David Tan's List: CRM

• Where social networking techniques can help best, I think, is in bringing together virtual communities of interest, people who will share their ideas about products and especially about their needs and attitudes.
• test ideas with users and see how they react
• test and validate marketing ideas, Web site design and the like

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• subscription fees
• demoed new preconfigured vertical templates in the public sector and manufacturing industries, and announced new strategies to further engage its partners in penetrating the market.
• Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM will be operated and managed by Microsoft within its data centers.
• Microsoft also announced a new revenue-sharing model for its partners.
• partners will be compensated on a recurring basis instead of a one-time basis. Each year, they will receive 10 percent of the yearly subscription revenue for each of their customers. During 2008, the partners will receive 15 percent of the Software as a Service (SaaS) subscription revenue for that year.
• on-demand users are beginning to put price at the top of their buying criteria now that the Software as a Service model is moving to maturity

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• Incredible levels of feedback and marketing buzz from a trusted social network
• products are trusted because they are distributed to and tested by the natural leader within the social   network.
• A trusted network, established for reasons unrelated to the company, that is involved in collaborating   with the company on products that the company is selling to them, and that they as members of the social network are likely to use. The data captured through   this network’s feedback and the marketing buzz around the product are invaluable.

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• "Just placing a [sales force automation] application on a PDA does not necessarily add value.
• The whole point for the mobile user is to be more business process-oriented, so salespeople can do more than just pursue opportunities and leads," notes Kingstone. "They have to have access to orders -- access to inventory."
• they must be semi-connected and not browser-based,
• provide events and triggers so a salesperson doesn't have to enter a lot of data on a tiny keyboard.

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• Sixty-two percent [of respondents] said CRM was improving sales force management and manager communications; 47 percent said it was improving their forecasting abilities; [and] 45 percent said it was reducing the administrative burden on the sales force," he explained.

   

  It was interesting data, Dickie concluded, but it didn't address what respondents said were their key concerns or problems: improving revenues and sales effectiveness.

   

  "The other data points -- about reducing the administrative burden, for instance -- [are] nice, but ultimately all it means is that sales has more time to make average revenue producing sales calls," he said. "What they need is to make great revenue producing sales calls."

• • There is limited agreement within the organization as to who owns customer data and what accountability that ownership implies in terms of accuracy or quality.
   
  • No one with profit and loss responsibility is currently responsible for the achievement of specific success goals for the CRM initiative.
• recognize who you want to keep, and at what price.
• Cost and cycle time: The tools of CRM are designed to positively impact cost and cycle time, but the more important attribute of customer profitability is that it helps the organization identify areas of wasted effort (when the customer does not perceive value) versus areas that the customer may be willing to pay a premium for. The focus takes on a market orientation.
• Customer and trade partner programs and policies have little accountability relative to behavior, profitability, or retention.
• None of the customer-facing functions are oriented with customer profitability.
• No one in the organization owns the customer experience.
• The discussion needs to start with an understanding that CRM capabilities are designed to help the organization to understand and manage customer profitability.
• As has been just stated, CRM is a disruptive concept; this suggests organizational change which has significant risks for the leader who attempts it.
• From an organizational perspective, CRM is a disruptive concept, and it is expensive to deploy and support.
• • CRM is an operational strategy that commits the organization to a focus on customer profitability and life cycle value as a means for achieving long-term profitable growth and shareholder value.
   
  • As a technology component of this strategy, CRM provides a complementary set of tools that facilitate processes that touch the customer, such that the total customer experience is maximized in a manner that leverages profitability and lifetime value.
   
  • CRM technology provides a database which includes everything the organization knows about the customer relative to interactions, profiles, profit, and behavior. Access (analytical tools) to this database allows the organization to identify how to profitably serve the customer and anticipate future needs.

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• A CRM system is like an electronic Rolodex souped up so that every entry yields not only a phone number but your entire business history with that customer. The systems also can scan data to spot trends, enabling you to refine your sales, marketing, and customer service efforts

• At its core, social networking enables customers and vendors to interact better on multiple levels, and if companies use social networking's techniques, they might be able to capture thoughts, impressions, ideas, needs, biases, and a lot more from people and contribute greatly to CRM processes.
•  Today's CRM is based on the idea of using technology to improve internal business processes

• CRM packages cover all areas of business -- policies and processes, customer service and information management -- and are designed to help companies acquire and retain customers and provide improved levels of customer service.

   

  Fry concludes, "Ultimately, technology may assist in managing customer relationships, but you need the people with the right skills to initiate and nurture those relationships." 

• the China enterprise application solution market has the following characteristics:

   

   

  1.The enterprise application solution market continues to grow rapidly but the demands for specific software varies
• 2.Increasingly fierce competition in China’s SMB EA Solution Market
• As the SMB market matures, more and more vendors will focus on the development of industry-specific applications and strategic channel partners. Future application software solutions will further focus on industry applications.
• Both the ERM and SCM markets posted around 100% growth in 2005 over the previous year. Fast-growing SMBs became the target customers for major solution providers in 2005. However, the needs of SMBs are very different compared to medium and large enterprises in terms of products, solution delivery models, and service. SMBs need specialized industry-specific solutions rather than simplified or scaled-down high-end products. SMB users are generally more concerned about the flexibility and user-friendliness of the applications, as well as how fast they can implement business management through EA solutions.
• 3.Local EA Solution Vendors Continue to Emerge
• local vendors have distinct advantages in product localization and sales and channel networks. Moreover, they are more familiar with the local demands of specific users and market industries.
• the manufacturing sector will continue to drive the China EA solutions development in the future.
• ERM and SCM accounted for the majority of the EA solutions market. The share of CRM software accounted only for less than 10% of the whole market, which consist primarily of call center software and sales applications. Leading solutions providers have been aggressively targeting the SMB market through channel and partner expansion and customizing their products to meet the specific needs of the SMB. Partners who can value add have become the favorite for solution vendors.
• China Enterprise Application Solution (Incl. Software&Services) 2006-2010 Forecast
   

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• Of all the CRM subsector technologies, sales force automation is the most mature.
• the Software as a Service model has made it easier for companies to deploy new applications. "There is a lot more guidance built into the latest generation of systems, as well as context,"
• traditional client-server applications are definitely out of favor among enterprises that rely on sophisticated sales forecasting and pipeline management, she says. "These older tools are too inflexible and do not really result in increased sales effectiveness."
• new and upgraded applications offer new value to users through more-intuitive interfaces and, at the advanced end, integrated processes that cross functional business lines.

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• Analytics is going to be increasingly important. We need it so that we can see  more clearly. We can understand what has been done and what needs to be done and  when, and what is needed and where, and what is being wasted and where, and what  needs to be achieved. But we are not yet used to the scale of data."
• It is that power – to choose my world, my way – that is at the root of the  problem for CRM."
• "Online reputation is incredibly important but you cannot control your online  reputation because it is controlled by the "collective"
• The story of the financial crisis was not the collapse of the economy, the real  story was the collapse in trust.
• This is not about devices. This is about relationships. This is about the way  people communicate and talk – and they are talking about you and your products.  This has changed the balance of power."
• businesses must now get used to the fact that they are no longer in control –  the individual is.
• Individuals are in control. Individuals are making the choices. That means that  the push economy that we have built our businesses around – that we can push  products out to consumers – is now changing towards a pull. People go out and  decide what it is they want to buy, they then approach the suppliers and say are  you willing to supply it on my terms. That is a complete reversal. The idea of  customer relationship management that we grew up with has changed. It is no  longer about customer relationship management, it is much more about customer  managed relationships
• Relationships will no longer be company-controlled, but more company-guided –
• Rather than focusing entirely on employee empowerment we’ll be empowering the  customer –
• Metrics are changing – Rather than how many times you answered the phone, how  many orders you took, what were your gross margins, it will move to what was the  experience
• Corporate data and information will be more accessible - "
• The mode of ‘we tell you’ communications is changing to participation
• Customer insight is going to drive a lot of what we do
• Technologies must allow businesses to focus on personalising marketing, engage  customer communities and deliver insight into the hands of customer-facing  employees.
• In the short term, Maoz predicted that CRM business application investments  would focus on three areas – collaboration and social CRM; customer-enabling  self-service technologies; and analytics baked into applications for sales and  customer service. He also forecast that the dominant delivery model for these  applications would be software as a service rather than on-premise.

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• While software-as-a-service  remains a popular option for CRM projects, the delivery model will not become as  dominant as once thought, with large numbers of licences already just sitting  unused on shelves, according to Gartner.
• situation not helped by the fact that many of the bad practices existing in the  on-premise software world have simply been transferred into the cloud-based one.
• Shelfware-as-a-service is the concept of paying for a software subscription that  is not being accessed by the end user," said Cearley. "This most commonly occurs  in large organisations, but if could happen to any company, especially those  that have downsized their workforce, or one that has oversubscribed to trigger a  volume discount."
• the delivery model was "not a panacea", companies needed to evaluate and  understand the trade-offs generated.

• While SaaS could help to cut both infrastructure overheads and management  requirements as well as reduce short- to medium-term total cost of ownership,  third party application tools were limited and SaaS offerings could not be  accounted for as balance sheet assets.
• SaaS services required effective governance and policies
• customers should carefully evaluate vendors’ commitment to SaaS for their  specific application requirements. Such evaluations should be based on both  business performance and technical factors such as operations management  capabilities.
• organisations would also be well advised to develop a roadmap in order to  understand how prospective SaaS services could be integrated with existing and  future on premise applications and SaaS offerings.

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• he fact that you're organizing and tracking data for sales and marketing use doesn't help the customer -- it helps you. If you want to alter how customers see you, you'll have to turn that data around and use it to understand what customers want from their relationships with you.
• failure is the result errors in expectations and execution on the part of users and implementers
• CRM can't make up for a somnambulant sales team, a lackluster product lineup or a service organization that frustrates customers seeking service.
• f you think competitors are killing you with CRM, try to figure out how they're doing it.
• having that data is not going to change your employees' attitudes about customers
• rationalization of processes is something that must take place before CRM is implemented.
• Instead of fixing those processes, you'll only be automating broken processes. Instead of a solution, you'll only get a more expeditious route to the same failure you're already suffering from.
• You need processes to take what CRM gives you and turn it into customer-reaching actions -- and that can only be accomplished by your management, not by your technology

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