The CRM roadmap has four key milestones:
- Analysis of the current state of customer interactions
- Predicting the future course of customer interactions
- Developing the plan of action to meet the predicted future course
- Building and presenting the business case to secure CRM project funding
Questions about current customer relations which need to be examined, include:
- Does the organization track and manage each customer as a single entity?
- Or do individual sales offices maintain their own set of customer records?
CRM Plan of Action
One of the first elements of a CRM Plan of Action is to establish priorities of functionality, by preparing two feature check-lists. List 1 will consist of the essential and mandatory functionality required. List 2 will be the optional functionality which may be incorporated, budgets and time permitting. These two lists will be important elements for the business case, and should be incorporated into the presentation to management for approvals of project budgets.
If approval for both lists of features is obtained, the CRM development process may be broken into two projects. This approach to the planning stage -- adding functionality in a modular approach -- coincides with a modular approach adopted by many CRM hardware and software vendors. This approach will also assist in developing the CRM plan of action and in the subsequent design and deployment of the CRM solution.
The following organizational elements must be included in the CRM plan of action:
- Employees of the corporation
- IT department
- A selection of other resources/departments
Participation will ultimately be required from all corporate departments: user community, executive sponsors and other involved corporate elements. This participation may involve providing design inputs, taking part in pilot tests of the system, or helping to train others to use the system during system rollout.
Links to Business Benefits
The plan of action will include target timeframes and expected project milestones as reporting dates to meet management expectations. The plan should mesh with the business case so that requests for resources -- people, time and money – are linked to forecast or anticipated business benefits.
The business case should describe a business rationale for investing in CRM, including information about competitors, as well as the expected qualitative and quantitative benefits, such as return on investment (ROI). While ROI is a significant benefit of CRM over the long term, financial or quantitative benefits do not represent the complete picture. Among the benefits of a well-executed CRM strategy, some measurable, some intangible, are the following:
- More sales per customer
- Lower cost of sales
- More referral sales
- Higher profitability.
Selecting Technology Solutions
While many enterprises believe that a large-scale enterprise CRM technology deployment is the only solution to their problems, it has been shown that the right technology enablers are those that solve the organization’s business problems as identified during the business evaluation stage, such as:
- Deploying or enhancing data warehouse or data mart information to collect and analyze customer and market data
- Web-enabling the contact center
- Improving call center telephony infrastructure
- Improving customer relationships through customer-facing e-business.
There are dangers inherent in a false reliance on technology alone to produce a CRM strategy. Some CRM projects failed to deliver projected results because companies seized on technology as an immediate solution to enhanced customer relations, rather than modifying their corporate culture under the canopy of CRM.
Technology is a significant element in the CRM mix, however, selecting the best enabling technologies for CRM solutions must be based on solid business practices and readiness to implement. Goals and metrics must be established to measure technology tools, which will require appropriate decisions to be made on vendor products from several areas of technology.
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