But isn't Outlook Good Enough?!?!
I was recently speaking with a mutual friend who has been in
sales for several years about the benefits of CRM. (For the sake
of this newsletter, we'll call him Jim) Jim was quick to comment
on how he didn't like any of the current CRM software packages,
and had used several of them for his various employers. Jim told
me how he swore by Outlook and that he had used it for many
years, and had developed such efficiency that every other
solution was less effective for him.
**************************************** We will talk in a few
weeks about how important the CRM system end user experience is
to the success of any CRM deployment, but for today, I would
like to focus on another topic.
****************************************
You see, if "CRM" is only being implemented as a new contact and
appointment manager, then Outlook probably is an appropriate
tool. ACT! is the world's leading contact manager and there are
tens of thousands around the world that swear by it. These are
both good, solid, workable tools for some remote salespeople.
However, Customer Relationship Management is a much more
comprehensive endeavor than simple contact management, or even
efforts to automate the sales force's daily activities. It
requires integration of processes, software applications, and
databases.
**************************************** We are now talking
about strategically making the customer experience better,
across the organization...
When they interact with their salesperson... When they call the
finance department... When they need technical support... When
they visit your website... and when they are marketed to.
****************************************
Outlook cannot possibly enable such things, or capture
information to be analyzed.
When I began to dig a little deeper to understand why Jim had
this apprehension and distaste for CRM products, the picture
became a little clearer. You see, he really let me know that his
main problem was not necessarily the CRM products themselves,
but rather the executive team and sales management's perception
of the system and what is was supposed to do.
Many times, management recognizes the need for CRM. Their
competition is "Implementing CRM". The press is talking about
CRM. They know that they need to change something, increase
their sales, while reducing costs. But a lot of times, CRM is
reduced to just another contact manager, implemented with three
times as much administration for the sales team, so that
management can see what the heck they are doing. Tough sell? You
bet. Especially to salespeople who are used to working
autonomously, and earning six figures a year.
It is important for executives and senior managers to recognize
that CRM is more than just getting information for themselves.
This is a very critical requirement, and an essential gain for
any implementation. However, we must go back to positioning CRM
as an initiative focused around making the customer experience
better. One of the ways to do this is to arm the people who are
dealing with the customer with relevant, timely, easily
retrievable information. It is also important to empower them
with applications that make it easy for them to enter new
information they discover during their interaction. The next
step, the critical factor we are discussing today is to make
that information available to all parties within the
organization who might be able to take advantage of it -
executives, managers, sales reps, marketing, tech support reps,
finance, customer service, etc.
CRM truly is a mindset. It is the implementation of customer
centric business strategies and processes that are intended to
make the customer feel like they are the company's first
priority. Implementing these strategies generally require the
proper technology as an enabler to successfully deploy and
implement the new systems and processes.
**************************************** If you missed my
article about customer centricity last month, take the time to
review it here "Why Customer Centricity?"
****************************************
My converation with Jim continued, and went something like this:
BRIAN: "I assume you don't do any of the order processing, when
your prospects sign a purchase agreement for your products and
services." JIM: "No, once I receive the signed contract, I fax
that back to headquarters, and they follow up with fulfillment
and billing"
BRIAN: "Are you ever aware of any issues that the customer has
after the order has shipped?" JIM: "Not always. Occasionally,
when they are really mad, or are having serious trouble, I'll
get a call."
BRIAN: "Have you ever gone to call on an existing customer, and
walked into a landmine because they have a nagging issue with
your tech support or finance department?" JIM: "Yeah, that
definitiely happens. It would be nice to know ahead of time
somehow, but unless tech support is really proactive and knows
our schedules, they really never notify us, especially because
we are in different timezones"
BRIAN: "So you have no idea what is going on with your customer
with other departments in your company, the other "touch points"
your customer has with your organization?" JIM: "Well, I try and
stay in touch with the customer as much as possible, but no, I
don't generally know what is going on with them unless there is
a serious issue."
BRIAN: "Is it fair to say that the rest of your organization
really has no visibility to what is going on with you and the
prospect/customer either?" JIM: "Pretty much. I sent in a report
monthly of my activity to my boss, but that is about it."
BRIAN: "How about any financial information? Do you have access
to any of that?" JIM: "Quarterly we get a spreadsheet from
corporate. I compare my personal spreadsheet to theirs just to
make sure that my commission is right."
Perhaps some of you can relate to this situation. It is not that
uncommon, but more and more companies are realizing the benefits
of moving towards being a customer centric organization through
a CRM initiative.
I went on to begin to paint a different picture for Jim about
how his life could be made a lot easier and how he could be more
productive with his time. Below are just 4 ways that integrating
department silos, and disparate applications and data could
improve a salesperson's life. I could expand and share a similar
list about each end user of a CRM system, but I think that you
can probably draw some conclusions on your own about how
integrating information would help Sales Managers, Customer
Service Personnel, Technical Support representatives, and
Accounts Receivable specialists.
****************************************
1. What if you could turn a quote into an order with the push of
a button, and have it automatically inserted into your
ERP/Financial system? Wouldn't that cut down on time and errors
spent entering orders in two systems?
2. What if you had visibility about all the open tech support or
other customer service issues that your customer had called
about, and you were able to proactively contact them, instead of
being blindsided when you are trying to sell them additional
products or services? Do you think they might be impressed with
your level of service and attentiveness? Do you think that your
unsolicited follow up might communicate to them that even when
things go wrong, you are truly interested in helping them?
3. What if you had access to see how much a customer had spent
over the past year, the products they had purchased, and whether
they were on time with their payments? Do you think this might
give you increased visibility to who your most valuable
customers are? Do you think it might help prioritze who you
should be calling on?
4. What if you could sort your customers easily by product line,
and easily market to them with complimentary products and
services that you offer? Do you think it might help enhance
collaboration between Sales and Marketing departments in cross
selling efforts? ****************************************
"An effective CRM implementation will have to be able to account
for an entire spectrum of customer-based systems and how they
interact with customers themselves. This is likely to include
conventional personal interactions, paper-based transactions,
Web site browsing, e-commerce, telephone contact or voice/data
interaction via wireless technology. Organizations must be able
to manage and maintain these multiple points of interaction to
say they have an effective CRM system." says Charles Saunders in
the September 24, 2001 edition of EAI Journal.
Outlook can be effective for managing your day to day tasks. But
how much time is spent on the phone, through email, looking at 4
different spreadsheets to gather fragmented, out of date
information? No wonder so many people are frustrated.
To learn more about how Initium Technology can help integrate
your applications, data, and information silos into an efficient
customer relationship system, please call us at 1-800-250-5732,
or visit our website http://www.initiumtech.com/rfi.htm
Have a wonderful Valentine's Day and President's Day weekend! Be
sure and take the time to express your love to the special
people in your life!
Kind regards,
Brian Vellmure Initium Technology bvellmure@initiumtech.com
Copyright 2003 Initium, LLC. All Rights Reserved
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