When your done reading this, you might also find some additional information from a previous post called CRM Shopping? Simplify the Process.

Chapter 6: Shopping for CRM Systems

Shopping with a Purpose
Once your requirements list is complete, it’s time to go shopping. As mentioned earlier, don’t start shopping seriously until you have a fairly good idea of your requirements so you don’t waste time evaluating unsuitable vendors on the one hand and you don’t ignore potential good fits on the other.

It’s useful to organize the shopping process into four stages:

Creating a long list. There are hundreds of vendors that claim to be CRM vendors so it makes no sense to attempt to evaluate them all. The first step in the process is therefore to create a so-called long list of likely candidates by performing an abbreviated evaluation of vendors’ capabilities against the requirements list.

• Evaluating the candidates against the requirements. Through a structured process, you perform a more thorough evaluation of the candidates on the long list against the checklist, rating them as you go.

• Creating a short list. Using the results from the evaluations, you narrow down the list of vendors to the two or three best candidates. Creating the short list is usually fairly simple, as leaders emerge rather naturally.

• Negotiating the best deal. After the evaluation is complete, you need to check references and negotiate the best possible agreement.

This chapter covers creating the long list, evaluating candidates, and creating the short list. Checking references and negotiating the best deal will be covered in the next chapter.

To purchase this book on Amazon just click on this link “Just Enough CRM“.

This post was written by SearchCRM.com. The original article can be found here.

An anonymous author for SearchCRM put together this article and starts it off with this blurb

"For the first time in years, earth-shattering acquisitions weren’t the
biggest news in CRM this year, but the market for CRM technology
remained an active and tumultuous place in 2006. We break down the top
10 stories of the year."

The article then goes on to list the top 10 CRM stories of 2006. We’ll do this David Letterman style and start from number 10…

10. Security isn’t just for databases anymore –  CRM practitioners need to start thinking security as well. Research conducted this year found that the customer loyalty costs of data breaches can reach $140 per record. In addition, the HP pretexting scandal and several offshoring fiascos showed how vigilant companies have to be and have left call centers grappling with data security. Yet despite the headlines, marketers remain unprepared should their company fall victim.

9. CRM finds a friend in Google — Not one but two SaaS CRM vendors released tools to link their CRM system with Google’s adwords program. "Marketing nirvana," quipped one customer.

8. VoIP connects in the call center – The benefits of Voice over Internet Protocol became worthwhile for an increasing number of contact centers in 2006 as many, particularly smaller operations, decided to make the move to VoIP, though others remained cautious.

7. Mobile CRM gets a move on — For years, we’ve been hearing it: "This will be the year for Mobile CRM." In 2006, that prediction finally rang true , particularly in the midmarket and with SaaS vendors. Salesforce was so excited it bought a mobile CRM company. And one welding firm gave the trend some credibility with a successful mobile SAP implementation.

6. On-demand outgrows CRM – Software as a Service wasn’t just for CRM in 2006, and it was the CRM vendors leading the expansion with  on-demand customization, online communities and open source.

5. SAP gets SaaSy — Having held out for years, SAP emerged with CRM on-demand capabilities in 2006. Much to the chagrin of its competitors, SAP added a twist to the on-demand CRM market, following up its sales module with marketing and customer service modules, eventually marrying SAP CRM on-premise to on-demand and drawing some attention to "hybrid" as a new implementation fad.

4. The return of big CRM… — This year marked the start of a return to spending on enterprise CRM applications, so say prognostications from Forrester, AMR and analysts at the Gartner CRM Summit. Predictions have the CRM market reaching between $8.4 billion and $10.9 billion by 2010.

3…but only after the post mortem — In 2006, everyone had a theory for why, historically, CRM has failed, whether it was too much focus on technology, not enough process or a lack of patience. But at least this year they also offered up some reasons for success.

2. Microsoft follows through — It seems Microsoft makes this list every year. Because it does. Its CRM product showed real momentum in 2006, offering relief after Vista delays, and even made some headway in larger enterprises. Microsoft has big plans to integrate CRM with Office 2007, and Vista as well.

And the number one CRM story of 2006 (Paul, drum roll please….)

1. SAP vs. Oracle — Opposition – not acquisition – strategy was front of mind for Oracle in 2006, as it repeatedly wrangled with SAP over CRM market share. Along with massive marketing efforts, the two applications giants were fighting over vertical CRM and support.

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• Problems that appear to
  be tool problems may stem from other causes.
• Implementing
  a new tool requires significant amounts of time and money, and requires
  retraining customers and staff to use it.
• You don’t want to embark on such a
  project without having a clear requirement to do so.

What other areas could cause what appear to be tool issues? Very often, the root cause is poor processes rather than the tool itself. Processes that are inefficient, not customer-friendly, or plain confusing need to be fixed before any tool can be successful. It’s true that a tool implementation process will expose process issues, giving you an opportunity to fix them, but it’s really an expensive and roundabout way to address process issues. Fix the processes first, and then worry about the tool.

The second root cause, which is often difficult to isolate, lies with the specific implementation of the tool. In other words, you can have a tool that’s basically sound, but the particular implementation (customization) you are running with is poor. It’s not that hard to twist a good tool into a poor customized version thereof (although it’s not possible to contrive a good implementation of an ill-suited tool). Poor implementations cause poor day-to-day performance, and typically more headaches and problems when it’s time to upgrade to the next version, so they are a very big issue.

What follows are two different instruments to evaluate your current CRM tool and to untangle the root cause of issues you may encounter.

The first one (the five-minute test) is very quick and focuses on a handful of critical questions to determine how well your tool is performing and whether any shortcomings come from process or implementation weaknesses rather than the tool itself. It’s a good starting point, especially if you have already done some research in this area.

The second one (the detailed inventory) is much more thorough and explicit and is meant for 1) those hurried souls who went through the five-minute test and want to explore specific areas in more detail and 2) those of you who prefer an in-depth approach. The detailed inventory includes more questions and, for each question, explains why it’s important, how to go about evaluating that particular area, and how to identify root causes.

The chapter ends with a list of good and bad reasons to get a new CRM tool. This is the place to go if you are tempted to make a move although your current tool is working well just because you saw a cool demo or you want the latest technology. By the end of the chapter, you should have a good idea of whether you need a new CRM tool.

This post was written by SearchCRM.com. The original article can be found here.

It may seem obvious but too many companies are failing to
understand the complexity of the good customer service jigsaw in which
technology is just one–albeit important–piece.

"More than 70 percent of CEOs currently rank building customer relations as their most important task yet, they tell me they’re not doing CRM. They think CRM is a technology. CRM is not a new concept. The term may be a decade old but it goes back hundreds of years." according to Gartner analyst Scott Nelson

Companies, increasingly under pressure to grow, are now looking
to improve their CRM through a greater use of technology. But according
to Nelson many are approaching the task in the wrong way.

Speaking at the Gartner CRM Summit in London, he said:
"Companies I speak to ask me ‘what vendor should I buy?’. They want to
jump straight to the technology, but it’s impossible to answer that
question without knowing what other building blocks are in place."

Nelson said businesses must ensure a number of vital building blocks are present.

First must come a vision, said Nelson. Any company must know why
it wants to do CRM and what it is hoping to achieve. And this vision
must be underpinned by a strategy for making it become a reality.

Likewise a company must ensure it understands all its core
processes, what data it needs and what that data means. The quality and
the relevance of the data will be a more telling differentiator than
any amount of technology bought on a whim, according to Gartner.

A company must also put in place a clear framework for
organizational collaboration to ensure silos within the business are
broken down. As long as information and resources reside in silos the
company will always be hamstrung, said Nelson.

And finally, a company must understand what metrics it needs to
judge its success. Only with all these factors in mind should a
business consider what technology can best complement those other
building blocks, said Nelson.

Bryn Jones, director of business architecture at Virgin Mobile,
said his own company has scooped a number of customer service awards
because it has prioritized many of these building blocks over the
technology it uses.

Jones said: "Our core CRM is built around a seven-year-old system. That is not the thing which is making the difference."

He added there are far more fundamental things a company must
worry about before the bells and whistles of technology. "You cannot
provide great customer satisfaction if you’ve got a duff product," he
said. "Below the product, the processes you have in place must be
designed from the customer’s point of view."

This includes everything from simplifying the number of hoops
customers must jump through to ensuring the language used is
appropriate. The best Web site in the world and the best back-end CRM
could easily be undone by what Jones calls "corporate bollocks".

"If people understand what you’ve said, they shouldn’t have to call back," he added.

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Having a new rep stumble through an unfamiliar system is the last thing
a call center manager wants to see or hear. So, what can be done to
help newbie users master your CRM system?

Tip #1: Get Real

In some training sessions, service reps go through standard scenarios
involving slightly disgruntled customers, or listening to canned
responses. But Gartner analyst Michael Maoz thinks it’s time for
companies to get real.

"You see these very highly scripted scenarios, but what would
help more is for a rep to see a day in the life of a customer," he
says. For instance, a rep could go through a session where the customer
looks for information on the Web site, doesn’t find it, and then gets
frustrated trying to navigate the automated voice response system.

"By the time they get to the rep, the customer is irritated,
and now the rep knows why," says Maoz. "Understanding the customer will
help reps understand the system and what information needs to be
accessed."

More realistic scenarios have significantly cut the time that
it takes for an agent to learn and to do the job, and it streamlines
functionality, Maoz says.

Tip #2: Invest Upfront

Another way to help service reps is to hire the right reps in the first
place, Maoz adds, and to pay them well once they emerge from training.

Many companies are turning to reps who want to work from home
or in small call centers close to their homes. Often though, companies
pay remote reps lower wages than those in a centralized office.

Also, Maoz has found that the training investment for remote
reps and telecommuters is usually less than for others in the industry.

"Companies give lip service to the issue and say they want to
improve customer service, but budgets for training and salaries remain
static," Maoz notes. "If you hire the least expensive people you can
find, it’s like hiring the cheapest brain surgeon. Do you really want
to cut costs for something so important?"

Tip #3: Avoid Overload

One of the biggest difficulties in getting new reps trained
quickly is that CRM applications have a number of different
communication types that need to be learned, such as email, phone, and
instant messaging.

Rather than trying to get a rep to learn all of them, it’s better
to focus on one type and then build from there. For example, teaching a
new rep how to handle phone calls first can lead later to folding in
email and other communication platforms.

"If you try to throw too many communication types at them, an
agent ends up being average at all of them," says Mike Betzer, vice
president of service CRM at Oracle. "Let these guys digest the stuff as
they go."

Also, Betzer suggests doing away with any time restrictions on
phone calls. Not only does unlimited time make an agent more relaxed
and helpful, but a customer will leave the call feeling happy.

"Let the customer get off the phone and be thrilled," he says.
"It’s easier to retain a customer than a get a new one, so teach the
rep to solve their problem, not just handle the call."

Tip #4: Learn from Your Pros and Your Newbies

For companies that have only recently implemented CRM and have
to get all their service reps up to speed at the same time, the
training challenges can seem especially daunting.

One of the keys to streamlining training is to garner user
acceptance, says Tim Bolte, product manager for MySAP. That, he says,
can be done more effectively by emphasizing easy-to-use features and
tweaking the application as opposed to delivering hour after hour of
classroom or online education.

A user interface that is specifically designed for call center
agents is helpful, and Bolte notes that managers should observe how new
hires as well as established employees are using the program. Those
observations can be particularly helpful for identifying changes to
help optimize the system. If the application can be modified to better
meet user needs, rather than asking users to learn a new set of
behaviors, it can facilitate them using the system faster and more
efficiently.

Tip #5: As Always, Keep It Simple

Bolte points out that at many companies, service reps tend to
write down notes on pads of paper, jotting customer names or
information as they jump between screens. Those notes, which could
contain valuable data, are often thrown out at the end of the day
instead of being input to a CRM application. Rather than asking reps to
log in the info, however, it would be more efficient to simply include
a digital notepad in the software that automatically captures the
information.

"The big thing is to have a unified agent desktop that is geared
toward how the agents work," says Bolte. "For instance, you could have
a little electronic business card in the corner of the screen that has
a customer’s name so a rep doesn’t have to write it down when they
change screens. Little things like that can go a long way toward
helping a rep learn a system fast."

After the application has been tweaked, Bolte suggests that
processes should be examined again for minor changes that could help
service reps. "You should be able to explain why a process is designed
the way that it is," he says. "When you combine the rollout of design
with processes, it creates an integrative approach that’s very
valuable."

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If you believe Frank Gens, senior vice president of research at IDC, one of those changes is that Salesforce.com will be bought sometime this year, and not by a company you’d think would buy the software as a service (SaaS) darling, either.

He predicted Google or Yahoo would purchase the firm as a way of moving upstream into the enterprise market from their consumer roots. The notion flies in the face of Google’s own feelings on the subject.

“Our focus is and really ought to be applications that have a place in both the consumer world and the enterprise world–to take advantage of the big Google that everybody knows… If they don’t have consumer analogs, that makes them [applications] much less interesting,” David Girouard, president of Google’s business division told internetnews.com in December.

Charlene Li, principal analyst with Forrester Research, sits more on Google’s side of the issue, not believing Google would pursue a company like Salesforce.com. “They understand ad markets, not enterprise sales forces.”

A Salesforce.com spokesperson told internetnews.com the company does not comment on market speculation.

Gens made some other predictions on the SaaS world. He said that either this year or in early 2008, a sleeping giant will awaken. IBM up till now has been rather quiet when it comes to SaaS, but it won’t be for long.

IBM will shake up the SaaS space at full throttle with its WebSphere family. Microsoft and SAP will also turn things up a few notches with newer products aimed at the smaller markets.

SaaS has primarily been a large enterprise phenomenon, but IDC believes this is the year for small and medium-sized business (SMB) to come online. SMB makes up 70 percent of the economy and 50 percent of overall IT spending, or $350 billion in untapped potential.

Gens predicted SMB IT spending this year will increase twice the rate of large corporate spending, and in the process demand lower cost and simplicity of use.

This change in IT will be driven by the new generation of workers who are comfortable in a Web 2.0 world and who expect it at work. It was younger workers who brought instant messaging into the corporate space, Gens said, bringing a habit they had developed at home into work, and they will do it again.

“They have blurred the line between work and lifestyle and have a low tolerance for lag time between work and their lifestyle,” he said.

This echoed an earlier speech by Danielle Levitas, vice president of consumer and broadband markets for IDC.

“There is no longer a line between personal and professional life. They have forever blurred, for better or worse.”

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"Most small businesses I deal with have either tried and failed on a CRM
implementation or are getting marginal value from what they consider a
sunk cost in software and human brain-damage from their implementation."

Here are short summaries of the six reasons why CRM initiatives fail:

• Counting v. Creating Customers – The current crop of CRM systems are very useful for large companies
  with thousands of customers that want to "count" them in interesting
  ways. If you are like most small businesses, you probably only have
  tens or hundreds of customers — your main problem is finding new
  customers and efficiently growing existing customers, not counting
  customers in interesting ways.
• Measuring the Wrong Thing – CRM measures the activities of prospects after they have
  "self-selected" in some way by calling the your office or filling in
  your form somewhere.
• Stuctured v. Unstructured Data – CRM systems are essentially databases with customer oriented forms
  built on top. They are very good at capturing and organizing structured
  information, but are horrific at capturing and organizing unstructured
  information.
• Ease-of-Use – Most CRM vendors say their product is "easy-to-use." The reality is it
  is easy to use if you have dedicated "operations" people or a dedicated
  CRM IT person to figure out how to do the hard/useful stuff.
• "Feeding the Monster" – Like many knowledge management initiatives, CRM requires end-users to
  take actions that are not part of their natural work process in order
  to "update" the system. After all, CRM output is only as good as the
  input — "garbage in, garbage out."
• Transactional Systems v. Solution/Relationship Systems – Today’s CRM is more useful for transactional (i.e. call center) types
  of companies than it is for small businesses who have client
  relationships that are more solution oriented in nature.

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Author: Brian Halligan was inspired to start HubSpot
because his current toolset of helping small businesses take advantage of the transformative
effects of the internet to grow their business was poor.

You can download the free white paper here.

According to Matthew Crook, CEO at SalesCentric, there are 8 CRM myths that should be debunked before your quest for the CRM grail begins.

I’ve included a summary of each of his points below.

1. CRM is too difficult to use

This is the view of many employees. In fact, many people
don’t even know what CRM is so choose to ignore it causing adoption
rates to fall.

2. CRM will make me change the way I do things

Many employees don’t realize how CRM will help them increase
business leads. Make sure
you involve everyone in the process right from the start, particularly
those responsible for entering the data otherwise they will feel left
out of the loop.

3. CRM gives me too much confusing information

The majority of CRM systems are not flexible enough to change. In short, the one-size-fits-all approach fails to take
into account the needs of every individual business.

4. CRM is time-consuming

The most common complaint of CRM systems voiced by sales people
is that they are time-consuming. This can be overcome by using CRM
tools that do not require a sales person to input masses of information
in the first instance if they don’t have enough time at that point.

5. Using CRM frightens me

Companies share similar opinions surrounding CRM. Mainly
concerning employees who don’t want to share their client information.
Statistics will become readily available that make employees more
accountable for their roles.

6. CRM makes me share information I’d prefer to keep to myself

Sales people are well known for keeping valuable information
close to their chests. They are very competitive and don’t see how
sharing information with their colleagues will benefit them. What they
fail to see is the big picture and how by sharing information and
business processes they could in turn be helping their colleagues reach
their sales targets and increase revenues (and therefore individual
bonuses) for the entire business.

7. CRM will solve my business strategy problems

Companies are spending money on CRM software without considering
their business strategy or processes and should remember that CRM isn’t
just about the software.

8. CRM was implemented without my knowledge

How often do you hear a sales manager complain that they haven’t
been consulted in the buying process of a CRM system? If sales managers do not use the
system then neither will sales executives. Without full support from
all users the CRM system will not be used to its full potential and the
business will not see any return on the investment.

Summary

Overall I think his article brings up some great points. I’ve heard many people discuss similar problems and can’t quite figure out how to overcome them. After reading this article, you should have a much better idea of how to tackle your CRM fears and obtain the CRM holy grail!

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