Tag Archives: CRM

Vocal Support For CRM And Sales Automation

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While CRM and sales automation software suites are a boon to business, they’re not without their drawbacks. Chief amongst these is the frustrating lack of automation in the software itself. After a call with a customer, a typical CRM system requires users to manually key in detailed information about the contact or transaction, relying on them to remember the details of the call – which, considering that the bulk of sales and service transactions are made by phone seems bizarre.

The problem here lies in that the CRM system will only prove effective, for both individual and business, if this process is not only completed, but done so consistently and accurately – ideally within minutes of the phone call ending. There is only a small window of opportunity after the call’s completion in which to enter an accurate account of the information, and it goes without saying that as time passes the specific details from a call, let alone hundreds of them, become much harder to remember.

But it’s part of the sales or service person’s job to make these notes, isn’t it? Perhaps, but it’s not realistic to expect larges teams of sales and services staff, dealing with hundreds of calls per day – each involving an ongoing trail of dialogue and follow-ups – to devote themselves to their CRM system updates.  Good intentions don’t always lead to good practice.

Couple this with an unpredictable work schedule, and things are bound to get delayed. It is far more likely that staff will enter call-specific information into the system days, or even weeks, later rather than minutes – and whilst some data is better than no data, the detail of a conversation may be lost when reduced to a couple of lines of garbled notes, keyed in after the call has finished.  This leads to inaccurate and muddled records, and frustration for managers and colleagues that may have to piece together the facts from jumbled notes if the original contact person isn’t available.

No pause for thought

So why not take an alternative approach – and have a recording of the call accessible in the CRM/sales software, alongside the customer record?  Having the full detail of each telephone call captured automatically not only provides a comprehensive log of transactions and issues discussed, it also cuts out of inaccuracy and ambiguity – and relieves the burden of data entry for staff.

Even better if these records can be presented in an online dashboard, and categorised by date, time, the number dialled, the employee making the call, and so on – making them easy to search and retrieve. This dashboard can be integrated into existing CRM systems using a simple interface, enabling the detail of calls to be accessed and reviewed alongside other records of contact with that customer, such as emails.

Bringing voice to CRM and sales automation means that staff no longer have to rely on memory in order to retrieve the detail of calls they’ve made.  It also has the potential to increase ease of use across the business, whilst improving the quality and enriching the overall database.

Bridging the gap

It’s also of real benefit if an employee is away from the office, be it a scheduled holiday or unforeseen sick leave.  In either circumstance, the responsibility of maintaining communication with an absent employee’s client-base falls directly upon his or her colleagues.

This can often pose a big problem when sales software or CRM systems contain inaccurate and inconsistent data, or at worst, have no data record on file at all for a particular client.  Not only is this detrimental to the valued customer relationship, it severely limits access and utility – which isn’t ideal when the stand-in agent needs to close a deal, quickly resolve a question or handle a dispute with a key customer that involves a contentious phone call.

Having voice integrated with CRM or sales automation software enables the stand-in agent to maintain communication with the absent colleague’s clients without disruption, as records of previous calls are quickly accessed.  It can also help resolve issues with clients, by providing managers and staff with real time, recorded evidence of each conversation that has taken place – which can be called upon in the event of a future query or dispute.

So when it comes to sales and services environments, where so much traffic is unavoidably phone-based, the call of duty is clear – it’s time to speak up for voice recording, to add vocal support for CRM and sales automation.

By Mark Seemann, CEO of SYNETY

Agile Companies Demand Agile CRM Support

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All financial crises eventually come to an end but in the meantime, many businesses are travelling a bumpy road to recovery, with hard-pressed senior managers constrained by tightened operational budgets – and everyone expected to do more with but with less resource.

Those businesses most likely to recover quickly and succeed when competitors are falling  behind will be noted for their agility – the ability to adapt quickly to changing demands and requirements in a cost-effective and productive way to increase revenue, shorten delivery cycles and lower costs, while becoming more responsive to customer expectations.

This is where effective CRM comes into play, helping agile organisations meet targets for productivity, performance, cost reduction and revenue generation. This is especially so where business leaders suffer acute economic anxiety and their reflex is to tighten their tech wallets, rather than invest in systems that will deliver the added flexibility and efficiency their company needs.

These agile companies will need an equally agile CRM system, with the flexibility of multiple access methods – helping engage with customers anywhere, anytime, anyhow – and on any mobile platform, through any device: laptop; iPhone, Android or BlackBerry smartphone; and increasingly, tablets such as the iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab. This means cost-effective remote working for increased flexibility and rapid customer response, together with 24/7 availability, so people need never be out of touch.

Rapid response is increasingly important where more and more organisations are reaching out to customers and prospects via social media. How they do so is influenced by the markets in which they operate. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Wikipedia are often referenced but some are more relevant to FMCG, others to B2B and need to be approached differently. Alongside these is the social intranet – the in-house communications and gossip community that develops quite informally.

It is all part of the drive towards enterprise mobility, going beyond unified applications for voice, messaging and email to embrace CRM and sales force enablement in a bid to secure positive customer engagement and improve workplace productivity. The norm of nine-to-five working is being overturned as staff and managers spend time away from their desks and on the road, spilling over into their evenings and weekends. And global workers may have the added challenge of doing business across multiple time zones. Whether in the office, at home or at the airport, they need constant access to enterprise systems, anytime and anywhere.

Key tips

There is more detail below but here are some key considerations to bear in mind when looking to become more agile:

  • Make sure your CRM system enables people to quickly and easily retrieve actionable business intelligence so that they can make fast and accurate decisions based on fact rather than assumption.
  • Ensure that your CRM system is simple to customise, flexible and intuitive to use – and without the need to rely too much on IT specialists.
  • Analyse the true cost of ownership of the system, beyond the cost of the core software package. Will you have to buy additional modules for essential functions? What about training? Adding data storage capacity or more users?
  • How much choice of access to the CRM system will you have? Desktop, online, over the web, via smartphones or tablets. The more choice, the better.
  • What KPIs can you rely on to help grow business, improve productivity and boost the bottom line, while serving your customers better?
  • Make sure your CRM system addresses the critical issues of people, process and technology – users must understand ‘what’s in it for them’. Question whether there are better processes and ways of doing things.
  • Ensure the system is bang up to date from a technology perspective, capable of running on any type of device, through any popular browser, on-premise, in the cloud, or a hybrid of them all.

Act instantly on up to date information

It doesn’t matter how large or small your business operation may be – or whether you are a manufacturer, retailer, professional services firm or consultancy – the ability to share up-to-the-minute information and to act on it instantly is essential. At its best, this might mean funnelling data and significant events from accounting and invoicing, inventory, production, logistics and distribution, sales and marketing, and workflow through your CRM system. The objective is to provide consolidated, actionable information about your customers.

For example, sales people can identify customers on credit hold while they are taking orders or giving quotes. The production manager can see potential large orders in the pipeline that may require additional resourcing; or query the validity of authorising a rush job when the customer has insufficient credit for the job to be completed without exceeding terms and conditions. By having all of the relevant information at their fingertips, they can make fast and accurate decisions based on fact rather than assumption or guess work.

This leads into better planning and forecasting. Should you review resources to ensure you can cope with demand? For example, if you are a professional services firm do you need to re-assign personnel to handle an influx of client advisory work? In manufacturing, do you need to book production space through the ERP system to ensure completion of this order or not? With an increase in orders in the sales pipeline, will finance need to consider next quarter’s customer credit limits; or organise more working capital to ease a squeeze on cash flow? Should sales and customer service teams be prepared to deal with customer calls querying lengthening delivery lead times?

This is all part of taking an agile approach at a time when business operations are changing direction and moving so much faster than ever before.

Quick and easy to adapt

Agility of your CRM system should extend to how quickly and easily it can be adapted to changes in processes and the way your company does business. It must be simple to customise, flexible and intuitive to use, and without the need to rely too much on IT specialists. It must also be able to reach out across all those areas that have a bearing on the customer experience which ultimately has an impact on the bottom line. And it has to do all this as cost-effectively as possible.

Whatever type of CRM system you choose, on-premise, as a hosted service or in the cloud, other items need to be included to give a true picture of the total cost of ownership. Does the software come with all the sales, marketing and customer service functionality you need? Or will you have to buy additional modules for functions such as web access, mobile CRM or to run email marketing campaigns?

What about data storage or adding new users, will the costs escalate? Are there any recurring annual fees – if so how much? Don’t forget to factor in training. Bear in mind that a simple, intuitive system will be quicker and easier to learn than larger, more complex systems. Also, check how easily you can migrate from an on-premise solution to a cloud-based service, and back again if you need to.

Agile access boosts efficiency and productivity – and saves costs

Agility of access is equally important. Good CRM systems provide multiple touch- points. This has obvious advantages for anyone working out in the field, like sales people or service technicians or other staff who may be working remotely. The agile CRM approach has ushered in even greater opportunities to improve customer satisfaction as well as increase efficiency and productivity of permanent or occasional field and remote workers by reducing down time and smoothing the two-way flow of updates between them and managers back at HQ.

Overall, agile CRM helps bring immediacy to collaborative management processes. Mobile access to real-time information, for example, from the client services team, production, despatch or sales systems means they will know of any problems and are well-prepared ahead of a meeting, perhaps why a project has been delayed or an order delivered to the wrong location.

You should be able to access the CRM system through most common web browsers – Microsoft Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, for example – as well as smartphone, tablet or mobile device. Currently, there is an interesting cross-over between home or personal access devices, where people are looking to use their own smartphone or tablet for work applications. They are very familiar with their personal device and by bringing it into their work environment, can extend that familiarity to their organisation’s corporate systems.

A good CRM system should be able to replicate a similar user experience but this can set some challenges. Some CRM systems may not look or work exactly the same on every device. There may also be some constraints in terms of onboard memory capacity, speed and network carrier coverage. But agile an CRM should take this in its stride.

Agile attitude to sales and marketing

Alongside agile CRM, sales and marketing professionals are embracing an agile approach to monitoring progress against KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). They can gain actionable insight through their personalised dashboards for a visual health-check of sales leads, opportunities and account status. They can also keep tabs on their biggest deals by staying vigilant to important changes in their status. Automated alerts keep them up to speed on significant changes, as soon as they happen so opportunities can be analysed and strategy adjusted accordingly, Instant reports deliver insight through sales pipeline funnels, lead summaries and forecasts. And other metrics such as how teams are performing against targets; pick-up from sales and marketing campaigns; statistics on which lines or products are selling well – or not so well – all help inform the decision-making process.

Overall, agile CRM can give a big boost to serving the customer better. Managers don’t have to function in isolation whilst out on the road. As long as they have mobile or internet access, they can monitor marketing activity without having to go back to the office, so they can re-focus resources, amend campaigns or change direction completely if the results warrant it. This shortens the communications process and allows users to respond to events quicker – essential in today’s fast-moving social media world where a single unfavourable Tweeted incident can escalate rapidly to a major calamity.

Profiting from people, process and technology

Deploying a successful agile CRM system means addressing three key components: people, process and technology. Lack of user engagement is the number one reason for the failure of CRM systems. Unlike installing back-end IT software, you will need substantial user engagement to drive adoption. So make sure you involve users early and often during the system planning and implementation phases. It is vital that they understand ’What’s in it for them’.

Put your business processes under the microscope. Are the processes you follow efficient and effective? Question whether there is a better way to do things – don’t just carry on with the status quo. Make sure your agile CRM is perceived to be as simple, quick, easy to use and more convenient than other alternatives or frontline users will circumvent it and continue with business as usual.

Make sure that the system you choose is bang up to date from a technology perspective: running on any type of device, through any major browser, on-premise, in the cloud – or a hybrid of them all. Also, bear in mind that any CRM system – no matter how agile – will require some tailoring if it is to fit the unique way you and your colleagues work.

And if you don’t have the experience or confidence to go it alone, don’t be afraid to call on expert assistance. Get it right and you’ll benefit from happier customers, decreased churn and better profitability.

 By Mike Richardson, managing director at Maximizer Software EMEA 

Intelligent Thinking: Smarter Deployment For Better CRM Integration

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No matter how hard you try, without the right foundations, most customer relationship management (CRM) tools are destined to underachieve. Just as business users need quality information to effectively perform marketing activities and provide good customer sales and service, similarly the advanced functionality contained in most CRM systems can only be optimised if fundamental IT structures are in place, and the data that underpins the business processes has been implemented properly.

To achieve optimal results and return on investment in CRM implementations, a best-practice approach undoubtedly requires thorough and consistent IT and business strategy planning, good communication and a continual focus on the business’ needs and goals.

Back to basics
CRM projects are inherently different to traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects. The fact that sales and marketing processes are inevitably more fluid than, say, manufacturing and financial accounting processes, places even greater emphasis on a combined business and technology approach to ensure all business requirements are fully addressed.

An intelligent approach to CRM deployment will consider all the fundamental elements of system design that underpin CRM while constantly evaluating how each element needs to support the business. Ignoring certain key considerations will prevent organisations from getting the true value out of the system.

Defining the organisational model in a way that truly represents the company’s approach to marketing, sales and service within the system, is a good starting point. Here, a partnership between business and CRM specialists is essential to ensure the resulting organisation model reflects reporting requirements, reporting lines, visibility restrictions and integration with back-end systems.

The need for customer information in CRM processes is well understood and, indeed, creating account and contact records is, typically, a simple task. Yet the straightforwardness of this task often hides something more important; the business agreement of what account and contact information is required by marketing, sales and service processes, and how this data needs to evolve as it is shared across the system landscape.

Before any enhancements or custom developments are planned, it is advisable to work closely with experienced specialists that have a clear understanding of both the business need and the CRM software being implemented or enhanced. This approach ensures enhancements are necessary, have a business case and can be supported going forwards.

A careful approach and strategy to user interface configuration is needed as any adjustments in this area demand a high-level of maintenance. For all of the above, the best approach will challenge the necessity of going beyond the standard, and only do so based on an understanding of the system architecture and business need being addressed. Getting ‘back to basics’ in this way allows work to be focused in the right areas.

The importance of good planning
A well-run project must be clearly defined, with realistic scope and business objectives determined in advance by both business users and the internal IT teams. However straightforward the project ambition, it is important to consider and seek consultation around the impact that these changes will have on the overall project to avoid re-work at a later stage. Neglecting to secure input from all relevant parties and focusing the project around a single objective can be detrimental to the project -and may ultimately lead to failure.

Once the project scope has been defined, the sequence of priorities will be agreed. It is vital that technology constraints are considered as part of this process to ensure critical foundations, such as new hardware, customer data design and so on, are delivered to support other deliverables. Again, discussions around these priorities must take place or the project may suffer at a later testing or build stage, when it is discovered that the dependencies and required hardware have not been factored in.

Business first
While most organisations inevitably want to go-live as soon as possible in order to begin realising the associated benefits of CRM, this approach can lead to unintended consequences. Good planning will help avoid these pitfalls by highlighting the impact of the approach.

A well-planned project considers all aspects of the project — not just those related to the technology. For example, a project team that is solely focused on realising the technical solution as quickly as possible may be unable to effectively support the key business users. The unintended consequence of this can quickly become poor acceptance of the solution within the business because the core users have not been supported in adjusting to the new system.

Make it personal
CRM is used in different ways by different users. To optimise user performance, the user interfaces should be configured to support and enforce business process by considering the tasks that are required to perform a particular job function. Determining the optimal number of configurations is a key task that should be performed by a specialist who understands how to maximise user adoption while minimising the effort to build and maintain the different configurations.

The broad range of business processes supported by a modern CRM system require a significant amount of information to ensure they are integrated across the enterprise and the necessary business intelligence can be gleaned from the subsequent reporting. Burdening end users with the task of providing this information does not make for an efficient process.

Fortunately, a lot of information can be automatically derived using predefined business rules and contextual information about the task being performed and the person performing it. Significantly, determining the information required to function has the benefit of freeing-up users to serve customers. Yet this undoubtedly requires experience in optimising CRM systems and processes, for example by making the most of the organisational model or customer-specific enhancements.

While it is undoubtedly good news for businesses that advancements in CRM usability and functional support have been made, they are not a substitute for good groundwork and their effect will be redundant if the supporting system basics are not in place.

Question the boundaries
Planning is crucial, but an intelligent CRM implementation also involves challenging perceptions throughout a project. In the IT department, for example, there is often a reluctance to agree to anything that cannot be achieved within the standard functionality of the proposed CRM system.

Essentially, there is nothing wrong with implementing a standard CRM system, as long as all parties understand what this system will give them – and are happy that this fits the project mandate. Problems can arise when enhancing the standard system without understanding exactly what needs to be enhanced and why. Attempting to rebuild existing systems and processes into SAP CRM or forging ahead with unrealistic or aspirational ideals are examples of failing to question the boundaries and often results in an implementation failing to live-up to expectations.

The relationship between the various parties involved in a CRM project is critical. The business teams, internal IT department and vendor all bring different expertise and knowledge and need to communicate clearly to avoid problems.

Business teams need to make key, and no doubt busy, resources available and trust the IT department and vendor to understand their business need. Similarly, the IT department and the vendor need to understand that the business is the customer — technology is an enabler after all — and be able to articulate how the proposed solution meets the business need.

A well-run project will take an accurate understanding of the genuine underlying business requirements obtained from a business and IT workshop and translate them into the CRM solution.

Smarter systems need better data
CRM and business intelligence (BI) systems are intrinsically linked. Without good underlying data, there is little or no chance of achieving good business intelligence, which makes it even more crucial to ensure that the quality of the data in the CRM system is good by implementing clear data management strategies and reducing the amount of unnecessary or duplicated records which may be clogging up the system.

Additionally, it is important to establish single, up-to-date records that are available company-wide to prevent customers being irritated by basic inaccuracies and users being held back in their work by poor data.

Expect change
There is no escaping the fact that, as one of the business-critical systems for the organisation, establishing or evolving CRM is a complex process that must incorporate a multitude of considerations.

Consider how many points of contact exist between an organisation and its customers across marketing, sales and service processes – and how many existing applications support those processes. Defining and agreeing the rules of engagement across these channels and processes and then migrating data from existing systems is more complicated than many organisations anticipate.

Despite what some vendors may imply, implementing CRM remains a complex change management process and, no single solution for opportunity management, for example, will present a fast-track to an explosion in sales. The secret to optimising CRM therefore lies in intelligent deployment; making use of the elements that work for the business – and ignoring those which don’t.

By Darron Walton, managing director of consulting specialist, De Villiers Walton