How to Craft a Clear and Effective CRM Strategy

GETTING THEM TO CARE ABOUT CX

In addition to training, companies should cultivate a workforce that genuinely cares about being customer-centric. There are several tactics companies can use to foster such a mind-set.

An essential part of creating a clear and effective vision is a meaningful cause, Arussy says. He suggests discussing products and services in a way that ensures employees can see the impact they can have on other human beings.

Arussy also recommends that customer centricity be linked with areas such as leadership and innovation so that everyone understands where the concept fits into the larger picture of organizational goals.

Companies must also align processes with metrics across the entire organization, not just within sales or another department. "When the key performance indicators are all sales, we will sell at all costs and disregard CX," Arussy says.

He's also in favor of setting the bar too high rather than too low: "Often companies do not set the standard high enough and employees do not reach as high as they can," Arussy says.

CREATING A BUSINESS CASE FOR CRM UPGRADES

The tips above have largely been no-tech, or low-tech, suggestions. At some point, however, a technology upgrade will be needed.

To use a simple example, getting from your house to the corner store is a trip you can take on foot, but going from London to San Diego will require greater technology, and a more costly investment (i.e., a plane ticket). In general, the greater the ambition, the more sophisticated the tools required to get the results.

And, like it or not, money will be a factor with outlining a strategy—and proposing new technologies. If someone has an idea for an upgrade, he must be prepared to demonstrate to the decision makers that it will have concrete benefits throughout the organization.

According to Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of Nucleus Research, there are ways to get through to the financial departments and decision makers who hold the power to approve these tools, but it requires some careful planning. "The business case [serves as a tool to help you] convince everyone in the organization that you're trading up," Wettemann told the audience during a presentation at this year's CRM Evolution conference. It also serves as a helpful map for firms, as a business case provides them with a structured outline as they begin to think about how to evolve their systems.

When determining what technologies to invest in, Wettemann notes, executives and managers should focus on pitching a short list of realistic benefits rather than indefinite or intangible ones that decision makers will likely meet with skepticism.

One of the great mistakes companies make today, Wettemann says, is to confuse the features vendors tend to market with the benefits they'll see from using those features. "We've been over-marketed to, and get overexuberant," Wettemann says. Therefore, companies must be careful in assessing what a given feature will do for them, not what it has done for another firm. Likewise, the objective behind a technology should be maximizing benefits, not minimizing costs, Wettemann says.

Wettemann suggests first identifying the real areas of benefit, quantifying those benefits, and evaluating the associated financial metrics.

Benefits, she says, must be equivalent to results. They can come in the form of increased employee productivity, reduced costs, additional sales, and higher customer satisfaction rates. (See sidebar below.) Wettemann suggests pursuing benefits that will provide the greatest return on investment.

MEASURING SUCCESS

The software might have been installed, but that doesn't mean you can relax. The performance of your systems must constantly be measured and assessed to determine what areas need to be refined.

And after companies have calculated the concrete benefits of an implementation, Wettemann says, they should set milestones to track whether they're meeting the numbers they've laid out for themselves. Companies should identify and prioritize the key areas of focus to make sure a project stays on track.

Nelson gives a useful reminder, one that can be applied to strategy and technology deployments alike: "As you embark on your CRM journey, it's going to be an ongoing process. It's not a once and done."

Associate Editor Oren Smilansky can be reached at osmilansky@infotoday.com.

Technology Benefits: What to Look for

A good technology proposal, says Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of Nucleus Research, should be closely linked to tangible benefits and provide concrete results like the following:

• "These features will reduce call center costs";

• "This new feature will help you avoid fines"; or

• "This new capability will increase your manager's productivity."

And the criteria below can help identify the benefits of a particular technology and create a convincing business case for it.

• Breadth: The amount of people an application will reach in an organization. (The more people it can reach, the greater the potential ROI.)

• Repeatability: How often people will be able to use the application. (The more frequently a company can use the application, the greater the returns are likely to be.)

• Cost: The more a process or task costs, the greater the benefits of automating it or applying technological support.

• Risk: This amounts to the money the project could potentially cost a company, if done wrong.

• Collaboration: Whether employees will be able to share it and work together. (Communication between employees can be costly.)

• Knowledge: Whether the company will be able to reuse the information created through implementation of the technology. —O.S.