Making the Complex Simpler

Your business needs can be complex, but simplifying with a good customer relationship management (CRM) can help to alleviate the challenges of trying to manage them. The value of simplifying with CRM can be realized when as part of your CRM strategy, your focus is also on simplification when it comes to design, the way it’s used, the ways it’s customized and enhanced for project management, how it generates reporting and invoicing, and at the end of day how it helps your business add value to your customers.

Success with CRM should be easy and simple with the user experience at the forefront because CRM success hinges on user adoption. Without user adoption, CRM is obsolete because it is through adoption that users gather the data that makes CRM valuable first to the users and then to your customers. If a member of your sales team find that there is excessive data in the system that makes finding important information difficult, they may abandon using it all together for a much easier option— particularly if they are already accustomed and comfortable with that other option.

Choosing the right customer relationship management (CRM) system can be overwhelming and time consuming. Questions must be answered about the needs of your business as well as the CRM features and functions needed to fulfill them. But as important as it is to answer these questions, an equally important question to answer is are you choosing a CRM partner that has genuine concern for your business.     

Will they be involved and accessible at every stage of your CRM experience? Will they provide users the proper CRM training? Will they offer ongoing CRM support after implementation? 

Having a partner that can answer ‘yes’ to each of these questions not only guarantees a successful CRM experience, but it ensures that you can both meet your business needs and improve customer relationship engagement. 

Let’s dig a little deeper.

"Equally Different" is a term that is helpful to describe the capabilities and benefits of a business solution to attract, keep and develop profitable customers. A long-term business system that is created with Infor CRM and its business partners for a business like yours.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is quoted as saying, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."  Imagine how beneficial that is for a person. Such a person can get a quicker, more complete picture of the situation. This capability allows the person to consider the advantages and disadvantages of one idea and then quickly move in their mind to the other, without bias holding back progress.  This human capability of holding opposing thoughts also allows the expansion of possibilities from divergent thinking followed by a clearer ability to come up with the converged thinking to that better final answer.  Wow - that is highly valuable in any business! 

So how can something be equal but also different?

This concept can be related to parents with multiple children.  In my case, my wife Carlie and I are proud parents of two daughters that we adore and love equally.  We are proud of each equally for the way they have turned into responsible and caring parents themselves.  Our daughters are also very different in their personalities, in their motivations and how they interacted with others.  Each has different strengths they use daily for making decisions and managing their personal and professional lives.

Many of our Sales Managers and VPs of Sales tell us that they struggle to figure out what their sales people are focusing on. It is not easy to predict future revenue when you don’t have a complete understanding of the challenges in each of your sales opportunities.

With a well-designed CRM System, you can support your sales staff, while gaining greater visibility into sales activities, current opportunities, and at-risk opportunities. A good CRM system will:

Speed up your sales cycle

        Provide insight into sales efforts

        Results-based sales tools

        Offer shared access 24 x 7 x 365

When I'm collaborating with entrepreneurs and executive management, we'll get to discuss the business benefits that matter most to them when deciding upon and then implementing a Customer Relationship and Management system.  The following are 7 key benefits that will be discussed.

1.  Build loyal relationships by maximizing the effectiveness of every person's interaction.

We all know that successful business revolves around the depth and breadth of the relationships we have with prospects, customers, clients, partners, vendors, employees, etc.  CRM provides the one trusted source where your company's domain knowledge about people and companies resides.  Consider the added advantages of knowing more about these types of people relationships and turn that into actionable information.

Understand more about the 60% importance of People in a well-used CRM system.

Outgrown Act and need an effective data migration to a more complete CRM?

So you have come to a conclusion that your trusted and true ACT contact management system has done all it can do to help your business to continue to grow.  You have taken this easy to modify system very far with customizations and performed work arounds to make it work the way your business operates.  But the limitations are now forcing an upgrade to a fully capable CRM system that is a very adaptable system, such as Infor CRM (formally Saleslogix).

A major concern is how to safely and conveniently migrate your core ACT and customized ACT tables of contacts, companies, opportunities, activities, history, notes, emails, attachments and products to Infor CRM. You realized that there will be the need for additional matching and data manipulations beyond a standard mapping from ACT tables to Infor CRM tables.  Also during this process some data garbage needs to be removed and data transformation must occur. Additionally you'll want to adjust the ACT source data to better uses in Infor CRM, taking advantage of what the new system offers.

It is critical that during the CRM deployment and training process, you carefully engineer the Ah-Ha moments for your user community.

These moments will crystalize the intent and purpose of why the CRM implementation is happening. The key is making the CRM system about the user experience and not about the results of use. All too often CRM deployments are perceived as “Big Brother” monitoring me. While reporting is a capability CRM provides, the project team has to proliferate the message that, CRM is intended to, first and foremost, to give the user Better and More data, to enable outstanding service while interacting with the customer, which builds loyalty.   Secondly, the CRM deployment should focus on simplifying workflow through a reduction of the toolsets required to perform in each role.

Focus on the NEW!

In planning for a well-used CRM system consider the best ways to educate both the new and experienced CRM users.  Get personal and specific- How can it help make life easier?

(Our thanks to Jeff Hanrahan, Infor CRM product manager, assoc., for his input.)

Educating Users

"Education around CRM is a huge thing, especially for people who are using a CRM system for the first time," Hanrahan says. "No one will ever learn CRM overnight — it's a super complex tool that takes years to master and to appreciate what it's capable of. But understanding it so that you know how to function in your role — that's how people should attack it first."

Having an optimal CRM system in place — one that addresses your business needs, serves your customers well and pleases your employees — is a high-stakes proposition.  The right solution and partner can bring it all together.

In planning for a well-used CRM system consider the various involvement with your CRM users. 

(Our thanks to Jeff Hanrahan, Infor CRM product manager, assoc., for his input.)

Capturing User Feedback 

Once a user group is in place, your CRM partner will get his hands dirty. That involves spending some time with members to see how they use the system and how it can be tailored to their needs. The partner can offer insights from a different perspective along with best practices that can be applied. Knowing the CRM system's capabilities will provide the pilot members with better ways of doing things that have occurred in the past.

As a CRM Solutions Consultant for Infor CRM, every day I strap on my headset and grab my mouse and set forth and answer the question "why should I buy CRM?"  It is always helpful to abide by The 10 Commandments of CRM, so let’s explore what they are from my perspective: