A practical guide to organisational design and technology infrastructure for CRM/CIM - Strategic Thinking

3 Strategic Thinking

CRM is primarily a strategic and tactical approach for managing events between an organisation and its clients.

Just like a military activity, CRM expects the organisation to structure and organise its activities through campaigns (strategies) and media (tactics) via jobs (tasks) and techniques (processes). Whether directing contact with clients (outbound targeting) or receiving requests from clients (inbound requests), CRM activities should contain functional processes to automate and facilitate the entire contact event.

To assess the effectiveness of various decisions regarding approach, methods and timing for any business activity, the CRM solution should maintain various functional (operational) histories. These include contact history, whether by telephone, mail, facsimile, email or personal appointment, as well as response history for buying patterns of recency, frequency and value. Analysis reports should be provided and as with the entire system, the user must have the choice to modify or create their own reports.

A major problem with most software solutions is that they rarely provide anything more than bland single or two dimensional sets of facts. If one is lucky, they may even provide this information over a pre-structured time interval for period reporting. You look for the opportunity to analyse by time many multi-dimensional relationships. This type of facility is more commonly known as data analysis. It is a powerful means of statistically analysing the relationships behind results. For example, one may want to know the common denominators behind clients who have purchased goods of a value greater than a certain amount. This may give insights into the nature of your most valuable clients. You can then appeal to clones of these clients from amongst your prospects, via the most appropriate medium, at a more efficient acquisition cost, for a better or more consistent return on investment. This is the heart of strategic CRM.

Ultimately any organisation seeks to provide satisfaction to their clients. Whether this is in the form of goods or services, from distribution to consulting. The delivery mechanisms, the processes, the people and information procedures should all be organised into disciplined capabilities for facilitation and completion of client requests.

Management requires knowledge about whether or not the organisation is meeting their client satisfaction targets. For example:

Are we turning around loan application requests on time?

Are we meeting sales forecast targets?

Are we generating enough leads?

Are we getting the best response?

Are we achieving expected levels of service?

Are we taking too long to process claims?

Do we provide the facilities that our clients want?

Is John Smiths productivity above average?

Are we operating this job at the best time of day?

Good CRM software provides management with performance statistics in the areas where duration, productivity, activities, returns on effort and processes are measured. This enables proper value assessments to be undertaken, whether about an individual, a client, a strategy, a tactic, a technique, a location, a group, a product or service, or indeed many other relevant views of performance.

In its full, CRM may be used for the following purposes within an organisation:

Lead generation

Appointments

Seminars and Presentations

Field sales management and reporting

Marketing development and analysis

Computer Aided Telephone Interviews

Process Automation (automating work procedures)

Quotations and Responses

Surveys

Client Service Centres

Publishing Subscriptions and Order Processing

4. Possibilities

Depending upon how you currently run your business or organisation, different things will be of importance to you. So, to guide you through the possibilities of CRM let us look at the basic business uses so that you may appreciate the possibilities.

The most important thing to realise is that for CRM to be of great benefit, the quality, consistency and content of the information stored must not be compromised. A well-maintained database of information will be of tremendous benefit when applied to the business in appropriate ways.

This guide will not teach you how to become marketers, managers or researchers. It assumes that you already have an understanding of the necessary principles and your needs are about facilitating these areas more effectively and consistently. You will learn about the supporting techniques, issues and methodologies for each of the possible CRM modules in this guide.

Due to the number of ways in which CRM can be applied, this guide will only cover the specifics of each possible module and how to go about taking advantage of the features. The procedures and staffing requirements may vary, depending upon how the application is to be used.

5. Change Management

The basic business functions that CRM supports are:

Strategic planning and tactical approaches

Implementation of procedures

Decision rules and processes

Reporting and feedback

Integration of data and creation of knowledge

Because CRM should be developed with a marketing bias, it is assumed that marketing is driving the conceptual approach and strategy of the organisation. Strategy, including the underlying tactics, could be developed by the sole proprietor, the board of directors, middle management or other persons.

CRM simply requires that the organisation structures its strategies as a series of campaigns using various tactical media with activities for specific jobs (tasks). These may be in the form of one-off efforts, or be a consequence of normal daily routines. Because organisations experience change and are constantly adjusting and moving with the environment, CRM expects that campaigns, media and jobs will reflect the strategic decisions of the organisation. As such comparisons between various efforts (ideas) can be made. This enables strategy to be accountable, not just outright performance.

All campaigns and media must have a finite life cycle. This will represent the dynamic quality of change in the organisation.

To take the full potential of the knowledge making capability of CRM, the organisation should use CRM as a conduit wherever client contact, or requests are being performed. This will enable the acquisition of productivity statistics, data relating to relationships, performance and other important marketing details. For example, it may be essential to keep a track of all client contact, whether by telephone, facsimile, email, or web. It may also be essential to keep a track of all responses, whether orders, surveys, etc.

Whatever the need, you will have to assess the various transactions that your organisation processes and determine what information and or details that CRM should keep successful control and effectiveness. You should be selective and accurate. Decide what information is necessary and which is not. Work out the most efficient ways to handle the required work and develop procedures to accomplish the tasks.

Another key element to the success of CRM is management commitment. Management must understand the potential change and discipline that will be wrought upon the organisation. CRM makes strategies and tactics accountable and therefore can make change politically and socially difficult. Management must lead the change and adopt a positive and active involvement with strategy development.

6. Business Process Re-engineering

A term that has become synonymous with the change that CRM will inevitably cause, is Business Process Re-engineering. Although CRM software is not a tool for re-designing an organisation's processes, it should be structured in such a way that it can be used to implement the changes as the foundation for new processes. This can be called Business Process Automation. This is usually undertaken to improve quality of service, reduce the cost of processing, or increase the efficiency of processing of specific tasks. CRM software should contain core capabilities for the implementation of contact strategies for sales and marketing. Other capabilities or additional modules for specific functions should be assed with the whole business requirement, to ensure a synergy for client satisfaction and efficiency.

CRM can be viewed as a means of policy automation. Automating the organisation's procedures invariably means development of logic flows and integration of external procedures. CRM invariably requires expert systems knowledge. This is also known as domain expertise and is vital when analysing and reshaping business processes. It will allow you to develop multiple choice and complex decision criteria with the ability to process non-CRM and CRM requests.

7. Knowledge Based

The fuel to decision making is knowledge.

Knowledge has to be at the right place, at the right time, in the right format, for the right person for the right reason. A good CRM solution should give you the facilities to alter the procedures and strategies, as well as to change the environment, so those positive reactions to the market can be made swiftly, assuredly and automatically.

CRM solutions should contain powerful statistical reporting facilities that enable the user to define clearly the relationships that need to be monitored and reported. These include multi-dimensional tabulations and correlation's, as well as conditional logic profiling and segmentation. The outputs from these tools, whether during transactions, or used separately, can give management very detailed knowledge that otherwise would require the services of an experienced research consultant.