THE SITUATION...

“How will Praveen achieve customer satisfaction?”

The motto of every business is to derive customer satisfaction and that is not easily achievable. Most business heads are prone to fret over the issue of attaining maximum customer satisfaction from the products or services that they bring to the market.

The desire to meet optimum customer satisfaction has a cascading effect on the IT department and in particular on the senior personnel. There is the mandate to deploy suitable solutions, which ensure accurate tracking of services and compliance with high standards. Praveen Sinha, a senior IT manager of a large garment manufacturing company faces a dilemma.

Despite the best supply chain system, dealer management systems, ERP system, immense customisation to tools and solutions, having customer-focused vision, the management is not really convinced about the mechanism to drive customer satisfaction. After much deliberation with the colleagues and peer group, Praveen thought about initiating certain CRM strategies, which might answer his concerns. While there are no budget constraints, Praveen’s dilemma is to convince the management about the investments around CRM, based on the theory of increasing customer retention, if the organisation was ready to pay for such intangible benefits that CRM brings in.

The other concerns that Praveen has are related to the aspect of the ease with which it is possible to calculate RoI. Always been used to addressing the response time, real time information, cost savings, immediate access to order status and consignment status, Praveen finds it slightly strange to gauge customer satisfaction using technology.

There are several queries in his mind with regard to technical support, and if the cost of the system will be passed onto customers. Praveen is splitting his hair over what kind of solutions could be used in the CRM space, which will give better analytics and dashboards. The solutions should also integrate with social media on the internet and create new ways of interaction with customers.

The Big Questions

Do you think CRM is the solution for Praveen in the current scenario and waht are the functionalities that he needs to look at? Whether it should be cloud mode, straight licensing or outsourced model, etc?

What kind of investments would Praveen need to budget for and how does he need to work out the RoI? Please also elaborate on the business benefits that CRM would bring in?

‘CRM SHOULD MEET BUSINESS GOALS'

By Basant Chaturvedi, Head IT, Perfetti Van Melle India

About me: Consummate tech professional with expertise on SAP platform. In the past have been associated with Basell India and Seagram India

Do you think CRM is the solution for Praveen in the current scenario and waht are the functionalities that he needs to look at? Whether it should be cloud mode, straight licensing or outsourced model, etc?

CRM can be of help. However, Praveen first needs to decide upon the objective behind deploying CRM. He needs to work out a CRM solution, which can cater to his business problems. The basic functionalities, which Praveen should look for in any CRM are:
1. Provide sales history, sales trends and market trends
2. Sales achievements & performances of the existing customers
3. Understand customer history
4. Provide product literature, training literature, etc to the sales team
5. Log & Track customer complaints and feedbacks
6. Potential customer details and conversion ratio
7. Help sales team to plan their tour route, customer visit schedule and their complete documentation.

Depending upon the requirement Praveen should select the model. Cloud or straight licensing or outsourcing - either of them can be good to begin with. He can go for a pilot with 4 – 5 sales team members in order to test the product deliverables and to find out whether the business objectives are met. If they fulfil the company’s requirement, then he can move further with full implementation.

What kind of investments would Praveen need to budget for and how does he need to work out the RoI? Please also elaborate on the business benefits that CRM would bring in?

According to me, investment should not be the only criteria while selecting any CRM solution. A solution should be judged on its deliverables meeting the business objectives and values.

Based on the above pilot, that will not cost much; Praveen can work out the real benefits along with the sales team, which were listed during the initiation of the project. If the objectives are met and if they bring ease for the sales team, improve their productivity, I think it will create its own demand.

If the pilot is not successful, then the exercise has to be repeated. I know this will take long time, but the outcome will be very useful and everlasting.As a system implementer, we should not consider much on which kind of model we should go for i.e. cloud, straight licensing, outsourcing, etc., as our major focus should be on the creating a solution or products that delivers value. The model should be selected based on the ease of maintenance and use.

CRM should ultimately result in:
1.Bringing Speed to the business
2.Documentation part should be taken care of by CRM
3.Information sharing and its faster retrieval, on an anytime - anywhere basis
4.Information should be with the system, so that it can be accessed, even if the concerned individual is not around.
5. CRM must help in maintaining communication with the existing customers.

'CARRYING OUT A POC IS CRITICAL'

By Sebastian Joseph, President-Technology & FM, Mudra Communications

About Me: He considers himself to be an open source evangelist. He has been in the IT industry for more than 30 years.

Do you think CRM is the solution for Praveen in the current scenario and waht are the functionalities that he needs to look at? Whether it should be cloud mode, straight licensing or outsourced model, etc?

Before jumping into deployment conclusions I recommend that Praveen carry out a detailed need analysis. What are the current pain areas? How is he expecting the system to address and resolve these pain areas? This exercise must be carried out with the need of end-users (marketing, sales, manufacturing, etc.), who would be the beneficiaries, in mind. Praveen should only be a facilitator. This would provide a basic understanding of the requirements.

Once the requirements are in place, Praveen can start looking at various offering available in the market. He can consider the various open source options that might be available. Having short listed solutions, it is advisable to carry out a Proof of Concept (POC) to ensure that the functionalities are fully met, so that we don’t have to discover new surprises during deployment.

Open source, cloud, licensed or in-house developed model will solely depend on the functionality, short listed options and success of the POC.

What kind of investments would Praveen need to budget for and how does he need to work out the RoI? Please also elaborate on the business benefits that CRM would bring in?

The requirement analysis output will automatically provide the ROI base. Capture the user pain areas in one column. Against each of these pain areas, ask the user to explain the business impact. Probe in detail till you are able to convert these into monetary terms. At the end of this exercise you will arrive at the total “notional” value. Compare this with the total project cost. Since this is a green field project Praveen could look at a cloud option. Apart from providing greater flexibility it could help Praveen to get the project initiated at a very low entry cost without any Capex.

One can write volumes on the theoretical business benefits. Praveen should concentrate on the Requirement Analysis and ROI table. Praveen should first address the existing pain areas. Once these are resolved he could then repeat this exercise to address new pain areas and resolve them. He should keep in mind that IT needs to be aligned to business and not vice-versa. The sole objective of IT is to strengthen the business.