Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Ongoing Support, System Optimization, and Follow-up:

There are a substantial number of companies who opt to not follow through on support after the rollout.
One of the disadvantages of small companies doing the implementation is their limited ability to provide post-implementation is their limited ability to provide post-implementation assistance and support.
In any case, the level of service needs to be there, and it is wise to arrange for post-implementation support.
Incurring cost is better than incurring systemic failure simply because something went wrong you didn't know what you did.
The good CRM is to contact the customer to make sure they are happy and functioning.
The implementation partner should access whether the customer is getting maximum benefit from the system.
Whenever there is update available, work with the implementation partner to ensure that the customization are not overwritten with the update's installation.

Rollout and Systems Hand-off:

1. This is the final implementation phase
2. The final phase is both a delicate and huge task. If anything goes wrong it could mean disaster.
3. Normally, the process takes one or two days, and usually occurs on a weekend so there is no or at least, minimal disruption of the actual workweek.
4. If it extends beyond the weekend or can't be done on the weekend, alternate arrangement are planned and executed so that the disruption remains minimal.
5. The other important significant part of the rollout is remote user and satellite office preparation.
6. Each remote user is given a copy of the general database installed on their desktop or laptop.
7. The initial problem is not part of the CRM system, but is rather the interaction between the system and the network.
8. One place that normally has some problems though they are mostly mechanical is that data synchronization with remote users.
9. The synchronization up doesn't always run smoothly in the first few moments of the production environment, but when products have good data synchronization engines, these problems get solved very quickly.

Training

Training time depends on the number of users and available facilities for training and the duration of the training period is about two to three days. There are four parts to training:
Basic training:
This is the plain training for users on the application.
This training is run by the vendor.
There are two ways to run this training, depending on which is the most cost effective.
You can either send users abroad or have a trainer come to your facility
Customization training:
This training is conducted by the now-trained employees who have been engaged in the project.
It is best done by the internal project team, because of their familiarity with the project.
One other plus with the internal staff taking the training is they have had the knowledge during the entire implementation process.
It is ordinarily built into the proposals, contracts, and statements of work that are basis for the implementation.
Documentation:
This is the vital part of the process.
The vendor has full responsibility to provide documentation on the customized system to see the use is assured.
Some companies will recruit the documentation experts in the organization.
Additional Training:
a. Train the trainer: Whoever you send of this course will be the one to train the users on your staff. This is a major time and money saver.
b. Integrator Course : This course teaches your IT staff how to make their own customizations to the other vendors who have such a course.

Power User Beta Test and Data Import:

This is a sensitive part of the implementation.
In this phase the star users get to play.
The experienced users play a vital role in this phase of implementation.
The first major step in this 2-5 day process is to create a testing environment at the site.
Systems with the most extensive customizations exhibit the fewest problems in beta testing because they have been checked so extensively during development.
The IT team focuses on how to implement and support the system.
The success or failure, strengths and shortcomings during the beta testing attempt determines the backup resources that are necessary.
All this must be done with the full participation of the customer. The customer must verify the integrity of the data transfer.
With some implementation methodologies this is the beginning of knowledge transfer, with the customer IT staff performing a beta implementation.
What kind of training will be paramount when the time comes for the vendor/consulting Services Company to leave the premises.

Development of Customizations:

Development of Customization depends upon number of factors such as:
The size of the project
The complexity of:
a. The interfaces
b. The workflow
c. The functions
The availability of employees/users to work with the team to improve the customization at a given iteration.
Technical problems unrelated to the implementation that affect it.
d. This can be resolved by creating an independent environment for development, testing and eventually production.
Midstream workflow and rules changes for the customization necessitated by changing corporate business processes.
e. This is something that can be managed but will affect the timetable and the price.
The elasticity of the application is very important in the case of creation of the customized application.

CRM Projects are divided into four phases:

Phase I : Sales module customizations : It means the product catalogs, the sales process embedding, the account and contact databases, and the sales pipeline management.
Phase II : Marketing module customizations : These are no different in technical process from Sales module customizations. They are merely different in what needs to be customized.
Phase III : Integration with external applications : This is an analysis of the existing information technology infrastructure and the network functionality. This work identifies the integration points between the legacy systems, the CRM application, and the possible installation and customization of other new non-CRM applications and systems.
Phase IV : Reporting integration : Reporting is a vital function for the businesses that are scattered the office. The customization of those reports and their generation are critical to corporate success.

Prototyping and Detailed Proposal Generation:

The main purpose of the prototype is to develop some of the key functionality for the customer to examine before the rollout.
2. The prototype can clarify the customer needs by visualization.
3. The Prototype can be demonstrated to varying departments, each with their own agendas and ways of viewing data.
4. All the customizations doesn’t require prototyping.
5. Once the prototype is done and demonstrated, a formal project proposal that states the deliverables, timelines and final costs is within for the client. This proposal generation.
6. The amount of difficulty in the achievement of the functionality and the issues it brings up are all on the table before a complete implementation to all users is done.
7. The prototype can clarify the customer needs by visualization.
8. The prototype can be demonstrated to varying departments, each with their own agendas and ways of viewing data, and can be worked by the development team, even if the data presentation from department to department is conflicting.

Requirements Gathering:

This phase takes about two to three days.
Meetings with the stakshoders, users, other corporate decision makers and IT staff takes place in this phase.
This phase requires that all the departments should cooperate, since the CRM implementation is going to affect the interaction of every appropriate department in the company.
Marketing, sales, finance, and so on all have direct need to input the teams during the requirements gathering phase.
Once the requirements for the front-office practices are gathered, the next step is the identification of the inputs and outputs.
This is the way the users will interact with the system.
The questions answered in this phase are:
Which screens will be needed to input data?
How will information be retrieved from the system?
How will the customer want to work with the system?
How many users most the system accommodate and how they will connect to it (LAN, remote offices, web)?
To make the requirements gathering go smoothly, it is important to obtain all information possible about the existing system.
To get the information, non disclosure agreements (NDA) and other necessary paperwork need to be signed during this phase.
NDA states that neither the implementation partner nor the customer will disclose each others information given during the course of the project to anyone outside.

The Kickoff Meeting:

In the phase the implementation partner – vendor, consulting firms or a system integrator – meets with the customer to figure out the customers needs. The kickoff meeting normally takes one or two days. The responsibilities are assigned to individuals during this kickoff meeting.
Project Manager (PM):
The project manager is responsible for all aspects of the implementation, including cost control, quality and testing, and customer satisfaction.
The project manager works out the details with the customer, if there are changes to be the statement of work. There should be a change management process in place that is approved by both the customer and the implementation services company.
Implementation leader: (Technical Head)
The Implementation Leader is responsible for technical aspects, directs the system engineers, and is usually dedicated to only one project at a time.
He tends to be onsite full time until the end of the project.
Strength: combination of people skills and technical knowledge.
Assists the project manager in preparing the statement of work.
System Engineers:
System Engineers role is to do the coding.
The system engineers are onsite at all time.
In many implementation you have technical and functional expertise necessary for them do their work. CRM implementation is complex.
The SE's should know how corporate sales processes tend to function
The SE also keeps track of the sales workflow functions.
Business analysts:
BA are the functional experts.
BA provide input on business processes and flow that are enterprise-specific. It is an assigned full time to the project and they can't leave until it is complete. The larger CRM packages have enormous specialized functionality best understood by a functional specialist who has background in the area and who also knows the product being implemented.
IT staff:
IT staff people are the administrators of the system.
These people are responsible for maintaining and setting up the network and its software.
These people should see that there is no significant downtime or problems during the implementation period.
In certain conditions they have undergo greater pressure during the critical period.
Integration Expert:
The Integration expert guides the integration of the system with other information systems.
These people are very specialized.
The integration expert has to check the other information systems and on what it is dependent on.
Heads of non-technical departments:
They provide input and approval on aspects affecting their departments.
They can make you or break you.
These people makeup a very important group of team members.
They can make the implementation succeed if the partner implementation team members understand that they are non-technical, which means patience and explanation are necessary.

Pre-implementation

Pre-implementation phase is nearly an endgame in picking the software. This is the phase where the software selection occurs. The selection criteria should be sharp and with the help of some references you will be able to identify the established vendors.
The selection is based upon following criteria:
a. Scalability of software
b. Toolset flexibility for customization
c. Stability of the existing CRM application code
d. Compatibility of the CRM application with legacy systems and Internet systems
e. Level of technical support available during and after the implementation
f. Upgrade support
g. Availability of additional modules such as EMA complementary to SFA

CUSTOMER: IN A NUTSHELL

You’re a company. You have paying clients. They give you money. You give them products and/or services. That’s Customer #1
You have employees. You give then a paycheck and benefits and bonuses and they give you productive work in return. That’s Customer #2
You have suppliers. They give you products and services. You give them money. Customer #3
You have channel partners. They give you leads, services, sales. You give them the same percent of a sale that you make. Customer #4
The individual or group with whom you exchange value is contemporary customer.

What is a customer?

a. Retaining customer loyalty has been a sales principle since the beginning of time.
b. To all to that, we have to look at the changing nature of the customer to understand CRM.
c. “Customer is King” has been the mantra since the 1940s, its content has changed fundamentally over the past decade.
d. Customer can be hence defined as ,
§ Your paying client
§ Your employee
§ Your supplier/vendor
§ Your partner
e. Now the historic customer has become your contemporary customer.
Historic Customer: the Individual or group that you paid for your goods and services.
Contemporary Customer: The individual or group with whom you exchange value.

FEATURES OF eCRM:

Meet the needs of your mobile customers.
Ensure timely delivery of messages.
Increase overall consistency of customer communications, improve program results and reduce errors.
Create highly targeted campaigns.
Monitor campaign activity in real-time.
Prompt replies to customer queries.
Improve customer service.
Improve customer relationships with personalized, relevant communications.
Efficiently manage customer interactions across multiple channels (Web, wireless, email).
React to customer behaviors, preferences or requests as they change over time.
One-to-one customization of outbound communications.
Communicate with customers through their preferred channel.
Increase response rates by distributing highly targeted messages.
Pre-defined message templates save you time by dynamically populating message content.
Provide relevant, one-to-one, personalized offers for individual customers.

CUSTOMER INTERACTION

Customer interaction is a critical component of CRM.
Increased customer interaction brings in some value to the CRM technology (without a human being)
It is the convenience and the ability of the customers to get something they need without having to rely on a busy human being rather a lazy human being.
The early interaction was document fax back.
Customer interaction now is more sophisticated, with both service information instantly available to the customer service representative and service without service representatives.

CUSTOMER LIFECYCLE

Customer lifecycle is defined as the process the customer has been undergoing to be with you for many years.
This includes the customer’s purchase history, perhaps how often one has taken advantage of special offers directed at ones customer class.
Customer lifecycle is the customer’s marketing value to you and how much revenue that marketing value could be worth indirectly.
With customer lifecycle and customer lifetime value (CLV). We can find out the expected revenue generated from a single customer over a lifetime of that customer’s relationship.
Customer lifecycle helps in determining the value of the customer to a particular company.

CRM Technology Components:

The CRM technology components are:
§ CRM engine
§ Front-office solutions
§ Enterprise Application Integrations (EAIs) for CRM.

§ CRM Engine
1) The CRM Engine is the customer data repository or the data mart or data warehouse where all data on the customer is captured and stored.
2) This includes basic stuff such as name, address, phone number and birth date.
3) This could also include more sophisticated information like the number of time you access a particular website and what you did on the pages you accessed.
4) CRM engine provides a single gathering point for all individual customer information so that a unified customer view can be created.
5) CRM engine provides personalization

§ FRONT-OFFICE SOLUTIONS:
The front-office solutions are applications that run on top of the customer data warehouse (CDW).
The applications could be SFA, EMA or service and support and customer interaction applications.
The hallmarks of these front-office solutions are
a. Analytics
b. Reports
c. Instant access to information
In the client server architecture (environment), they provide employees with the information on what to do next with a customer.
The more specific applications provide an element of self-service for the customer.

§ Enterprise Application Integrations (EAIs) for CRM.
These sit between the CRM back office and front office.
They also sit between the newly installed CRM system and the been-around-forever enterprise legacy systems.
They also allow CRM-to-CRM communications. “They” – are pieces of code and connectors and bridges that as a body are called EAIs, formerly known as middleware.
EAIs provide the messaging services and data mapping services that allows one system to communicate with other system.

CRM Technology

There are 3 types of CRM technologies – operational, analytical and collaborative
§ Operational CRM is the customer facing applications of CRM as SFA, EMA and front office suites.
§ The analytic segment included data marts or data warehouses that are used by applications that apply algorithms to dissect the data and present it in a form that is useful to the user.
§ The collaborative CRM reaches across customer touch points, all the different communication means that a customer might interact with, such as email, phone call, fax, website pages etc. it includes application such as PRM software.
OPERATIONAL CRM:
Operational CRM is the “ERP-like” segment of CRM.
Business Functions like customer service, order management, invoice/billing, sales are all part of operational CRM.
One fact of operational CRM is the possibility of integrating with the HR functions and financial functions of ERP applications. With this integration, end-to-end functionality from lead management to order tracking can be implemented.
ANALYTICAL CRM:
Analytical CRM is the capture, storage, extraction, processing, interpretation and reporting of customer data to a user.
Companies have developed applications that can capture the customer data from multiple sources and store it in a data warehouse and then use algorithms to interpret the data as needed.
The value of the application is not just in the algorithm and storage, but also in the ability to individually personalize the response using the data.
COLLABORATIVE CRM:
This is almost an overlay. It is the communication center, the coordination network, that provides paths to customer and his suppliers.
This could mean a portal, a partner relationship management application (PRM) or a customer interaction center (CIC).
This could be defined as any CRM function that provides a point of interaction between the customer and channel itself (web, email, voice applications, snail mail or any channel strategies)

Introduction to CRM

How do we define CRM?
CRM: Customer Relationship Management
1. CRM is a business strategy to select and manage customers to optimize long-term value
2. CRM requires a customer-centre business philosophy and culture to support effective marketing, sales and service processes.
3. CRM applications (SFA, customer service and support, marketing automation) can enable customer relationship management, provided that an enterprise has the right leadership, strategy and culture.
4. CRM technology provides a systematic way of managing customer relationships.
5. CRM is an enterprise transformation that places the customer at the center of all activities.