Rules of the road for CRM Contact and Customer Relationship Management 17 Rules of the Road for Contact and Customer Relationship Management When it comes to choosing the right Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system for your business, it's important to understand all the benefits of a CRM system before beginning your selection process. When you launch a CRM implementation, your choices can impact nearly everyone in your company. That's why this booklet has been created. These 17 "Rules of the Road" for CRM were collected from executives, managers, employees and consultants who shared their experiences with Sage. The goal is to provide you with useful information as you choose a new CRM system. We're confident that forewarned is forearmed and that the educated choice will be a Sage product. 1. CRM is more than a product, it's a project When your company chooses to implement a Customer Relationship Management system (CRM), it is taking a dramatic step forward in it's customer commitment. And, since customers drive your business, you're leaping ahead in your ability to generate and manage revenue, too. The benefits of CRM come not only from the product you purchase, but also from the implementation plan you follow. The more thoroughly you embrace a company-wide CRM project, the more your company will benefit from the features your CRM software offers. Choosing a CRM system is often the simple part: the implementation can be hard. That's why we always recommend working with a recognised expert in the area and learn from their experience in delivering a successful project. Through the course of a widely scoped project it is common to uncover areas and functions that can be automated that were not considered before. In principle give the CRM project time; it will repay you many times in what it delivers to your organisation. 2. Customers are everywhere: clients, vendors, employees, mentors It used to be easy to define the word "customer." But companies are becoming more diverse, with multiple locations, employees who telecommute and vendors who function as partners. The idea of "customer" has broadened to include a wide range of end-users of different kinds of corporate information. For example, employees are customers when they need self-service information on pension plans or other benefits. Shareholders are customers when they're looking for financial information. Vendors are customers when they need detailed specifications before they can proceed with a project. A colleague is a customer when you need to deliver time critical data. And, of course, the buyer is always a customer whose experience is critical to your bottom line. With a CRM system, you can serve all of the groups who rely on your company for important, timely information. 3. Bigger is not always better CRM is a broad discipline. Solutions are built to deliver and match different levels of functionality, complexity, structures, methods of working and robustness. Just as you are unlikely to buy a tractor to mow your lawn you should avoid looking to buy enterprise-focused systems it your company's requirements are simple or modest. The reverse is also true. One of the key areas of dissatisfaction in CRM is a mis-sold solution. Our advice is simple - take a proper look at what the current and potential needs for organising customer interactions are in your company. Are your relationships long lasting or brief, do you re-sell or look to cross-sell? Do you need to link other departments and people together on a shared system? All of these requirements have tools that suit them, and very often contact management, for example, is enough. Sometimes more of an investment is needed. Work with an expert to assess this, it need not be expensive and it could save you much money and hassle in the long term. 4. CRM solutions are different for mid-size companies Some software companies selling CRM would have you believe that you need to buy what they call an enterprise solution that includes all the bells and whistles required for the largest of global enterprises. But for small to mid-size companies this may mean paying for more capacity than is required. In fact, the price of these systems is often so high that any company smaller than a FTSE 500 firm cannot reasonably afford one. But other vendors have created CRM solutions with the mid-sized company in mind, offering applications that include virtually all of the features common in enterprise solutions, but at a cost that is reasonable for smaller scale users. Even better, many of these solutions can be scaled from as little as a single user to as many as you are likely to need in the future. With a CRM solution designed for mid-sized companies, you can start small and grow big without ever wasting your valuable resources on capacity you don't need. You buy what you need, when you need it. Another benefit of CRM solutions designed from the ground up for mid-sized companies is that they are easier to implement and are fully functional right out of the box. Maybe larger enterprises have the time and resources to spend tailoring a solution and integrating it into their enterprise. But mid-sized companies want a CRM solution that they can get up and running easily, quickly and at minimal cost. And they want one that can be seamlessly integrated with back office systems such as accounting - without the need for custom programming. 5. Planning Pays To ensure a successful CRM project, planning is essential. Begin by defining the need for a CRM solution. Arm yourself with the background information to justify the investment costs and to demonstrate where the benefits, savings and Return on Investment will come from. Next, define the stakeholders in the project and use the needs analysis and benefits projections as a foundation for establishing a common, company-wide goal for CRM. With this groundwork completed, you can now establish a budget, planning for the costs associated with identifying vendors, testing solutions, implementation, integration, training and support. A team should then be assembled to begin the drive towards completion of the project - a drive that begins with a clear description of your company's CRM objectives and any processes that will have to be modified to make the project successful. Make sure the head of this team is a CRM champion - someone who completely believes that CRM will make a difference. Good planning will involve discussions with internal and external customers. What are the best practices for your sales force, for your marketing team, for customer service? Also consider the various types of data that are important to track for each group involved. Data required by different groups of system users, such as field sales representatives, may be different from those of customer service agents. Plan for the needs of each group by confirming that your data requirements list is complete. Remember: any person who requires information available through the CRM solution should be considered a system user, whether he or she is an internal staff member, an external partner, or a customer. 6. Prepare for product demonstrations Once possible products and vendors are identified, a demo will be a critical factor in determining which solution is best for your company. But before inviting vendors' representatives to perform their demos be sure you have told them exactly what you are looking for. Why waste time evaluating a product that may be very functional but just will not work in your environment? Also be sure to find out from the vendor what platform is required to run the demo. Again, don't waste time scheduling a demo only to find out you don't have the right hardware or the right operating system to support the product. When comparing several products it is advisable to establish a scoring system that makes it easy to track the various benefits and shortcoming of each product being evaluated. By tabulating these scores, the decision process is often simplified. But be sure to include qualitative information in these lists, such as a vendor's history of innovation, customer satisfaction, financial stability and so on. And finally, make sure the CRM implementation team attends the demo, and encourage them to share their concerns and feedback. If the vendor or reseller cannot immediately address any issues raised, make sure they do so in a reasonable time frame. Responsiveness is often a key differentiator in the vendor selection process, so some planned tough questions may be critical to making a selection you can live with long into the future. 7. Implement relevant technology When you choose a CRM system, make sure it's based on current technology. Don't let a salesperson talk you into product vaporware based on future promises. Insist on seeing a current version of the product as it can be deployed today. Equally important, don't accept old technology that's past its peak performance curve. You don't want to have to replace the system in the near future. Look at what is in the product roadmap, planned enhancements and other features that reassure you that this is a product being invested in by the vendor for the long term. Take a view on its integration capabilities and plans and the relevance to your back office systems. Decide whether the interface and usability is suited to your user type - i.e. for a power user keyboard short cuts might be better, for ease of use a web-based interface might be more appropriate. A good business consultancy will be able to help you make the right decision. 8. CRM is not a single department solution CRM solutions should provide company-wide benefits. But many products that claim to be CRM applications only address a single functional area such as marketing, sales force automation or customer support. True, these role-specific solutions may be adequate for their specific intended purpose. But what happens when your requirements broaden? If you implement a dedicated sales force automation solution, for instance, and down the road realise that you also need to automate your marketing efforts, you have to start from scratch, looking for vendors,trying products - and wasting time. Plus, you'll be faced with two separate products, two separate vendors and no single point of contact for support and problem resolution. Even worse, with multiple point solutions, how will you share information across your company? Will information captured by the sales force automation solution be leveraged in new marketing campaigns? Will marketing campaign data find its way to the customer support centre where cross-selling opportunities could be made, or lost? While it is true that custom code can be written to integrate products, a true CRM solution provides the functionality of any single function solution, as well as a cost-free, seamless way to add features and capabilities whenever you need them. So, if your needs require it, don't settle for anything less than a comprehensive solution that delivers on the true promise of CRM: Marketing campaign management Sales force automation Customer care Contact management Task management/scheduling 9. Integration with back-office systems can speed Return On Investment One area many companies overlook when evaluating CRM solutions is the fact that accounts payable and accounts receivable data can form an integral part of CRM. If a customer calls to order a product, for example, wouldn't it be beneficial to instantly know whether that customer's accounts are up to date? Although some CRM solutions offer patches to link back to an accounting system, others offer this seamless integration out of the box. The cost benefits of this approach are so great that some companies report an immediate ROI because they were able to get their application up and running without incurring the high costs of custom integration. 10. Multi-channel access is the only way to go To be truly effective, a CRM solution needs to support customers on their own terms. This means delivering the information into the hands of agents who respond to customer inquiries over the telephone, fax, e-mail or written letters. And, of course, in this Internet age, the CRM solution should also support interactive Web chat with customers and make a wide range of information available to them over robust Web sites. For internal staff, such as field service employees and sales staff, the solution should also support all standard wireless devices; solutions that are restricted to a single device or operating system will become too limiting as this technology evolves. With support for PDAs, for example, sales reps can get real time updates about the prospects or customers they are about to visit - before they walk through the door. 11. Delivery Method that is right for your company An item of increasing relevance to many companies is whether they want to actually bring their CRM solution "in house"; ...