Vertical is Horizontal: Dynamics of Industry CRM Solutions

Dears,

For the forward-thinking corporation, business processes and corporate best practices are not stagnant one-time decisions or implementations. They are dynamic, reacting to changes in the competitive landscape as well as being internally driven as part of a corporation’s strategy for long-term growth and shareholder value..

Thisblog article discusses the dynamics of Industry CRM solutions. Today Vertical solutions are horizontal and in the future we will have only Industry CRM solutions to survive. Vertical solutions are specifically tuned for the customer’s business. Such applications support the way companies do business, supporting existing business processes. They do not force companies to bend into a prepackaged generic template often offered by horizontally based solutions

When considering vertical solutions, we are typically referencing software solutions that are written for, or modified for, the specific needs of a particular industry or sub segment of an industry. These applications are often tailored to meet an industry’s needs using the business processes, rules, and best practices of companies within the specific vertical as a model. Companies within the same vertical will have similar solution requirements. Certainly some requirements will be unique from company to company. Therefore, even a vertical application will require some tailoring for each specific installation.

Key attributes of vertical solutions are noted in the following list. Specifically, vertical solutions:

1. Are custom tailored to meet industry needs

2. Typically include an additional configurable set of capabilities appropriate for the industry

3. Are based on business processes and rules of the industry

4. Include reporting and analytics that are germane to the industry

Implementing an appropriate vertical application in a given industry provides many benefits over the implementation of a horizontal solution. At the top of the list are ease of implementation and lower cost of implementation. In summary, the benefits of vertical applications are that they:

1. Are easy to implement.

2. Reduce training and adoption time, since the applications are written in the vernacular of the industry.

3. Leverage industry best practices by incorporating lessons learned from other implementations.

4. Are cost-effective.

Industry Flavor

Each industry has its notions of a customer, as noted in the preceding section, but they have very different implications when it comes to their management. The following are some examples of organizations that require systems to manage their day-to-day business, all of which have very different means of selling or delivering services to their target audiences.

Pharmaceutical Sales

A pharmaceutical sales representative is more of a sales influencer than someone who is involved in taking a sale or taking paper. The role of a pharmaceutical sales representative is to sell the latest drug therapy. But who does the buying and selling? A physician does not purchase a case of medication from a pharmaceutical sales representative. Drugs are sold when a patient fills a prescription at his or her local pharmacy.

The sales representative really influences the sale in this example. He or she educates the physicians about the benefits of the therapy and how and when it should be used. The better the influencer and educator, the more effective the sales representative. Why is this distinction important? Remember, we are dealing with a CRM application and specifically the sales force automation (SFA) component within

the application. If a pharmaceutical sales representative does not sell, how is he or she compensated? And how does sales management manage the pipeline of sales opportunities and forecast sales volumes? Pharmaceutical sales representatives will be compensated on how a specific drug does in a specific region. Forecasting might be done based on seasonality of the therapy in question, but it certainly won’t be based on traditional direct sales 30-, 60-, or 90-day forecasts. The sales force management segment of a conventional CRM software application won’t work here.

Heavy Equipment Sales

On the other side of the equation is a direct sales representative for heavy construction equipment. In this case, the salesperson will be intimately involved in the presales process (educating the target audience about the product), the sales process (pricing, quoting, RFPs), and, in many cases, the transaction and delivery process. In this case, the person or thing the business is trying to manage with a

CRM solution is truly a customer. Sales management will rely on forecasting information that the representative has entered into the SFA component of the CRM system and manage the pipeline based

on traditional sales cycles specific to the heavy equipment industry.

The Public Sector

In the public sector, there are no "customers"; rather, there are cases, assets, and property, to name just a few. Case management is this vertical’s CRM solution. The notions of sales, marketing, and support are truly different in every way. Simply changing the names on a couple of database fields won’t completely address this vertical’s needs. Consider a social worker’s customers ,families, parents, and children in some form of crisis. The social worker needs to track the services for which these individuals qualify and those for which they do not qualify. From a marketing perspective, there could be ongoing communication about service termination or new options coming online. There could be integration requirements with other sectors within the agency that require security compliance or health-related issues that require HIPAA patient records security. One doesn’t need to wander too far down this path to see that horizontal CRM features and functionality aren’t appropriate for this vertical. Also within the public sector, consider the tax collector’s office in any town in the country. There are vast opportunities for automation in bill collection, taxes being only one of many. Web-based solutions for billing are a boon to towns. Online collection makes payment and recording easier and more convenient and provides for better and faster tracking and reporting. In the tax assessor’s business process, who is labeled the customer? Is it the name of the person paying the bill or the property associated with that owner? In these cases, this revenue is applied to the property first and then threaded back to the owner of the property. The property always remains, but the owner, or owners, may change over time.

Of these examples, heavy equipment sales is the most suited to the current crop of horizontal CRM solutions. Current horizontally focused CRM applications are appropriate for industries in which:

1. The customer is clear.

2. The sales process, or channel, is relatively simple.

3. The target audience for marketing is well understood.

4. Service and support has repeatable processes.

Determining the Best Strategy for Your Organization

Each software application installation will require some level of customization. The question is, "Which strategy will require more time and money?" Customizing a horizontal application up to the company’s vertical requirements? Or starting with an inherently vertical application and bringing it up to the company’s requirements? The goal is how to limit the amount of customization and at the same time get the highest degree of vertical features. Early iterations of CRM solutions were generally focused on horizontal market segments, and most suppliers ended up creating large monolithic applications. The

phrase "large monolithic applications" is not necessarily a negative one. They did a fine job for the markets for which they were originally designed. These solution sets had to be horizontally focused, largely due to the economics of very high development overhead and the need to spread this cost over a large number of customers. Vertical solutions are becoming more prominent as the market has matured amid consolidation, price competition, and the need to differentiate to continue to drive sales.
In the early going, only forward-looking companies and niche players considered developing vertical solutions out of the box. These companies quickly became acquisition fodder for those seeking a quick answer to the vertical demands of their customers. In general, end-user organizations have two strategies for addressing the demands of vertical business requirements (see Picture enclosed):

1. Purchase a horizontal solution and customize it to their requirements. In this case, the customer is purchasing a product for which the supplier’s stated strategy is to maintain one code base and iteratively expand its functionality over time. To address specific vertical industry customers, these vendors will customize the software each time. They will start with their horizontal application and customize it each time with expertise from the vendor’s professional services organization, a partner organization, or a third-party bolt-on solution via Web services and the like. These vendors will develop centers of expertise around selected vertical industries to specifically address the needs of these customers. These centers of expertise can include in-house professional services teams with industry experience or dedicated partners with vertical knowledge and solution sets that can be integrated into the base application.

2. Purchase a vertical solution and tune it to their requirements. In this case, the customer is purchasing a product for which the vendor has committed to supporting specific vertical solutions for each market segment. The horizontal application is often the base code, and this code is iteratively upgraded into specific vertical-focused products. In some cases, as with niche software vendors, the code is written from the "ground up" with the specific vertical in mind. These products have the ongoing benefit of multiple installations taking into account current best practices and market dynamics. Any vendor that supports multiple verticals through a strategy of acquisition can get a quick leg up on the competition but must be careful when considering the challenges of bringing the solutions into the fold of product offerings. Those that do can gain instant expertise, credibility, and market share within a specific vertical market.

Fundamentally, every organization is in a vertical market segment. It is just how the software vendors decide to address each segment that is different. It is largely a vendor market strategy choice that has driven the aforementioned differences in addressing these market segments. And this strategy is often driven by the internal economics of the companies, their vertical strategy philosophy, and the fastest, and easiest, way to support as many customers as possible.

Customers should be concerned not with the economics driving the vendor’s decisions but rather with simply trying to get the best possible solution by spending the least amount of time and money.

In the subsequent articles we will explore the vertical crm solutions offered by Leading application stalwarts.

Loving P & C

Future of Innovation, Is not in Future. It’s Now – Consumer Goods Industry Technovations

Dears,

This article is inspired by one of the articles on the Digital innovation in a leading magazine.How true it is to say “Future of Innovation, Is not in Future. It’s Now ".

It’s no secret that Kraft Foods (www. kraftfoodscompany.com) is a leader in digital innovation — not only in the consumer goods market, but also in the business world at large. Mobile, social and web tools, like the iFood Assistant, Big Fork Little Fork and Kraftrecipes.com, have earned the company major accolades from the likes of Parenting magazine and the Mobile Marketing Association. As a consumer goods executive — and a shopper/ consumer just the same — you are probably familiar with these industry-leading innovations. Yet, until now, Kraft Foods has rarely talked about its process for bringing digital ideas to life.

In January 2005, when the digital world was still in full swing adolescence, Kraft Foods had the foresight to form a Digital Innovations group. At that time, Facebook was only a year old and the Apple iPhone hadn’t yet been invented. However, under the leadership of then Chief Technology Officer Mark Dajani , the Digital innovations group at Kraft Foods was already hard at work finding “digital” answers to three key questions:

• How do we engage shoppers in store?

• How do we increase basket size?

• How do we increase frequency of return visits?

Operating under the motto, “Turning ‘what if?’ into ‘what is’”, the group that exists today is comprised of highly-creative members of Kraft Foods’ Global Information Systems organization. The team works to fulfill the business needs of its “clients”. The team’s goals are straightforward and results driven:

• Infuse digital innovation into Kraft Foods’ culture, and grow participation in innovation

by 10 percent each year.

• Grow an ecosystem of internal clients and external partners by 15 percent each year. This includes conducting 15 or more scouting activities annually.

• Deliver a diversified portfolio of 5 to 10 prototypes.

• Position one to two of those prototypes for commercialization each year.

How does Kraft Foods go about meeting these goals? Generally, the Digital Innovations group’s process begins with a time based challenge related to a business problem or opportunity. To spark an idea, the team conducts internal technology showcases for the business and goes with them on scouting trips to companies and shows. Wherever the spark starts, the Digital Innovations team works with the business to assess and understand their personalized business need. The group then assembles a motivated, Multi-functional team that comes together for a directed, fast-paced, collaborative brainstorm session — or “Idea Slam”. Both information systems members and key business partners are among the carefully selected participants.

Totally New Outcomes

Now six years old, the Digital Innovations group has produced countless forward-looking Opportunities that create win-win solutions with retail partners and end consumers. Atleast 10 to 15 pilots have come to life since the group was formed. Many of them have been integrated into existing programs, like the Lunchables Augmented Reality campaign and putting QR codes on Huddle to Fight Hunger displays this year.

In 2010, Kraft Foods conducted 10 pilots, and expects to conduct at least as many during 2011. Perhaps its biggest digital innovation to date — in size and functionality — is Kraft Foods’ Meal Planning Solution, developed last year in a collaborative effort with technology partner Intel (www.intel.com).

Foods’ Meal Planning Solution

http://download.intel.com/newsroom/kits/embedded/pdfs/Kraft_Intel_VirtualMealPlanning_Solution_Overview.pdf

The goal for this project was to come up with an innovation that retailers and brands can use to connect with the consumer beyond the point of sale to increase visits, brand recognition and loyalty as well as basket size. The result, in a nutshell, is a solution that transforms the traditional self-serve kiosk into an interactive, immersive retail experience. The total package delivers content in almost every digital way possible, from digital signage to mobile integration, video analytics and more. Shoppers can use the solution to obtain recipes, shopping suggestions, promotional coupons and even product samples. Click on the “Quick Look” tab to the left for more details. The Idea Slam for the Meal Planning Solution took place during the summer of 2010. The user experience that exists today was created in 30 days, and the physical prototype was built to match the user interface by the fourth quarter of 2010. By January, the Meal Planning Solution was ready for its close up and debuted at the 2011 National Retail Federation Conference in New York City. It has since traveled to Amsterdam, Beijing, London, Las Vegas and Boca Raton.While you can’t find the solution in stores just yet, King confirmed that Kraft Foods is working with one retail partner on a potential test market that is expected to commence in the third quarter of 2011.

In line with its philosophy to adapt innovations on the turn of a dime to meet changing market needs, Kraft Foods does expect the form factor and the user experience for the test to be customized according to the requirements of that particular retailer. It’s that open-minded point of view that continually establishes Kraft Foods as a leader in digital innovation. “The most important lesson we learned was to just get started,” says King. “Technology is changing continually, so waiting for a particular platform to emerge as ‘the winner’ is fruitless. It will be necessary to experiment with multiple solutions within each area to learn which ones work best with each company’s existing systems and procedures.” O’Keefe adds, “There won’t be a right answer, but trying to wait until development in any area is ‘complete’ is certainly not the way to approach digital innovation.

Try something now, and plan on trying other things later to improve the results, irrespective of how well the first pilot works. Innovate Now

Loving P&C

DC*

Making of Everyday CRM Champions : Super Customer Service Agents

Dears,

While organizations have spent billions on CRM to provide better service and build stronger connections with customers, achievement of CRM objectives remains an elusive goal. A Bain & Company survey of more than 400 executives found that 20 percent thought their CRM initiatives actually damaged customer relationships.

Achievement of CRM objectives depends on a customer-centric culture and enterprise-wide strategy, with particular emphasis on building buy-in and shared objectives among employees. While enthusiasm and participation at the top levels of an organization are necessary, it is far from sufficient. It is when employees understand the role they play in a company’s CRM strategy and vision that they can understand the link between their own performance and corporate objectives. Clear expectations, and the opportunity to continuously improve and develop, will build the CRM philosophies of quality, service, and consistent performance into each employee’s day-to-day routine. A CRM strategy cannot succeed unless it is supported by a customer-centric organization, driven by timely, frequent communications and change management efforts.

Since it is the customer-facing employees who play a central role in building and managing customer relationships, they must be proactively involved in a company’s development of this new customer-centric culture and strategy. In particular, successful CRM strategies must develop effective change management efforts based on the needs of the employees who hold the primary responsibility for the customer experience: customer service center agents. Yet, in most organizations, customer service center agents are an undeveloped and overlooked asset in CRM initiatives.

Customer service centers play a critical role in the success or failure of CRM initiatives. Recent studies by the Center for Customer-Driven Quality at Purdue University confirm that customer service center agents are crucial to the CRM formula because they create the all-important link between a company and its customers. According to the findings, over 90 percent of those surveyed form their perception of a company based on their customer service center experience. In addition, the study indicated that over 60 percent will terminate their relationship based on a bad experience with customer service centers.

A failure to appropriately include customer service agents in change management efforts could be the very reason that customer service centers and agents are not performing to their customers’ expectations. Gartner reports a large gap between an organization’s perception of how well its customer service center meets the needs of its customers and the customer’s reality. Although 70 percent of enterprises believe they have a well-run customer service center that provides their customers with good service, only 46 percent of their customers report satisfaction with that service.

After a CRM strategy has been defined, many organizations look to technology to provide valuable information and functionality to improve customer relationships. Unfortunately, these initiatives can present their own set of challenges. A staggering 55 to 65 percent of CRM projects fail to meet their objectives, according to numerous industry analysts, including Gartner, Meta Group, AMR Research, and Yankee Group.

Why are CRM implementations so dysfunctional? At its core, CRM success is built on a foundation of employee performance, shared goals and objectives, and customer-centric processes and culture - not technological innovation. Although inability to achieve expected benefits from CRM initiatives is an ongoing problem, it is not the technology that is failing. Forrester Research reports a high satisfaction with application functionality and capability.

New technology is only useful when it is put to good use. Yet the people who can use new CRM applications to better serve customers are viewed almost as an afterthought in many CRM deployments. The technology and process change required for CRM success must cascade all the way down into the trenches: to the people who most interact with customers. Unfortunately, the three primary stakeholder groups for a CRM implementation often have different - and even conflicting - goals and motivations. To address the needs of each stakeholder group, technology, processes, and people must be each considered as necessary and complementary elements of a complete solution.



Agents cannot be overlooked in CRM implementations. When companies embrace CRM, their employees - especially their front-line employees like customer service agents - must be introduced to new processes, culture, and technology, while learning how to develop the skills required for relationship building.

Typically, change management and training efforts are too little, too late. Customer service center agents tend to only hear about an upcoming CRM rollout by learning the “what” without the “how” or the “why.” There’s little wonder, then, that Benchmark Portal studies find that customer service center agents do not understand the organization’s CRM strategies, and have even less ability to operationalize that strategy when they are on the phone with the customer.

Getting It Right: The Path to CRM Success

The history of CRM initiatives makes it clear that the missing link is effectively preparing employees - and especially customer service center agents - to be customer focused, to understand the importance of the CRM approach, and to be well-prepared to operate consistently in a manner that is in sync with the overall CRM vision. The best-practice approach to change management surrounding CRM initiatives is not difficult to define. Planning ahead and avoiding the typical pitfalls in CRM implementations will build a solid foundation for sustainable, long-term success. By including change management efforts directed specifically to agents and development of their performance starting early in the project lifecycle and continuing long after deployment, the probability for success is greatly enhanced.

Typical CRM implementations not only delay communications, training, and other change management activities until late in the project lifecycle, they may leave out some of these ¬activities ¬altogether.

Assess People and Process Drivers and Impact

An important first step is to evaluate the current skills, processes, and structure of the customer service center so that organizations can come to an understanding of the impact that the new systems and processes will have on customer service agents and their ¬ability to deliver best performance in their daily interactions with customers. Measures and benchmarks are established to ensure that all future efforts are carefully aligned with CRM strategies. Based on this evaluation, the organization can understand the key areas in which processes must change, as well as what performance development areas are required to bring the agents to perform ¬consistently well.

Conduct Communication and Change Management Activities

Unfortunately, many projects delay communications and training until right before the pilot rollout, setting the CRM initiative up for failure. Lack of user adoption, inconsistent or poorly executed business processes, and misuse of new data or functionality are all common results of not addressing change management issues up front.

These communications must go beyond simply a series of memos dropped on the agent’s desktop or inclusion in the employee newsletter. Change management communication is too critical to be left to chance; customer service centers need to be able to deliver communications, ensure that they are read and, most importantly, ensure that they are understood. Instead of passive communications, they should be able to engage agents in a way they will be able to clearly understand the value of the upcoming changes and what role they play in transforming the organization.

Create Functional Designs Involving All or Most Users in Providing Design Input

Typical CRM engagements involve few, if any, end users in ¬functional design and requirements for CRM. It is the end users - often customer service center agents - who will use the technology and must make it function in their daily work. Organizations run a high risk for low end-user adoption if those end users feel they were excluded from the design phase and the resulting solution does not meet their needs. Alerting users to planned design ¬features and gathering feedback from each and all agents at their desktop, without impacting day-to-day productivity, can help ensure application usability and help the agents become familiar with future expectations.

This ability to quickly and efficiently test design elements among end users - the agents - leads to more efficient and ¬relevant applications. In addition, it includes the very people who are expected to make the application work effectively in the process, gaining greater acceptance and buy-in, while introducing them to the new expectations, strategies, and the critical nature of their role.

Provide Training to End Users on New Processes, Skills, and Best Practices for Application Usage

It’s unrealistic to expect a CRM application and new customer-centric processes to work if the agents don’t know how to effectively use them. For example, low proficiency in agent use of CRM technology at best means that agents might not use the software effectively, a low blow to expected return on investment. At worst, it means agents are practicing and learning with real customers - and potentially damaging customer relationships while they work out the kinks, live, with the very customers that CRM strategies are supposed to be retaining.



Because of the unique requirements and challenges facing customer service center operations, change management requires a different approach with the customer service agent than what works in the rest of the organization. With productivity top of mind in most customer service centers, costs and service level concerns prohibit pulling agents off the floor and away from the phone often enough to impact the agent’s mindset, build new skills and knowledge, and ensure understanding and retention. Even if this development could occur in the classroom, organizations would not know which agents mastered the information, how long the agents would retain their new knowledge, or how well they would translate classroom content to live interactions with customers.

What is required is a new approach that specifically addresses the needs and operational concerns of a customer service center. Classroom training and passive e-learning solutions have not and cannot meet the challenge. Customer service center agents need a proactive performance support solution designed to individualize learning, set clear direction and expectations, and provide individual feedback on their accomplishments and current level of performance in order to create habits or change behavior, all while minimizing disruption to customer service center productivity.

Measure Results and Continue to Refine Processes, Application Design, and Individualized Training as Needed

Due to the dynamic nature of company offerings, competitive pressures, application upgrades, mergers, organizational changes, shifting corporate priorities, and high employee turnover in the customer service center, change management activities - communication, development, measurement - must occur daily, on an ongoing basis. This ensures that even with frequent changes in the internal and external environment, agents are performing their best and are consistently aligned with the vision of the CRM effort. Delivering a large quantity of shifting and changing content to each agent, and measuring the results of the investments made to accomplish this goal, are overwhelming challenges in most customer service operations.

Even with extensive classroom training - whether for a newly released application or process or for a newly hired agent - when agents leave the classroom, there’s no telling what or how much they retain, how this will vary by team or role, or how well the training will be applied. While few in management would believe that initial classroom training translates into instant proficiency, most executives would be shocked to realize that up to 80 percent of their training investment is lost within 48 hours of training without proper reinforcement. This means that it’s natural for agents to develop knowledge and skill gaps once they go live with customers on the phone, leading to less than satisfactory customer experiences.

By measuring actual on-the-job results based on business ¬objectives and the initial CRM goals, organizations can understand the strengths and weaknesses of each agent and deliver focused support specific to the needs of each agent. Just as a personal trainer focuses a trainee on the most relevant exercises for that ¬person’s abilities and goals, an individualized performance building strategy will ensure that the time each employee spends in development is productive and relevant to the individual’s skill and ¬performance improvement goals, thus reducing time to proficiency.

CRM and Agent Performance: A Partnership for Success

For too long, the human element of CRM, especially in the customer service center, has been ignored. An overwhelming majority of executives cite technology - not people or processes - as the most strategic element in their customer service success, according to Benchmark Portal. Yet all this focus on technology has not led to success. It is the people who are using the technology that can make or break the implementation. The bottom line for CRM - building and managing customer relationships - is that it is people who build relationships, not technology. The customer service center agent represents an untapped resource for realizing an organization’s customer-centric vision. Enhancing agent performance can quickly deliver significant returns - in the form of customer loyalty and revenue growth, and therefore, great profits - to an organization’s bottom line.

One contact at a time. That’s how customers are kept - and how they are lost. As more organizations begin to realize that customer service centers are a strategic player in critical CRM initiatives, optimizing agent performance to deliver consistent, quality service and support has become a strategic factor in meeting corporate financial goals

Loving P&C
DC*

WIFM in CRM - 2011, a Mid Year Analysis

Dears,

Hope the year 2011 treating you well and in the middle of all economic crisis, stock market crashes, hue cry about scams and corruptions we sometimes feel like lost in this madness and find hard to focus in our business. The most important opportunities always comes from crisis and its always the CRM which leads the game and make life little more better during such tough times. Let’s see how each of the market crm leaders and challengers doing in these times

.ENTERPRISE SUITE CRM : The Market

Spending on CRM software is expected to see the largest increase of all the application software markets worldwide, with the biggest areas of investment expected to include the online channel, software-as-a-service deployments, customer loyalty management, customer service applications, and mobile CRM solutions.

On-demand CRM offerings are, well, in demand, and not just from SMB clients. Those solutions are gaining traction among enterprise customers as well. According to a study by Nucleus Research, 63 percent of enterprises with more than 1,000 employees have adopted on-demand CRM technology. SaaS within the CRM industry is expected to exceed $4 billion in total software revenue in 2014, a figure that would constitute more than 32 percent of the total CRM market, according to Gartner.

The Leaders

Microsoft gained ground on Salesforce.com this year in functionality with its release of Dynamics CRM 2011. Analysts also liked the business software giant’s aggressive pricing strategy, But Microsoft isn’t out of the woods yet. A recent investment in an online application marketplace “still needs refinement, but it shows Microsoft’s recognition that a partner ecosystem and readily accessible add-ons to CRM are particularly important in the SaaS space.

NetSuite has always had “a stronger play in the SMB space than the large enterprises. In fact, the company’s score in company direction as well as its high mark in cost propelled Net Suite onto the leaderboard this year after being named as a One to Watch for the past two years.

NetSuite’s all-in-one integrated solution encompassing CRM, ERP, finance/accounting, and e-commerce, developed on a customer-centric information infrastructure, offers true value for a reasonable cost adding frosting to this cake is a workflow management module with point-and-click, rules-based workflows that enable line-of-business executives to automate, streamline, and improve common business processes.

Oracle captured the attention of analysts in depth of functionality, scoring highest in the functionalities. The company has “by far the richest feature set of any vendor in the market today.Without dispute, Oracle Siebel CRM continues to provide the most CRM functionality and support for the most complexity across sales, marketing, and service.. Oracle took a hit, though, in cost, which turned out to be a double-edged sword. You’re paying a high price for [Oracle], but you get what you pay for. However, that Big Red has started to offer aggressive pricing around its on-demand solutions.

While SAP’s scores in most categories were consistent with industry averages in the category, the company did grab the spotlight with its latest software release. The latest SAP CRM is very rich in mobile and analytics support.”

Salesforce.com, on top for three years in a row, led the pack once again in customer satisfaction as well as company direction. Those scores did not surprise the company “has built its business through real customer references and a very enthusiastic and collaborative user Community. Analysts agree that Salesforce.com has continued to expand its core CRM functionality and add-ons through the AppExchange, which is “an asset.” But, more importantly, the company has made all the right investments in social CRM, cloud functionality, and collaboration tools.

One to Watch

Amdocs is the choice this year, reprising a role it held in 2008 after having made the leaderboard in 2007. Several analysts were particularly impressed with the company’s direction during the past year or so. Amdocs offers a compelling vision for enterprise customer management through guided support of pragmatic business processes (such as revenue management, provisioning and fulfillment, billing, charging, and policy), reporting, analytics, and real-time alerts, coupled with anywhere/anytime/any touch point. This “illustrates a unique, industry-specific focus in this category,” and “has enabled Amdocs to develop a robust solution tailored to the requirements of the telecommunications and media sectors.”

MIDMARKET SUITE CRM :The Market

Major CRM vendors increasingly are targeting development efforts toward the midmarket, which hasn’t been as quick to adopt CRM solutions as some other industry segments have. Analysts indicate that the midmarket is a key revenue driver for CRM vendors and will see an implementation boom in the next three to five years.According to Forrester, the midmarket segment was on pace to account for 38 percent of CRM revenue last year, which comes from 54 percent of mid-sized companies. Among those businesses, CRM solutions delivered through a software-as-a-service model will continue to grow during the next five years, while spending for on-premises solutions will be flat. Forrester called SaaS solutions “highly probable” for companies with between 250 and 500 users.

The lines are blurring between midmarket and enterprise CRM, with vendors like Microsoft and Salesforce.com showing an ability to scale to support large enterprises as well as traditional enterprises.”

The Leaders

Microsoft, a fixture among the leaders in midmarket CRM, this year finished with a respectable score. The company’s Dynamics CRM offering, updated for 2011, continues to captivate analysts and customers because of its easy integration with other Microsoft Office products. Dynamics CRM also came with a lot more bells and whistles, but it benefited most from added functionality. In addition, the company’s new aggressive pricing strategy, growing partner ecosystem, readily available add-ons, and rising investments in an online app marketplace all position Microsoft to compete against Salesforce.com.

NetSuite continues to shine because of its “best-designed front- and back-office solution for the midmarket . The company put up impressive numbers in depth of functionality , customer satisfaction , and company direction , but many analysts saw it as not quite on the same level as some of the larger competitors. Although Net Suite doesn’t provide the breadth of CRM functionality that others do, it does deliver “real productivity gains for end users, particularly in mid-sized businesses.”

Oracle, usually associated with much larger-scale deployments, continues to excel in the midmarket, too. The company, which tied for the top score in depth of functionality with a 4.4 out of 5, was kept out of the overall top spot because of such issues as long deployment times, arduous training times, and other adoption challenges, all of which were reflected in the company’s low customer satisfaction score of 3.3. Analyst says the company suffered in other ways: “We’re not seeing a lot of Oracle CRM activity, largely because we believe customers are waiting to see what Fusion CRM looks like and when it will be available.” Oracle took the greatest hit, though, on cost, where it scored a mere 2.9, by far the lowest of any vendor in the category.

Salesforce.com, the hands-down winner again in midmarket CRM, has seen competition heat up this year from Microsoft. To stay competitive, Salesforce.com has continued to expand on its core CRM functionality while expanding its ecosystem of value-added CRM add-ons through the AppExchange marketplace..

One to Watch

RightNow Technologies, which has reached the leaderboard each of the past five years, slipped this year, scoring just slightly higher than the industry average in all criteria. The company’s offerings fell short in the larger CRM market largely because they are geared more toward customer self-service than they are toward broader CRM applications. Its company direction scores also fell for that same reason, and most of the moves RightNow has made in the past year have centered on its search and customer intent–gathering products

The race is very much on and Kicking the winner will always have it with whatever it takes.

Loving P&C

DC*

Consumer goods CRM, Winning on the Shelves with Mobile Retail Audit Solution

Dears,

Consumer Goods Industry is like a Fairy Tale where you see things in a Supermarket beautifully displayed and gives you the urge to buy thing even don’t need them. So every Consumer Goods major want to make their product speak and welcome you to take them home. Now let see in this blog article what makes you to improve the Shelf Performance with a Mobile Retail Audit Solution.

 Paper, clipboards, laptops and spreadsheets continue to dominate the way retail audit information is collected and consolidated. Conducting retail audits is necessary to remain competitive in an industry where multiple products and brands fight for the attention of consumers. The reality of the traditional retail audit process is that there is a considerable time gap from when retail audits are conducted to when a manger see the reports and can respond to trends or critical situations. Data accuracy is also a concern of any process that involves transferring data from paper, and then consolidating it to produce management reports .What FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) companies need is a complete, end‐to‐end retail audit solution that enables managers to influence the shelf performance of their products and brands in real‐time while reducing the overall costs of conducing retail audits.

IMPROVING SHELF-PERFORMANCE OF FMCG/Consumer Goods

How can the retail audit process tangibly improve product and brand performance as measured by market share and revenue? By replacing clipboards and spreadsheets with a smartphone‐based retail audit solution,

FMCG companies can receive immediate and accurate results and gain even more market intelligence . This translates to better and faster decisions and a new ability to immediately respond to store‐level trends and discrepancies.

An innovative and end‐to‐end solution is necessary to get the most out of retail audits and needs to be:

• Quick ‐ fast to deploy with rapid data collection and immediate reporting

• Insightful ‐ to get more accurate reporting on key performance indicators and brand metrics

• Responsive ‐ to make better & faster decisions to gain competitive advantage

A Quick retail auditing solution also needs to be customizable for gaining internal adoption and to achieve immediate insight into the retail channel.The mobile solution should be easy for both IT departments to implement and business managers to use ‐ one that requires no programming or technical knowledge to define & deploy surveys or to collect & review results.

An Ideal Mobile CRM Consumer goods Solution have a built‐in campaign manager makes creating and modifying surveys simple. With just one click, the surveys are automatically deployed to auditor’s smartphones in seconds. And once completed, surveys are submitted on the smartphone and results instantly compiled to generate up‐to‐date reports for head office. What this means for FMCG companies, in addition to gaining immediate market insight, is the ability to conduct even more intelligence gathering via retail audits. Because it’s so quick and easy to deploy, business managers can send out even more surveys to the field in order to gain the advantage necessary to win on the shelves. And since the auditors no longer need to re‐key in data, more time for value‐added activities is created.

Good insight is the key to managing FMCG and is dependent on reliable data from the retail channels. The more accurate the results from retail audits, the better the insight. Therefore increasing the accuracy of audits is  key when considering a mobile retail audit solution. Not only are mobile surveys intuitive to fill in for an auditor, they also eliminate blank and illegible responses common to paper‐based systems. Data accuracy can also be improved by thoughtfully selecting the right response type. A best practice is to choose response types that:

• Are easy and intuitive for auditors to fill‐in (ie. checkboxes or drop‐down menus)

• Reduces the chance of input error (ie. mandatory fields or input parameters)

• And produces powerful insights when analyzed (ie. average or sum calculations)

A mobile retail audit solution is of no benefit if it doesn’t ultimately contribute to improving agility and increasing market share and revenue. The ability to respond quickly to what is happening on the shelves is reliant on how fast reports can be generated when the latest retail results come in.

With online Retail Audit the data gets immediately compiled to produce management reports that FMCG  companies can rely on for monitoring its KPI (key performance indicators) and brand metrics as well as stay up‐to date on market trends and the competition.

• Summary Reports show product and brand performance throughout the overall retail channel and are effective for executive reporting and highlighting trends. Built‐in filters enable top‐down views into specific

regions, banners, or products to highlight any performance issues that may exist.

• Detail Reports give a bottom‐up view of the results and show specific responses to each question that can pin‐point red flags or zero in on trends and discrepancies that might get overlooked in the summary

reports. These reports are key for the day‐to‐day business manager responsible for meeting sales targets and needing to influence product and brand performance in real‐time.

• Usage Reports are good for operations and sales management purposes to highlight efficiencies, show individual performance, and estimate future campaign deployment timelines.

Winning on the shelves is what it all comes down to.

Conducting retail audits using Smartphones improves the timeliness and accuracy of reports that enable managers to respond faster to store‐level trends or crisis situations. These results in better shelf performance of FMCG and reduced costs associated with conducting retail audits. It’s important for FMCG companies to be innovative and resourceful in order to maintain competitive advantage in the battle of the brands. Changing the way retail audits are conducted by adopting a proven mobile solution can be one way to achieve this. With Fortune 500 companies already deploying Best of CG CRM ’s retail performance management solutions, it only makes sense to go with them as a tested and proven solution for the most accurate and timely insight from your retail audits.

Check the Oracle's CG SOLUTIONS

http://www.oracle.com/us/industries/consumer/046899.html

and Hitachi Consulting CG Industry Solutions

http://www.hitachiconsulting.com/consumer.cfm

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