Art of Leadership

Successful business people are--more often than not--great leaders, leading thinkers, and leading doers. Much like the attributes of a great general, it is smarter and nimbler leadership that prevails in the marketplace, that most complex of all battlefields.
The Art of War describes several criteria of leadership; let’s examine a few of them briefly:
First I want to tie in the purpose and strategic significance of the enterprise. Without creating the bonds and trust necessary between the leader and subordinates, it is all but impossible to consistently meet the strategic and tactical objectives of CRM.
Second, let's tie in the boldness and strategy of taking actions. This is three-pronged: First, great leaders time their moves with great care. This includes press releases, earnings forecasts, and product launches. Second, it is important not to display indecisiveness, which can lead to an erosion of trust and confidence. And third, a smaller force can beat a larger one by causing its rival to respond before thinking. Many forms of deception are perfectly ethical in warfare and business. So don't be afraid to provocate and agitate your competition when necessary.
Third, I'd like to reflect on disciple in the ranks, an important tenet in Art of War. Instilling proper discipline into an CRM organization is complex: It consists of setting and implementing rules, regulations, and the treatment of employees. Are the employees which made things happen getting the proper rewards? Or are they getting demoralized and leaving for greener pastures?
As I mentioned the marketplace is the most complex of all battlefields. And just like there is confusion on the battlefield, there rarely are "usual patterns" in the market. However, chaos offers continual openings to someone who can perceive the forming of a future order of things. By understanding all possibilities, one can respond without confusion to whatever emerges.

Art of preempting Competition

Would Sun Tzu advocate head-on competition? I think he'd instead agree with some of the innovative sales strategies that attempt to outsmart the competition before it figures out what's going on.
Sun Tzu puts much emphasis on preempting conflict, he says:
“And so one skilled at employing the military Subdues the other's military but does not do battle,Uproots the other's walled city but does not attack”
The company which wants to avoid head-on competition needs a powerful market strategy, just as a nation-state which wants to avoid conflict needs to maintain a powerful army. However, many modern-day companies ignore the "avoid strength, attack weakness" principle to the industry's detriment. By directly attacking the competition with means such as a head-on price war, they commoditize their own products. And as we know, commoditization is the killer of profit margins. Instead, a healthier approach may be to differentiate existing offerings, create new ones, or develop new markets or branding.
Later on, the General also says, "one advances without seeking glory, retreats without avoiding blame." So take a step back, and consider whether the machismo approach of going head-on is a better option then beating your competition to the customer's door in the first place. When a product launch [battle] is planned, for example, speed to market [battlefield], all the various cycle times, and logistics are essential.

Genghis Khan once said, "It is not sufficient that I succeed -- all others must fail."
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CRM Project: Enabling Agility beyond Challenges

Dears,
I have often witnessed tension in CRM projects between scope management and innovation. Organizations start out thinking of CRM as a project with a budget, a deadline, and a set of high-level requirements.

These requirements include the demands of the business heads who decided to pay for the project so they are generally not flexible. While there may be vague discussions of future phases to encompass a broader wish list, nobody gives that much thought. The focus is exclusively on the project at hand that will bring CRM to the organization.
Upon kick-off, the project manager (or in some cases business analyst, IT manager, or CRM consultant) must flesh out the detailed requirements as quickly as possible and then prevent those requirements from changing. Project managers know that requirements churn poses the greatest risk to the schedule and budget. With deadlines and budget usually tight and the high-level scope aggressive, the only hope for project success is a determined effort to avoid requirements churn.
The problem is that CRM projects are great learning experiences. As participants think through how they do their work, as they verbalize and visualize their processes, as they understand how their processes affect others across the organization, as they collaborate on how a new system could empower them to reach objectives, they start to rethink what they expected of CRM. People wonder whether they might just innovate.
Oh, no. Sounds like requirements churn. No, let’s not go there. That is a later phase for which there is no budget and no timeframe. So just forget it. Let’s squash that innovation right now lest expectations get out of control. Project managers must meet expectations and so they must control expectations.
Since I’m a PMI certified project management professional (PMP), I do know the PMI answer to this dilemma. It is scope management with a documented process for handling change requests. The problem here is twofold. First, few organizations put such change control boards in place. Second, such a rigid process is unlikely to foster innovation. Just tell somebody with a new idea that they must fill out a change request form and submit it to a committee of superiors and you can be sure they will not have any new idea.
Because CRM projects lead to learning and new ideas, agility is essential to respond to innovation as it happens rather than squash new ideas as a threat to the project schedule. To consider what agile means, let’s take a look at a few of the guiding principles from the Agile Manifesto.
· Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
· Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
· Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
· Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.
· The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
Applied to CRM, I would translate these principles into the following bullet points.
· Break from the notion that CRM is just one big project with a defined beginning and end. The challenge of satisfying customers and meeting market threats never ends so why restrict the opportunity for employees to innovate.
· Launch CRM with an expansive vision rather than a rigid scope. The vision should include making the organization outwardly focused toward its customers and markets and promoting continuous improvements in processes that add value to customers. And the vision should tie in closely with the organization’s mission statement and strategy. Obviously, the CEO would be a great person to deliver that initial vision at a kick-off meeting.
· Include the widest range of stakeholders in the kick-off meeting even if initial phases will not directly affect them. Collaboration across the organization is a great catalyst for innovation.
· Keep each phase, especially the initial phases, short so that the team does not have to push off new ideas far into the future. Do not insist that the first phase include every high-level requirement requested by the executive stakeholders. Some of these requirements may be replaced as new ideas emerge. And once people start using a system, they will have a better understanding of their requirement priorities.
· Follow proven project management practices within each phase to reliably implement new features on time and within budget.
· Encourage brainstorming and idea generation on an on-going basis. When new ideas emerge, create ad-hoc teams to pursue them even if the actual implementation is not in scope for the current phase. Do not just say “not now” and leave it at that.
· Make sure initial phases focus on usability rather than maximizing features. If people hate using CRM, it is unlikely to become a platform for innovation.
· Select a CRM platform that not only satisfies initial requirements but can adapt to meet evolving requirements.
· If you hire consultants to start you on your way with CRM, make sure team members learn as much as possible from the consultants both about how to perform business analysis and how to customize the CRM platform. In that way, the journey of continuous innovation through can continue after the budget for consultants runs out.

In other words, start out with a big vision but get there through small steps.

Your P&C

DC*

Let the Cloud Debate not Cloud your CRM Vision

Dears,

The term "cloud computing" has inspired a lot of thought, energy, ideas and enthusiasm. It's also sparked a lot of head-scratching, brow-furrowing and definition-debating. You might think that after several years of the concept being in the forefront of thought around business computing, this might have resolved itself and there would be a single, holistic view of what "the cloud" means. If you thought that, you'd be wrong.
Attendees at Oracle Open World have been treated this week to the embodiment of the debate over what the cloud is, courtesy of two rather prominent figures in the world of software: Oracle's Larry Ellison and Salesforce.com's Marc Benioff. The positions they took on the cloud were totally predictable, since their views catered to product images each is trying to project. However, they were also an indication of why users find it hard to fully grasp what "the cloud" means: No one at the vendor level is willing to provide a complete definition.

It's in a Box
Ellison kicked off Open World 2010 with a keynote that included the introduction of an integrated middleware machine called the "Exalogic Elastic Cloud," a big gray box tuned to run Java very rapidly, to provide a complete cloud computing infrastructure, according to Oracle.
"It's a cloud in a box," Ellison said as he introduced it Sunday night.
It was the sort of thing you'd expect from a company that spent a lot of money to acquire Sun last year, and that was very cool to the idea of SaaS until the market forced its hand. That announcement came with a round-about definition of what Oracle thinks "the cloud" is.
Ellison took time to say that Salesforce.com was not a cloud company -- it was a 10-year-old software company, and that was not what the cloud was about. Ellison stuck to the idea that the cloud was the underlying infrastructure, the kind of thing that could be created and nurtured with the Exalogic Elastic Cloud product. That pointed toward a view of the cloud as infrastructure, and Oracle's eye firmly on the private cloud part of that infrastructure.
What It's Not
On Wednesday, Benioff , CEO of Salesforce took the stage for his Twitter inducing talk, and, in mock distress, parried Ellison's jabs.
"The cloud is not in a box!" he said, before asserting that there should be a cloud computing test: If it requires you to buy more hardware and software (presumably, on-premise software), it's not cloud. If it can't scale, or it lacks automatic upgrades, or it has no applications marketplace, or it isn't energy-efficient, it isn't the cloud.
If that definition sounds a lot like what Salesforce.com already sells, there's a good reason for it -- the same reason that Ellison's definition was a good match for the big gray boy he shared the stage with Sunday night. Both vendors want to appropriate the term and make it their own. The problem is that the cloud is bigger and more complicated than either end of this debate is willing to acknowledge.
It's Elementary, My Dear
Here's my view of "cloud computing": It's computing. You need an underlying infrastructure (the boxes Ellison was talking about), the software to run on it (hello, Salesforce.com, I'm looking at you), and a transport layer to make it all work together.
At a very, very basic level, it's the same as what we've done since the first time two computers were networked. Back then, though, we didn't hear scientists at IBM arguing about whether the hardware or the software WAS the computer, or which was really the network. That was a silly idea that would have earned derision comparable to not wearing a shirt and tie to the office.
Nowadays, users are more sophisticated than back then, and yet we still figure out ways to baffle them around computing concepts. Thus, if you're a CRM user, here's my suggestion: Forget the cloud.
Hit the Mute Button
You heard me right. Pay no attention to it. Step away from the fray and let the CEOs have their fun. Focus on your business needs. Odds are good that a cloud-based solution -- one that uses software optimized for the cloud, running on a distributed infrastructure -- will do the job for you. It'll cut your administrative costs, provide backup and disaster recovery, limit your upfront costs and enable you to be more flexible than you've been in the past. The point is to let your business objectives lead you to it -- that's really the way you should be reaching these decisions, anyway.
It's possible, though, that your business requirements may lead you to an on-premise solution. You may have regulatory issues that preclude the cloud model, or you may have management that's still leery of it, or you may simply prefer to use your capital and in-house talent to tend to your business computing environment yourself, thus allowing you to skip the cloud sideshow entirely.
The question you need to ask is whether a cloud solution -- regardless of how it's defined or who's defining it -- works to address your CRM issues and help you forge better relationships with customers, and whether it does so in the optimal way for your company.

Ignore the debates among vendors (amusing as they may be), and focus on your own company. If you do that, the question of whether or not to deploy CRM via the cloud will decided itself, regardless of the definition of "cloud computing.

You P&C
DC*

Why “CRM “Must Die ?

Dears,

When Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez landed his ships on the eastern shore of Mexico in 1519, it was to fulfill his dreams. But his sailors grew tired of the hardships and talked of returning home to an easier life. To ensure they were totally committed with no option of turning back, he ordered his men to burn the ships.

In fact, "fighting" is precisely the right word. Consultants and vendors are in warring camps, each with vested interests in defining CRM their way. CRM has become a convenient label to sell stuff.

Consultants say CRM is an approach to business or process improvement. It shouldn't come as a shock to anyone that their "solutions" are packaged as consulting services.
Vendors define CRM as something you can implement via their technology. Sure, some give lip service to "CRM is a strategy," but do vendors propose non-technology solutions to solve a CRM problem? Right. About the same percentage as consultants who propose technology without any of their services.
Industry analysts are hardly independent bystanders. Most use "CRM" to define sets of "front office" applications (marketing, sales and service software). But CRM-as-a-business-strategy could, of course, be enabled with many other technologies classified in other analysis buckets, such as call center, performance management, feedback management or even ERP.
It's no wonder that people are confused. Like the famous Indian legend of six blind men trying to "see" an elephant by touch, and each forming a very different impression, "CRM" can mean just about anything to anybody.
And now, Customer Experience Management proponents arrive fully armed and ready to escalate the war of words in a new direction. Is it part of CRM? An extension to CRM? An alternative to CRM? The answer depends on what you think CRM is.

And what of the collateral damage done in this war of words? You know, the companies that are supposed to "implement" CRM. Or the customers of those companies that are supposed to be more satisfied and loyal.
Customers say "customer-centric" means things like "high-quality goods and services," interactions with "empowered employees" and "open and honest communications Despite billions of dollars spent each year on customer-oriented technologies, there's been little or no improvement in customer-centricity over the past decade, at the industry level. Sometimes industry loyalty leaders use technology extensively and sometimes they don't But technology investments alone are not enough, or we'd all be a lot happier with the service we're getting.

Let's Burn the Great Ship "CRM"

I've come to the conclusion that, for true success with CRM (the customer-centric business kind of CRM, in case you're wondering), the "ship" that must burn is the term "CRM." It's the only way to get everyone on board with a concept that's obvious: Without customers, there is no business, so let's take care of them. But this ship has sailed with far too few people on board.
My advice is to call CRM whatever makes sense to your organization. Call it customer management, customer experience management, customer managed relationships—or, if you insist, customer relationship management. But spell it out and define what you mean, because CRM doesn't have a commonly accepted meaning, and I'm now convinced it never will.
My definition of Customer Relationship Management, for what it's worth, is quite simple: the development and implementation of a customer-centric business strategy. "Customer-centric" means giving your customers what they want. "Business strategy" means accomplishing the goals of your organization. Accomplish both at the same time, and you've got the win-win that CRM is supposed to be about.
Instead of more debates of what CRM is or isn't, focus on developing and implementing a successful customer-centric business strategy.

Your P&C
DC*

The MDM Building Blocks

Dears,

Today most organizations understand the concept of master data management (MDM). After all, vendors like Oracle, IBM, Siperian and others have been pushing the MDM message for years. What most organizations don't understand, however, is how exactly to get the initiative under way

They sort of get the idea of MDM in terms of the need to get more consistency in the data … but then they struggle with two things. The first is building a sustainable business case for MDM, and the second is laying a sustainable foundation for the initiative.

Without both elements, most MDM initiatives are bound to fail. If the business doesn't recognize the benefit of MDM -- and without comprehensive data governance and an accurate and transparent way to measure MDM effectiveness -- support and funding will inevitably dwindle.

For organizations to get this puzzle right, a framework of MDM building blocks is necessary . This article would provide the brief insight about these building blocks and you know whom to contact for more information J

Develop an MDM vision. Every organization has a business vision, but they also need to develop a related MDM vision that clearly articulates its business benefits. At a bank that strives to offer the lowest prices, for example, the MDM visions should explain how consistent master data will help achieve that goal. It's not some esoteric IT infrastructure plumbing thing,It's really hardwired into achieving your business goals.
Document the MDM strategy. If the MDM vision explains the "what" and "why" of MDM, the next building block – an MDM strategy – answers the question of "how” An MDM strategy should explain which master data domains and use cases will be addressed, when and how.
Determine business-related MDM metrics. Linking MDM to business value is key to success and so is developing a set of metrics to measure and illustrate MDM's impact on the organization. Such metrics should be business focused, not IT focused, he said. For example, metrics which show that MDM helped increase the accuracy of customer data by 10% aren't likely to impress management, but metrics which show that customer retention or cross-selling rates increased as a result of MDM will. Those are the things that keep [executives] attention .
Create MDM and data ownership-related rules. Most MDM initiatives that fail do so for data governance and organization-related reasons. That's because, at its heart, MDM is about people sharing data. At the early stages of the MDM processes, then, establishing rules among stakeholders as to who makes what decisions, who is responsible for what data, and who will consume the data is a must. "If you don't have something like that, you might get some pitched battles internally,. Or worse, certain people or departments might refuse to share their data, defeating the whole purpose of MDM.
Prioritize MDM-related processes. Once governance and organizational rules are established, the processes to create and actually consume master data should be articulated. "There must be a step-wise, prioritized focus on different data domain areas, source systems and consuming communities. "Prioritization is vital to determining which processes are 'nice to have' and which are 'must have.'"
Determine the MDM technology strategy. Finally -- after the MDM vision, metrics, governance and processes have been determined -- comes the technology. Organizations have the option to buy MDM-enabling technology, build their own, or do some combination of both. The important thing is not necessarily which approach an organization takes but that it supports the other building blocks of the MDM initiative. "[Because, in the end,] if [MDM] was just IT led and concentrated purely on technology, it would never get off the ground
organizations should keep their eye on the MDM big picture and not to artificially overemphasize one element of the initiative over the other. Each MDM building block identified has an important role to play..

"Striking the right balance between technology and governance," ,"as well as ensuring that the MDM strategy aligns with the business vision and can be measured via a set of metrics, is key to success."

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Walk the Talk CRM: Keep Jargons aside

Dears,
CRM advocates to potential CRM buyers a disservice when they use industry-insiders' jargon to explain its benefits. Instead of speaking about features and functionality in software-application terms, they should talk about benefits in business terms. Most businesses are engaged in CRM -- they just don't use that acronym, and they don't yet know how a unified CRM system can work for them.

Those of us immersed in CRM take it for granted that people understand what the acronym stands for and what it really means -- the technology, people and processes that go into building stronger relationships with customers, or customer relationship management. Quite naturally, the people who sell, support and comment on CRM understand all of that. But do the intended users?

I tend to talk about CRM a lot outside my professional circle, and it astounds me that so many people haven't the slightest notion what "CRM" means. In many cases, I'm talking to Small & Medium Business owners who could benefit directly from a CRM system, and who have been the targets of many a big-budget marketing campaign over the last several years. For whatever reason, the message has yet to penetrate the consciousness of a vast percentage of decision makers.

Yet almost to a person, these Small & Medium Business owners are confronting the issues at the core of CRM -- lead generation, customer service, customer loyalty and sales information management, among others -- and handling them through home-grown and usually totally unconnected systems. In many cases, it never occurs to them that they are practicing CRM. These are simply the activities they need to do to run their businesses.

Tuning Out
As a result, these companies create ad hoc on-line and off-line solutions, or they implement simplified technologies -- like low-end SFA -- that are expedient but create silos. Information is never shared or fully exploited, and the issue tends to fester until a company grows too large to ignore what is by then an extremely thorny problem.These are the conditions that led to the creation of CRM in the first place -- why are they still afflicting businesses today?
Part of this is due to the de-evolution of the concept of "CRM" from a business-wide philosophy into a software sale. It makes sense, to a degree; the organizations at the forefront of the CRM movement, out of economic necessity, have been the vendors who stood to profit from that activity. Unfortunately, the result is that the CRM argument fades into the din of other enterprise software sales pitches.
Small & Medium Business owners get a lot of these, and the natural tendency is to tune all of them out -- including those for concepts like CRM, which could transform their businesses.
How can vendors and service providers stand out in this environment? By reframing the CRM story in ways that Small & Medium Business owners can understand. The jargon needs to take a rest, while the results of an integrated approach to managing customer relationship information come to the fore.
Talk Business
The argument should not initially be about software delivery models or IT considerations, but about the impact on business. That means the impact of a well-tracked marketing campaign on sales, the impact of arming salespersons with customer data at the start of the selling cycle, the impact of data collected by sales staff on the service and product development processes, and the translation of all the results into marketing.
Small businesses understand segments of that cycle, but they can miss the forest for the trees. It's crucial to explain the power of a unified solution in the context of the business, not in the context of the technology.
Reaching this coveted untapped segment of the CRM market is tough for vendors, who are expert at selling software and services, not at helping potential customers re-imagine the role of data in their businesses.
It's also tough for the CRM media, which often defaults to the language of the vendor instead of the language of the user. In both cases, the answer is to employ one of the basic tenets of CRM: Work with the customer the way the customer wants to work.

By taking a step back and understanding how Small & Medium Business users view their sales, marketing and service issues, and then talking about solutions in terms they understand, the CRM community can reach small businesses with messages that resonate about a solution they need -- even if they don't call it "CRM" yet.

Good Luck

Your P&C
DC*

Social CRM: What’s so Unsocial about it.

Dears,

Today, everything is social — social commerce, social business, social CRM. The list goes on and on.

Social CRM is one of the most abused title I've heard in the last 2 years. What's disappointing is that it obscures a completely valid concept for helping businesses better understand their customers. Sure, it's a way for software vendors to attempt to explain or differentiate themselves using the latest buzzword, "social." Let's set aside the fluff and define what this really means, because there is some real value here that shouldn't be overlooked.
To a business owner, customer relationships are core to just about everything. CRM technologies are tools to help facilitate interactions with our customers. We need these tools so we, as an organization, can be better equipped to sell to and support our customers.
Today there are new ways to interact and engage with customers and prospects — online communities and social networking sites. But it's important we make a distinction here: There are social networks and there are communities. The two are not mutually exclusive, nor are they identical.
Social Networks — Facebook, Twitter, and other similar online properties are designed to facilitate social interactions between people. For example, on Facebook you connect with friends, people you knew in school, and possibly even some coworkers. You may connect with some customers you know, too, but only as a nonwork-related relationship.
Online Communities — Many of the concepts found in social networks such as Facebook and Twitter apply here, but for the express purpose of solving specific business goals and objectives. For example, when Dell uses community software to provide support for its customers, the goals are to sell more hardware, reduce costs, and raise awareness of new products. There is some social aspect, but that is not the purpose of that community.
So how do you apply these concepts to managing relationships with your customers?
1. Monitor Social Networks Social networks are important as you manage your customers. You should monitor and watch them for trends and feedback. They are a channel through which your products and services may be discussed. Use social media monitoring tools to keep track of any mentions of your brand, product, or services so that you can properly react or respond to those mentions. In fact, a great strategy here is to respond with a link back to how you are addressing or echoing the feedback in your own community.
2. Offer a Community There are different types of communities that you can run for your customers. In some cases you may run a business community on a social networking site such as Facebook — though one challenge this represents is data management. Data, as you'll quickly learn, is paramount to understanding your customers and their behaviors.
3. Own the Data The data created for and by your customers is critical to understanding them. It is only through the data that you can derive value from your investment in this new customer channel. For example, Cadence integrated its online community with its CRM software, intending not only to use the community as a resource to help learn more about its customers but also to populate its CRM with that customer knowledge.
4. Customer Intelligence If you own the data from your community, there is a new level of depth you can gain from your customer interactions. Customers will populate data about themselves, the products they use, and their successes and frustrations. Once customer analytics become integrated with a CRM system, you can gain substantial intelligence about your customers: what products they own, what questions they've asked, where they've contributed, and which customers are influential — that's another list that goes on and on.
The answer for CRM vendors isn't reflexively adding "social" in front of their offerings. Instead, these vendors — whose solutions already manage rich customer data — should integrate with community platform vendors that provide intelligence and analytics to complement that data.
Then we'll have more than social CRM. We'll have integrated customer intelligence.

Good Luck
Your P&C
DC*

Your Company is Unique & So is your CRM application: Custom Development in CRM Application

Dears,
Is your company just like your competitor’s? Of course not. If it were, you wouldn’t stay in business very long. Entrepreneurs and big business alike strive to set themselves apart with unique characteristics, and since your company is unique, you need applications that are customizable to meet your unique needs.
The New age Customer relationship management (CRM) systems allow customers to access applications from any device with Internet access. The tools streamline business processes, increase sales, improve marketing strategies and improve customer relations. Additionally, data can be stored, processes can be automated, costs are reduced and sales and marketing coordinated. Each application can be customized to meet your business’s particular needs.
Through CRM utilities, companies are able to customize applications to employees’ work styles. When employees enjoy the software they are working with, it reflects in their work. Employees are more apt to capture the data and utilize the tool. When customer problems are handled efficiently, it improves the company’s brand image. Satisfied customers bring more business. A satisfied customer will not only continue to provide business, but also spread the word to other friends.
Its recommended you implement a robust CRM application but When trying to decide whether or not to look into custom application development to enhance the features of the Standard CRM Application, here are some areas to consider:
•Your business is different from all the rest, even from direct competitors offering similar products and services. You need to provide your company with the tools that enable it to stand out from the crowd. Customization adds a personal approach to business applications. It also encourages professionalism of your business.
•Your employees still need access to a standard framework. Using standard frameworks with applications keeps workflow consistent. It eliminates the need for additional training that would otherwise be required if you switch to entirely new applications. Instead, employees are engaged with applications they are familiar with.
•Using the same applications, day after day that look exactly like all the others is repetitious. Newly customized applications help motivate salespeople by providing creative resources to work from when tasks become mundane.
•Do you have certain applications available to your employees that first need debugging in order to be used? Customizing your applications saves time by increasing document flow from department to department.
•Sophisticated programs often make collaborating a messy task. By customizing your company’s applications, programs are modified to meet to the specifications of your company with an added personal touch.
•Customizing as opposed to rebuilding gives your businesses a sense of professionalism. Taking the time needed to customize applications so that they are usable and unique gives your company a sense of identity and unity.
•Does your company need an increase in sales productivity? Custom application development is a smart customer relationship management approach. First, your company can eliminate the use of multiple systems to perform the same tasks. By sharing a single application for a specific assignment, employees are freeing up time once wasted transferring data. With the rapid advance of sales force automation technology, businesses are better equipped to serve their customers. A strong business uses technology to its advantage to offer exceptional customer care. By customizing applications, you are allowing sales representatives to focus on the customer, not on the software. Ultimately, customers determine sales.
•Custom applications gives smaller businesses access to the same tools that larger ones use. The uses of technology are skyrocketing. By continuously using old applications, you put your company at risk of falling behind in an age where technology dominates. Customizing applications through web-based services allows even the smallest companies access to the most powerful technology.
•Are you interested in expanding your applications to world of mobile technology? Mobilizing provides your company with many advantages. Sales reps are always available, from any location. If your goal is to create better relationships with customers, salespeople need to be available to offer responses, even when off the job site. Not only does going wireless increase productivity, but it’s engaging to salespeople. Mobile technology is everywhere, and it is logical for businesses to acknowledge the benefits that they provide.
If your company falls into any one of these areas, you have reason enough to take steps toward custom application development and enhance your CRM application. Not only is technology more accessible than ever before, but more companies are learning about the many ways in which to implement it into everyday business practices.

Then word of caution is your customization should be within the permissible limits without affecting the standard CRM application functionalities and data model extension need to done with utmost care. There is merit in customization when you have explored all possibilities of Standard CRM functionality and the wait is really long for the Vendor to release the functionalites you are looking for.

All the Best
Your P&C
DC*

Customer Analytics, the 3rd Eye View

Dears,
This is my second article on the Customer Intelligence or Analytics. There is lot of fascination and enthusiasm around customer analytics. Our clients speak about analytics post implementation of Operational CRM efforts and its very natural to see this as next logical step for many CRM implementations .

It’s important to understand some basic definitions before we explore little more on this topic

· Business Intelligence is the use of information to monitor the business, identify issues, and create opportunities that can be leveraged for competitive advantage.
· Customer Intelligence/Analytics utilizes Business Intelligence strategies, processes, and technologies in order to provide the following capabilities ( as given in the picture ) regarding a CRM initiative: ( Look at the Picture)

Demographic data is only the base of a customer segmentation system. Demographic data is less effective in differencing interests and purchase patterns than customer analytics. Customer Analytics is different. It makes sense of data got from daily customer interactions and provides a single view of the customer. This is done by collating and analyzing customer information in order to gain better customer insight. It also enables an organization to make better decisions and thus improves future customer interactions.
Analytical techniques are two -Predictive models used to predict future events, and Segmentation techniques used to place customers with similar behaviors into groups.
Customer analytics includes:
Campaign analytics
Consumer analytics
Marketing analytics
Technical analytics
Transaction analytics

Uses of Customer Analytics
Customer analytic solutions are designed to cater to the specific business needs. Customer analytics identifies critical areas; root causes of problems and develops a plan to implement in risk areas. It also increases revenue and surpasses customer expectations. It provides high quality customer service and operations. Customer analytics increases customer satisfaction rates. It provides the organization with expertise. It also provides the organization with customer knowledge. Customer analytics involves looking at customer events and actions and using this to determine behavior. It tries to identify segments of the customer base in order to enable effective and efficient customer relationship management. Customer interactions are browsing, purchasing, paying, communicating etc. This is used to develop customer profiles, predict future actions, understand interactions, understand the impact of marketing etc. This increases marketing efficiency. It enhances customer interactions and increases marketing effectiveness tracking and customer analytic applications. This helps marketers to optimize campaign management and helps targeting as well.

Guidelines for Effective Customer Analytics

• Business processes kick start the objectives of the analytic projects. Personnel who develop the analytics should have knowledge of the business process and work with departmental heads. They should have an understanding of the business process. They should then set the objectives in accordance with all departmental objectives.
• The various departments like sales, marketing, IT etc must understand the infrastructure and database configuration. This should be done before choosing the analytical techniques and data that will be used. All parties should be brought together and the time frame looked at.
• Once data sources are identified it is important that the data is stored. Now, models can be built and deployed after which it is important to understand the data and correctly use it.
  Once all the actions are listed, identifying the attributes that are needed to develop the final transformation and selecting the most favorable combination of attributes should be done.
• The goal in developing a segmentation scheme is to place customers in groups that are as similar as possible.
• Data timing basically refers to how recent the data must be in order to be able to deliver the required power. In this respect it is important to work with customer interactions that are taking place also at the time of the proposed marketing, even if it requires additional resources. There should be the implementation of additional analyses.
• Additional enhancement data may be used when comparing clustering systems. But it must first be determined that the demographic data does not provide additional segmentation.
• The first step in segmentation is to define the objectives with all departments and collect the data about the customers' various interactions with the company.
• Similar to data transformation, model application and scoring is best completed using a tool outside the database environment. The process includes extracting data, transforming the attributes, updating the clusters, scoring the models, placing the scores and clusters in the database etc.
• The age of the data must be considered. The time to apply the model and time to complete the campaign process must also be considered.
• Data warehouses may not contain the complete view of the customer thus it is essential that relevant information be incorporated from other sources; including CRM, order management etc.
• Organizations can use customer analytic applications for long-term planning and to help employees make better decisions.
• To get the best out of customer information, analytic insight should extend to the employees and partners.

This weekend is festival Weekend in India and I wish all my Indian Friends Happy Dushhera

Your P&C
DC*

CRM Success Chronicles: The Master Strokes

Dears,

There is a lot of negative information about CRM right now that is flooding the news. However the success rates are equally high. CRM is definitely a strategy that can be implemented effectively and successfully. CRM caters to companies of varied sizes. It helps focus on different problems and solutions. Statistics show that there are clear cases of excellence in CRM implementations that can be found right across a whole range of different industries. Research indicates that organizations can clearly measure the return they received from the implementation. What is important to note is that cases of past CRM failures are not in a position to judge the entire CRM technology. Research shows that a CRM success story is easy to find.Some of the companies whose CRM implementation has been successful include:
Canon (Japan)
AMD
Hitachi
Nokia
Engage
Pepsi Americas
Sovereign Bank
HP
What most of these companies had was a clear idea of all their business processes. They understood their business needs before implementing CRM. They had managed to identify leaders and the best performers in the organization. They have also managed to involve key executives at the highest level and get the message to everyone in the organization about the importance of CRM.

The benefits of CRM implementation are huge. They include:

· Higher percentage of cross-selling
· Attracting new customers
· Closing deals faster
· Quicker and more efficient response to customer leads and customer information
· Simplification of marketing and sales processes
· Understanding customer needs
· Better customer service
· Improved responsiveness and understanding
· Building customer loyalty
· Build a knowledge base for customer support
· Control marketing campaigns
· Analyzing marketing campaigns
· Viewing the actual profit of each campaign
· Quickly view customer statistics and analytics
· Maintain exact info about the target market
· Store product prices and information
· View sales statistics and analytics
· Control current projects
· Achieve excellent customer service
· Being aware of customer needs/ reacting to them
· Understanding and responding to customers' needs
· Maintaining consistency
· Achieving an efficient, integrated business system
· Achieving organizational discipline

Steps to Becoming a CRM Success Story

· Companies should adopt stringent rules that ensure that the organization finds appropriate solutions for its customers.
· Objectives need to be fixed prior to starting on a CRM project. Also the existing processes need to be integrated with the solution.
· Assessing data quality issues should be undertaken compulsorily and companies need to make sure that they undertake the required measures before implementing CRM.
· A company should strive to understand the problems of the customers in order to secure CRM benefits.
· Create a single view about the customer with all the information available about him and make this information easily available to every one in the organization. Doing this is most essential.
· Outside resources need to be brought in if required. The need for outside resources has to be carefully studied and adopted if essential.
· Dynamic changes are possible only when sufficient technology is in place. IT enables this as it facilitates change within the organization and enables it to adapt. Hence the IT department needs to be incorporated in all respects.
· All information should be cleansed before entering.
· The solution should aid organizational objectives to the hilt.
· The various departments should be collaborated.
· Organizations should endeavor to clearly Establish Clear Business Objectives and a business plan as well that is in sync with the CRM goals also.
· A company needs to secure the acceptance of its employees to the CRM implementation
· Organizations also need to initially and right through the implementation involve top management as this is crucial to success.
· Consultants should be availed of. Their expertise would go a long way in getting the most out of the CRM benefits.


Bell Canada's Success
Bell Canada is easily Canada's largest communications company and a CRM success story. It boasts of almost 28 million customer connections and manages to provide some of the most comprehensive communication services. These services aside from being innovative have also been a source of stability to residential and business customers in the Canadian region. The company basically serves to provide their customers with solutions that smack of ease of integration and simplicity to their customers. They basically cater to all their customers' communication requirements like the telephone, internet, wireless, voice over IP and digital television. They try to provide information and technology for communications to top business enterprises within the Canadian region and beyond. They cater to a variety of organizations ranging from the small and mediocre enterprises to the large corporates. Small and medium industries have benefited immensely from their services. Their services include internet access, data services, voice services, wireless services, satellite television, long distance phone services etc. Since customer needs are growing Bell is currently trying to simplify the existing processes and introduce bundled services by moving towards a single, bill. It manages an extensive local access network providing local and long distance phone services to customers. It also enables the provision of a wide range of services for consumers. Bell's phone services include call display, call waiting, voice mail etc. A classic example of CRM success is that which Bell Canada found. Its successful implementation of CRM saw profound results in just6 months.
Pre - CRM Scenario
The solutions, business processes and methods being employed prior to the CRM solution clearly did not fulfill or meet any of the business needs. Bell Canada needed a full fledged customer centric strategy that was catering to the company requirements. After scrutiny they embarked on the implementation of CRM and decided that they will opt for its advantages. They basically encountered a problem that the existing disparate solutions created a lot of extra work for employees and basically increased the task load. This had resulted in a decrease in employee satisfaction and posed numerous problems. In addition to this BELL required its front and back end operations of its shared services centre to be integrated. This step could not be achieved through existing processes. Also the access to current employee case status and the reporting capabilities was required. All this led to the installation of CRM solutions.
Implementing CRM
The result was that CRM customer service & support initiatives were availed of. The CRM benefits were deployed to a total of 200+ users in 6 months. The staff was trained in the ability to use multi language systems; This helped them immensely especially when dealing with multi lingual customers and customer data. The key elements employed in the implementation were speed, data integration, and easy usage and increased efficient reporting capabilities.
The Result?
What did BELL ultimately witness? The result was increased and better customer service from employees amongst almost seven groups. Another advantage was the internal efficiency that was created within the organization. The flexibility and customization traits of CRM enabled a reduction in the total case volume.The ease of usage and its adaptability also resulted in an increase in the integration of data between the systems. The main point to note here is the fact that the entire implementation required very little time and was carried out with very little effort. Speed was a dominating factor in this implementation. The organization was able to acquire the business requirements it needed so much.

It's imminently clear that focusing on the failure rate of CRM is the wrong approach. Organizations need to focus more on the 'CRM success story'. What's needed most is being able to focus on the success rate and get the most out of the CRM implementation by employing the right practices prior, during and after the CRM implementation.

Your P&C

DC*

Business intelligence ROI, The Mind Game

Dears,
Justifying the value of business intelligence (BI) investments is uniquely challenging, according to analysts and end users -- particularly because there's no straightforward ROI equation. Unlike some IT systems that replace more expensive systems, manual processes or headcount, BI's benefits are often "soft" or intangible. While there may be some ROI metrics that support a business case, BI projects often require a bit of faith on the part of the people writing the checks -- and some savvy selling by IT and business users.

Here's my 5 cents about calculating ROI and effectively justifying BI investments.

1. Collaboration between IT and business is essential.
It's difficult to justify BI's price tag as an IT overhead cost .IT needs to work with business users to figure out the business value of a BI application. That's exactly what BI Champion does. While his team provides guidance and estimates resource usage and technology costs, they look to business users to justify the project's value. We can say how much it will cost, but someone in the business ought to be able to quantify that benefit.

2. Don't get hung up on hard metrics.
One of the biggest challenges in BI projects is determining accurate before-and-after metrics. If you don't know where you're beginning from, it's difficult to work out the benefit at the end -- what your ROI is. You need accurate metrics at the beginning and accurate metrics at the end. But then some organizations run into a chicken-and-egg problem. Without a BI system, they don't have accurate metrics. Without accurate metrics, they have trouble justifying the potential ROI of a new BI system. So organizations should do their best to find some hard measures, such as where BI deployments will reduce costs or increase sales, but the real focus should be on soft benefits.

3. ROI calculations are difficult -- and not always necessary.
The BI projects always have some kind of ROI calculation, he said. Some projects enable obvious cost reductions by eliminating manual processes. But most initiatives require collaboration with business people to determine ROI metrics, asking questions such as, 'How many clients will this new reporting tool help us gain or retain?' The calculation is different for each project.
There's not a magic ROI equation for BI. There's clearly value and benefits, but that doesn't really get to the ROI. What you need to focus on is: 'What is the business value?' 'How am I driving the business forward? Pushing ROI justification problems back to a potential BI vendor. Vendors may be able to provide references from customers -- in similar industries -- that can share their metrics. The supplier should be a source of ideas and best practices, and if they can't help you justify the investment, you really have to question whether you want to go with that supplier.

4. The "soft" benefits of BI are the most important.
While hard metrics are important, organizations should sell their executives on BI's soft benefits. The main benefits you get from BI are intangible benefits of strategic value, such as faster reporting, better management information, better decision making and more productive users. And even without hard metrics, there are often soft benefits that executives can appreciate. For example, a recent corporate performance management project at FMCG enabled the company to get rid of a manual, spreadsheet-based planning process -- improving visibility and accountability More than that they were able to identify KRA they need to focus and improve their brownie points.

5. Executive sponsorship really helps.
I know of a BI champion who was first trying to sell his management on the concept of an enterprise data warehouse, he wrote a white paper explaining the potential benefits and circulated it widely. This document made its way to an executive who promised to help the champion make the project a reality. Executive sponsorship makes it much easier to sell these kinds of soft, intangible benefits. It helps to find somebody with credibility and a lot of political capital and attach yourself to them if you're trying to get buy-off for the first time

Good Luck

Your P&C
DC*

Orchestrating Your Customer Information: CRM Symphony

Dears.
In any CRM implementation customer view point is essential. Therefore it becomes perfunctory that the necessary information regarding their profiles, behaviors, likes and dislikes are orchestrated together. Aside from its absolute necessity for the implementation of CRM, the collation of customer information is essential to an organization. It is only with respect to this that most organization decisions are made and therefore the assembling of this data is vitally essential.

Why collect Customer Information?

New Products
New products and services can sometimes be the result of customer surveys. When customers actually suggest new ideas and they prove to be rewarding companies sometimes take them up on their suggestions and innovate new products. This information can also be obtained from customer feedback

Room for Improvement
Organizations can spot opportunities for improvement when they listen intently to what the customer has to say. In CRM customer view is the most important one and should be paid attention to.

Customer Retention
Learning the customer, what is most important to him and catering to his needs goes a long way in maintaining customer retention.

Gaining old Customers
Lost customers can be recovered and sales thus boosted as a direct consequence of gaining information about why they left in the first place.

Customer Information can be collected from sources like:

· Information collected from other companies
· An organization can opt for interviewing competitors customers to get additional information on what they can do to improve their products.
· Information collected from sister concerns or parent companies as a result of the customer's interaction with them.
· Information colleted over the phone, emails or even snail mail
· It is crucially important to gather information that has already been obtained within the organization and give it to the concerned employees
· Customer information can be obtained from the internet
· Rather than opting for paper or electronic surveys it is often better to use direct interviews as direct interaction always enables the gaining of more information from the right source
· Information that is collected from application forms, customer surveys, sweepstakes coupon entries, stores etc.
· Information collected when the company website is visited

Here's what you can do to orchestrate 'more effective' customer information:

Listen to the Customer
It is imperative to create an atmosphere wherein the employee ensures that he listens to the customer. Valuable information is gained this way. A viable atmosphere wherein even negative feedback should be encouraged is essential if the company hopes to gain valuable customer suggestions. It is most important to listen to the people who are closest to the products and services. Doing this provides a powerful tool to collect information on customer likes and dislikes.

Logical Thinking
It is important to think logically and use the primary resources in the areas that are most important to CRM to listen effectively to the customer in order to avoid wastage of resources.

Put yourself in the Customers Shoes
When a company looks at things from a customer's perspective, it will see the difficulties a customer often faces with the concerned products. It is essential to focus more on this than the companies own perspective. This is essential as companies obtain an understanding of the customer's use of the product, collect the required information and translate it into what is required for betterment.

Take the Good with the Bad
Most customers will be reluctant to reveal information that they are not happy with. Addressing direct questions is essential and needs to be done in order to find exactly what the problems are that customers face.

An organization can opt for any of the above methods or all of them. Depending on the resources an organization possesses it can decide. It is important to focus on the CRM customer view throughout the implementation of CRM and indulge in the usage of the collated customer data, effectively and efficiently.

Good Luck

Your P&C

DC*

CRM Strategies that Backfires

Dears,
Your company knows that it wants a good robust CRM system. But the CFO, nervous about the costs, starts to suggest strategies that could keep things under control. Meanwhile, you know the implementation team has some ideas that go in a completely different direction.
How can you manage executive expectations that may be based on misinformation? This article will cover common traps that you should avoid, followed by advice on the best ways to save some real money. The advice applies to any modern SaaS CRM or SFA system

Bad Strategy #1: Believe the Illusion of Forever

In your computer science studies, the focus was on building industrial strength systems that would stand the test of time. This perspective is totally inappropriate for a CRM system and leads to a series of progressively expensive mistakes.
The reason: the business requirements for a CRM system are likely to change so radically over time that the system design life will be less than 5 years. In some industries, the tenure of a VP of Sales or a CMO is only 18 months, and even a CEO change is likely every few years. With each new leadership change will come shifts in market strategy, sales tactics, and product line emphasis. New regulations come into play, and new partnerships become important (or not).
Everything you "designed in" the system at the outset is likely to become irrelevant or counterproductive years later. Even if you were to stay with the same CRM platform over time, there are good reasons to re-implement the system from scratch after 5 years.
This short design life means you need to get the business payoff out of the system quickly. The payback for the investment should be less than 18 months in most cases—and any benefits projected beyond 5 years should be discounted almost entirely.
Of course, you don't want to have a throw-away system that is too fragile to survive the inevitable revisions. But it's a big mistake to over-engineer your CRM system, the scope of data to be imported, and the range of external system integrations. Perfectionism doesn't pay.

Bad Strategy #2: Too Many Goals

When you're an IT pro selling the organization on the need for the potential benefits of a CRM system, it's easy to fall into the trap of "happy ears." Everyone hears what they want to, and the expectations for the system ratchet skyward. Even if you could delver on all the individual expectations, the total cost of the project will be laden with waste.
The problem here is a cacophony of goals—unprioritized, politicized, often contradictory or even impossible—that leads to a project that is ill-defined and hard to execute. Expensive areas of the project aren't well enough defined in terms of business process or business champion, so the project team flounders. Other areas of the project may not be well enough defined in terms of the economic payoff, so there's nothing in the numerator of the benefit-to-cost ratio.
Better to have a very small number of goals for the system, each with a clear owner, metric of success, and deadline. Every goal should be prioritized, with no ties. After you've registered some quick wins that demonstrate results and get users committed to the system add the next one or two goals as you build the system out incrementally.

Bad Strategy #3: Wrong Yardstick

When evaluating CRM system success and progress, it's all too common to measure the wrong factors, or measure the wrong way. At the project level, progress shouldn't be judged by how much system functionality you deploy. The system features by themselves are an empty shell with no business value. Instead, you should be measuring the value of the data asset that the system contains. What proportion of your current business is represented there, and how often are users accessing the customer relationship information? The first order of business is user adoption: how quickly and deeply are they using the system? The second order of business is the value of the orders flowing through the system per month.
At a more fundamental level, make sure that the success metrics you're using are clear, coherent, and agreed to on all sides. Watch out for the Great Expectations problem described above—it gives you a set of metrics that are confused, ambiguous, or working at cross-purposes.

Bad Strategy #4: Build Rome in a Day

The story is as old as the computer industry itself. Fred Brooks' classic The Mythical Man Month described how the larger the systems project, the more likely it was to be late and over budget. The complete-system launch, sometimes called a Big Bang project, just doesn't work very well for software. The warning signs of Big-Bang thinking include: Infrequent project milestones; large, complex, monolithic project deliverables; little consideration of political or change-management issues; fake, vague, or overstated requirements, particularly for scope of system integration or historical data; scope creep.
Better to deliver incrementally, deploying something of value to the business at least once a quarter. This results in support from both the grass roots and the executive champion, so you can win the vote of confidence for the next increment of system expansion budget.

Bad Strategy #5: Focus on Costs, Not Business Impact
It's easy to focus on cost, because there are fairly clear data and familiar tools for analysis. When you do the cost analysis, focus on TCO (initial cost, particularly for SaaS CRM, is completely misleading). As mentioned above, this cost analysis should look at a 3 to 5 year time horizon: anything longer is unrealistic, and anything shorter is foolish.
But cost analysis should only be done to ensure the proper budgetary allocation, not drive the system scoping decision. The business results of doing a proper CRM system should totally trump costs (they'd better!). The goal of your CRM system should be to raise the profitability of revenues: Lowering the cost of customer acquisition, increasing customer lifetime value, and reducing waste in sales, marketing, support, and service delivery. These business results may be tough predict, but you should have a model of the kinds of improvements you're shooting for, by answering questions such as:
1. How much more revenue could you realistically get if you could close the trickiest 1 percent of customer deals?
2. What would be the impact of shortening the sales cycle by one week?
3. What would it mean to the bottom line if marketing could divert 10 percent of its programs from people who aren't likely to buy and instead spend on people who were more likely to buy?
4. What would it mean for customer support costs if you could handle each customer issue with one less phone call?

Focusing on this type of business benefit helps prioritize your requirements, understand the business drivers, and avoid "requirements" with a questionable payoff.
After this list of "don'ts, We need to focus on Top 5 Strategies that would strengthen your CRM project and adoption. Post me your comments and some food for thought for our readers.

Your P&C
DC*

Dealing with Exceptions, The CRM Way to Salvage Damaged Relationships.

Dears,
When they have issues, customers want to know that they are having their individual concerns addressed; nothing is more effective at sending that message than a make-good that makes sense for their specific situations. This is giving something away -- but not for nothing.
Earlier in my career, I worked for a banking major. Nothing better prepared me for a career examining CRM than the sight of enormous corporations with immense customer bases failing to build any kind of relationship with their users and instead resorting to price as their major differentiator. Worse yet was the service aspect of these businesses. Perhaps because they were in constant churn-and-acquire mode, the resources devoted to service suffered. When something went wrong with a customer's service, the result was a process that, in effect, punished the customer.
The common scenario in Telecom is that Service calls usually required a customer to stay home awaiting the arrival of a service person, who might or might not be able to diagnose or repair the problem. If it could not be repaired, then the customer might have to repeat the process the next day.I went through this when I moved houses; the phone provider installed my new line in someone else's house. It took 3 more visits from service personnel to figure out the problem and get my phone working.
Exceptional Opportunities
As common as they are, these service issues are not the norm. They're the exceptions -- but in cases like these, where there is limited contact between the company and the customer, the exception can seem like the norm. When that happens, the customer's likely to start looking to buy from someone who promises a better -- or at least different -- norm.However, the exception is also an opportunity. Studies have shown again and again that customers who report a problem to a company and then have it remedied in a reasonable way and in a reasonable amount of time are far more loyal customers than those who never experience problems.No matter how effective your company is at what it does, customers will have problems. How can you use CRM to convert those exceptions into relationship-building opportunities?
Tailor the Response
Step one is to have an organization-wide understanding of this very concept. Too many companies look at responses to customer problems through a cost-benefit analysis prism: "How much will it cost us to really satisfy this customer, and is it more than the cost of losing the customer?" Flip that equation on its head: "How much will it cost to lose this customer, and how much do we stand to gain over the customer lifetime by solving the problem and gaining long-term loyalty?"How do you get that long-term loyalty? First, of course, you need to fix the problem. Beyond that, understand your customer and why that customer came to you in the first place. That data should already exist in your CRM database.
Understand what customer used as the major criteria in selecting your company: price, features, payment terms, flexibility in capacity, ability to respond to new product requests, or any other aspect of your business that attracted the customer. Hopefully, your sales reps collected this data during the selling process.Then, offer a token of your gratitude to the customer tailored to take advantage of what initiated the relationship. That might be a discount, some free hours of service, or a complimentary product that you know the customer can use. It should not be some set apology item that's trotted out in every case -- it should be tailored to the individual customer.
Not for Nothing
This is giving something away -- but not for nothing. It's to demonstrate your organization's good faith intention to make things right and to cement the relationship in a visible way with the decision makers among your customers.It also pays to train the first line of defense in these situations to start the process of transforming a complaint into an opportunity. That means training for your call center staff to deal with unhappy customers, and giving the staff the power to start the process rolling.
If it's done right, dealing with these exceptions can ensure not only that customers stay with you after you solve their problems, but also that they remember how well they were treated when they broached their concerns -- and perhaps talk to their peers about how your company dealt with them.
If you handle exceptions well, and with the proper mindset, you can convert customers with problems into customer advocates
Just Do it , The CRM Way.
Your P&C
DC*

CRM Implementation “Quick” ees, Just Do it Faster and Better

Dears,

CRM projects can have some very tricky moments, particularly when it comes to integrating with other customer-facing and internal systems. They can also be quite labor intensive when it comes to normalizing, deduping, cleansing, and converting data. But in many CRM projects, those issues aren't the biggest contributors to schedule slips. Look closely: the larger the CRM project, the more likely that the delays are coming from outside of IT. No, it's not time to beat up your vendors. It's time to engage more closely with your users and project sponsors.

Why? Because a key problem in CRM projects is getting permission to proceed. The team is waiting for user feedback, executive policy decisions, or management approval. CRM projects are much more vulnerable to this issue than most enterprise applications because the requirements and business processes are much more variable than, for example, an accounting or HR system. Since CRM systems provide the most business benefit when they are tightly aligned with business policies and personal preferences of the sales and marketing VPs, fit really matters. Organizational politics really matter. And some of the priorities will change with every reorg...which in sales and marketing can happen pretty frequently.

So, approval cycles -- quick, definitive, and broadly communicated -- are a key success factor for tight CRM projects. There are two levels of approval cycle -- and the project lead can only do one of them by him/herself. The second one, senior management has to help with.

User Feedback

User adoption is a key metric for CRM systems. You don't have to believe in Agile to know that engaging users early and collecting their feedback on a regular basis are the best ways to avoid waste and rework. In our CRM projects, we want users to try out features-in-progress at least once a week.
Why so often? Because users are busy people, and they tend to forget what they told you. Further, as their personal goals and priorities shift over time, it can be tough to even keep the users on topic (sometimes they'll give you feedback on a different system than the one you're working on). Asking for feedback incrementally, and publishing user feedback in a Collaborate Site or Portal, will improve the quality and relevance of their input.
It's also important to get feedback from the right users. Sometimes, the people who have time to spare for a functional usability session aren't the ones who matter. Other times, people who just love to be critics aren't setting realistic standards. Choosing the right users is something of an art, but an art that the project lead must learn.

Even though the characteristics of the review users will vary by organization, I recommend to use the following strategies.

• The feedback team should be selected at the start of the project, and explicitly authorized by their managers to spend an hour a week (or whatever you need) for however many weeks the project needs them. Try to keep the team stable for at least one release cycle.

• The team should be about equal thirds: power users/computer sophisticates, luddites/passive-resisters, and people who work closely with another system in addition to the CRM.

• The team should be reasonably centralized. Even though much of the review should be done over the Web (and in some cases must be remotely to be realistic), it's easier to coordinate and schedule the sessions when the team isn't on the road or scattered across several time zones.

• The team should be comprised of people who have the bosses' ear. Decisions and approval cycles go faster if the boss trusts their representative, better yet if the boss delegates the authority on small decisions to the team member. Beware fake delegation, where the boss overrules or contradicts their delegate!

It is typically much faster to collect user review feedback in individual meetings. Of course group sessions would be a better use of engineering's time, but the scheduling impact of a single meeting can be far worse. It's easy to lose a week's time just trying to coordinate a 5-way meeting, and the resulting traffic jam effects can stall parts of the project and idle your engineers.

Management Decisions - four Ps (priorities, policy directives, people, and process)

In CRM projects, management decisions about the four Ps (priorities, policy directives, people, and process) can be pivotal to CRM project success. The more important the decisions, the longer it takes to get the meeting...and the bigger the schedule impact of decision changes.

So it's critical that the project managers and track leads be able to tap the political power of the CRM executive sponsor as well as top IT leadership. The specifics depend on your corporate culture, but it's generally better to have short, quick decision cycles and avoid the "summit meeting" impulse. Of course, sometimes a big meeting devoted to CRM is required, but too often these are non-productive because the focus tends to wander away from the specifics of what you need decided. We've all lived through meetings like this where decisions from previous meetings were overturned, almost invariably clobbering the schedule.

No matter how executive decisions are made, it's best if there is a signoff sheet at the meeting, and the decision published on your Collaborate Site or Portal to reduce the chances of misinterpretation and eliminate plausible denial.

Trust me, your schedule will thank me six months from now.

Your P&C
DC*

CRM Projects: Odyssey of Fixed Bid executions

Dears,

Welcome to the Odyssey of Fix Bid CRM Project Executions,The known realities and unknowns exhibted here is not to say that Fix Bid Projects has little or no value but to make sure we signup for Win-Win Situation with your partner and realize the synergy of successfull CRM exections.

Imagine a CRM consulting project with inadequately specified requirements, no clear internal project manager, and ill-defined success criteria. Your consultant bids it on a time and materials (T&M) basis. You're in a rush, no time for a detailed RFP - you know the consultant can do the job, but you need a budgetary number to get approval. We've all been through this drill: somebody brilliant suggests that this has to be fixed price, it'll be easier to get project approval and manage to conclusion that way. You know, just like it would be when buying servers.
But you're not buying servers: you're buying services. While 80% of CRM projects are formulaic and could be bid as a "standard project," the other 80% of the project work is not only a one-off, but an unknown. Nobody actually knows the requirements, or the ramifications of "something simple," or the shape of your data, or the tricky parts of external interfaces. You may think you're signing up for a three-hour tour, but you're on the way to Gilligan's Island.

While fixed price projects are easy to measure, the simplistic calendar-and-budget approach misses the point. Will the project result in any value to the business? Did it satisfy the letter of the requirements without solving any real problems? Let's look at this a little deeper.

You don't want to pay too much, so you get competitive bids. But all consultants have a powerful incentive to bid too high: they need the LEG room to manage the risk of scope creep, weak project management, and ambiguous success criteria. This is particularly endemic in CRM projects that have to satisfy right-brained types in Sales and Marketing. Look at it from the consultants' economic perspective: a fixed price project must be more profitable to compensate for the extra risk.

Let's say you get lucky. Your consultant made a low fixed price bid. You win...except you don't. The consultants will be spending all their time during the project trying to figure out how to deliver as little as possible and develop some engineering change orders (ECOs) or other tricks to get you to pay more on their money-losing bid.
Now let's say the consultant is a saint. They don't try to up sell you, and they eat the losses on the project. What happens next? They lose their talent. And no, those people won't come to work for you. So all the institutional knowledge they brought and the business process expertise they developed for you on the project is gone. You get to pay for the learning curve all over again.

What do you think the chances are that the consultant's bid is within 10% of the effort required to make your team happy? Or that you had the foresight to tell the consultant at least 90% of your actual requirements before the statement of work? And what about the rubber yardstick of satisfying your users? Do you really think you can do that consistently, even when your own staff hasn't even analyzed your database before getting the bid?

Fixed Price Discovery, T&M Tasks

A common solution for these issues is to have the discovery and detailed requirements setting phase of the engagement be fixed price (perhaps 10% of the expected project value), with the actual implementation tasks as T&M. Even if the follow-on tasks are done as fixed price, this is a good step forward in containing risk on both sides of the table.

This approach provides incentives for both the consultant and the internal project manager to manage scope creep, make sensible tradeoffs, and apply some "value engineering." But there's still the issue of the unknown: the subtle data corruption or the API glitch or the political subterfuge coming from the Sales team (who - for reasons that are never clear - subtly oppose the project). In CRM projects of any size, these unknowns and unpleasant surprises can account for 25% of the effort. Still think your team's initial task estimation is within 10% of the optimal outcome (where the users are actually satisfied, but without unneeded bells and whistles)?

There's an old adage in politics, "If you can get the other side working on the wrong question, it doesn't matter what answer they come up with." Maybe "how do I get it done at for $X" is asking the wrong question. All too often, the word "it" isn't tightly defined, guaranteeing a suboptimal answer. And the unspoken issue is trust and tight management.

Agile Fixed Price?

You may not practice Agile in your organization. Fine. But know that CRM system deployments are best done in this incremental, user-centered style. Salesforce.com and SugarCRM even build their products that way. If an incremental deployment style is the right way to do CRM, how does that fit with a fixed price project? Agile projects do have fixed budgets and schedules - in fact, proper Agile projects have a better record of meeting those targets than conventional IT projects do. But Agile projects dont have a pre-determined set of features for any specific delivery. The requirement "cards" and "stories" are continuously evaluated and re-prioritized through the life of the project. Why? Because the business doesn't really know what's going to be valuable until it sees it, or even uses it for a while. In a perverse way, Agile is an ideal fit for CRM work precisely because the details and ramifications of your requirements are seldom known until the project is underway.

So an Agile project would have fixed price and a time-boxed schedule, but a variable set of deliverables. You get the most valuable deliverables that could be produced for a given budget, but you don't get a fixed SOW.Making Agile work for consulting engagements will require the same project management skills and attitude adjustment that it does for internal projects. But most consultants are living the Agile lifestyle already. So maybe the right question to be asking here isn't "how do we get it for $X?" but "given our fixed resources, how do we get the business payback from CRM in the fastest way?"

Good Luck and Welcome your thoughts

Your P&C
DC*