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"More than 1300 customers spanning over 50 industries worldwide are using Consona
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Source : Consona
Connecting your Executives to the CRM Effort: Becoming (and Remaining) a Data-driven Organization
Data-driven is also known as :
Data Driven,
Data-driven Programming,
Doing Data-driven,
Data-driven Decision,
Data Driven Gadget,
Community-driven Approach,
Database Driven,
Data-driven Decision Making,
Data-driven Apps,
Data Driven Discussions,
Data Driven Design,
Data Driven Websites,
Data Driven Web Pages,
Create Data-driven,
Data-driven Site,
Collecting Data,
Datadriven's Interface,
Online Data Drives,
Free Database Download,
Data-driven Services,
Building Data-driven Applications,
Data Driven Design Research,
Data Driven Attacks,
Data-driven Testing,
Data-driven Overlay,
Realize Data-driven,
Data Driven Culture,
Emerging Data-driven,
Data Drive Access,
Access & Share Data,
Drive Data Deals,
Best Value for Drive Data,
Data-driven Learning.
Introduction
It's absolutely undeniable: each and every organization with a truly incredible CRM implementation
has a fanatically data-driven management team at the helm. If your management team is lukewarm
on CRM, does that mean your CRM project is doomed to mediocrity?
The answer, thankfully, is no.
It is true that Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is more business
philosophy than software, more passion than project. When an organization
commits to implementing CRM, it commits to realigning its entire business around
the customer. It commits to becoming an organization that will collect the right
information and use it in the right way at the right time.
But it's not necessary for that commitment to exist in the beginning as the force
that drives the executive team from day one. More often times than not, executives
become data-driven over time as they are shown a hard, cold financial benefit that
cannot be denied or ignored.
Will you succeed in helping your executives become connected to the CRM effort?
The key to your success will be to approach the positioning of your proposed CRM
effort with the same dedication and intensity that you would apply toward starting
up a new line of business. You must set goals, show a return, and identify the value.
You must involve others, as active participation across departments and divisions of
your organization will be critical to achieving desired results. If you do this, you will
help your executives plug in to the CRM effort - go beyond simple sponsorship
and support to proactive connection with the project.
This paper was designed for you, the manager championing CRM in your
organization. It is designed to help you create the CRM buzz, so your entire
company can reap the benefits. Read on to find tips and worksheets that will
help you lead the charge, as well as bullet points to pass along to your
management team.
Creating a fanatically data-driven organization
C-level managers become fanatic about CRM when they see its power, but,
sometimes they need help to see the light. This section provides quotes from
the analysts that will educate your organization from the bottom right on up.
This section also includes a spreadsheet so you can translate the need for CRM
into the language management understands best: dollars and cents. Enter
your own numbers and see how the costs of waste, inefficiency and missed
opportunities add up.
What the analysts say
Keep these quotes from the analysts on hand as you work with your executive
team to build the data-driven organization.
"As industries mature and companies can no longer differentiate themselves
by attributes such as products or pricing, customer service becomes a critical
competitive advantage. Managers at all levels are coming to realize that service
and support interactions are often the only direct contact the company has with
the customer, and that the quality of those interactions therefore has a significant
impact on long-term business success."
- John Ragsdale, Research Director, Forrester Research
(as quoted by ASPnews.com)
"[With CRM, you are] using business intelligence, data mining, and advanced
visualization tools to make better decisions about what you offer a particular
client, how to target or segment new opportunities and understand what drives
new profitability."
- Rod Johnson, Analyst, AMR Research
(as quoted by ComputerWorld)
Put it in dollars: making real the cost of waste and lost opportunity
As the sponsor of your CRM initiative, you instinctively know that every new CRM
power-user generates a steady stream of mission-critical customer data that will
inevitably help your organization cut costs and increase profits. But the executives
around you might need some convincing before they believe. Executives are driven
by bottom-line numbers, so to help them truly connect with the CRM effort you'll
need to translate what you know into the language they speak. Showing them
tangible examples of cost savings, efficiency gains and lost opportunities is the
first step towards executive connection.
There are many ways to calculate the return on investment (ROI) for your CRM
implementation, and Onyx Software would be happy to help you develop a
detailed business-specific ROI for your organization. This paper aims not to develop a full ROI, but instead to assist you as you translate technical benefits
into hard data that executives will understand. To that end, we've developed
a spreadsheet to help you chart the savings and missed opportunities on a caseby-
case basis.
The spreadsheet is already populated with a call center example, but is easily
manipulated to calculate your own data. Key in your own problems, consequences
and estimates and see how the costs add up. Share the results with your executives
so they can see the connection.
Access the spreadsheet online at http://www.onyx.com/doc/OnyxShowValue.xls
Once they're convinced
Did the stats and spreadsheet work? Don't celebrate just yet. Verbal commitment
- and even a hefty financial commitment - doesn't cut it. We lay out nine steps
that move executives beyond just the verbal agreement as well as steps other
managers, supervisors and CRM sponsors can take to play a more active role in
CRM success.
Beyond lip service
It is easy to say that CRM thrives when executives sponsor and stand behind the
effort. Yet companies struggle with what that "management commitment" looks
like on a daily, weekly, and quarterly basis.
The good news is that it doesn't have to be hard. Management commitment and
connection to CRM is as simple as believing in the effort and communicating that
belief regularly.
The difference between paying lip service to the concept and 'walking the walk' is
both remarkable and particularly noticeable when looking at a company's bottom line.
Below are nine steps your management team must take to ensure CRM success.
Pass these tips along, and help your management team make them happen.
- Put it in writing. Senior management must have a written policy on CRM goals
and usage expectations. They must make certain this policy is absolutely crystal
clear and could be misunderstood by none. Review and, if necessary, revise this
policy quarterly.
- Put it in writing. Senior management must have a written policy on CRM goals
and usage expectations. They must make certain this policy is absolutely crystal
clear and could be misunderstood by none. Review and, if necessary, revise this
policy quarterly.
- Communicate informally. Each member of the management team should
schedule informal sessions with team members to discuss how CRM is affecting
work life and culture. They should seek feedback on the implementation without
allowing the discussion to get into the specifics of feature and function. The goal is
to consistently convey the importance of CRM and the affects on the organization
as a whole.
- Acknowledge and overcome. The management team should work with managers
and supervisors to determine any obstacles to commitment and implementation in
their specific areas and identify actions to overcome those obstacles.
- Educate. Management should always be prepared to help employees
understand why CRM is so critically important. Books and news articles about
others' CRM experiences are good; company-specific examples are even better.
- Be aware. Don't blame, but be vigilant in identifying areas where CRM
participation and utilization could be improved. Ask for employees' assistance
in improvement efforts.
- Welcome naysayers. No CRM project has ever gotten off the ground without
someone objecting to it. The management team must listen to the naysayers and
involve them in assignments that require active research, discussion with peers and
hands-on use of the CRM system. They may require additional training on specific
areas of the implementation that will be helpful in their specific role. Naysayers
need to see the personal value in the system. Once this happens, they will likely
become advocates.
- Plan for it. Make CRM part of both short- and long-term planning efforts,
including: budgetary requirements, ongoing system requirements, user requests,
user group meetings and opportunities to discuss best practices.
- Recognize success. Everyone needs praise - formal and informal - when they
do their job well and help create a data-driven organization, and it is most effective
when appropriate praise comes from the management team. Here are some
suggested ways of recognizing contributions:
- Organization-wide celebration of the individual or team
commitment to CRM success and/or achievement.
- Gift certificate for dinner for two
- Plaques
- Verbal recognition at a meeting
- Personal phone call, e-mail or handwritten note from the CEO
- Lunch with CEO or President
- Publicity in newsletter or on website
What can you do?
We've told you what the management team must do to truly sponsor the CRM
initiative by plugging into the effort. What can you, one of the primary sponsors, do?
- Develop a plan of CRM awareness activities for the next six to 12 months.
Include industry information such as posters, intranet articles, surveys, newsletter
articles, and updates during weekly team status meetings. Always make sure to
include updates on the CRM initiative in your normal internal communications.
- Conduct meetings with individual employees on a planned, scheduled basis to
improve the CRM commitment of your entire team. Listen to any concerns and
address them immediately.
- Make sure all employees know who the final customer of their work is and how
the CRM mindset has a positive impact on that final customer. Share examples
of extraordinary customer service given by utilizing the CRM system and pay
accolades to the employees that are going over and above.
- Invite other managers (senior management, managers of internal/external
customers, and suppliers) to speak to your department about the importance of
CRM in their department's efforts.
- Help managers and supervisors throughout the organization exhibit the behaviors
needed to create a positive culture that supports the CRM effort.
Tip-sheet: tips from the pros
- Fix your processes first. The only thing worse than a bad manual process is a
bad automated process. If your work processes are less-than-lucid, now is the time
to clean them up.
- Get - and stay - specific. What does your company hope to achieve with
CRM? Help your management team get its goals down and keep a tight focus.
- Take it across the board. If your back-end delivery process isn't tied to your
front-facing CRM processes, the customer could easily walk away with a lessthan-
stellar impression. CRM should not be an island in your organization. Its
benefit really kicks in when the software is used company-wide. Help make it the
dashboard from which all your sales, marketing and strategic decisions are piloted.
- Let 'WIFM' do the driving. Often, a small group of influencers serves as the
spark that ignites a CRM project. The spark will fizzle if that small group fails to
address the question on every potential CRM users' mind: "What's In It For Me?"
Include end-users in the development and definition of the project and empower
them to help define a system that will fully meet their needs.
Keeping it going
You've created a fanatically data-driven organization. You've rolled out the system
and are reaping the benefits. Beware: the urge to slip back into old, pre-CRM
ways of doing business is inevitable. Allowing the organization to cave in to those
urges is not.
How is becoming a data-driven company getting in shape? It's a true
accomplishment to reach your goal; however, the greater challenge could very
well lie in the struggle to maintain those results over time. Just as the commitment
to a healthy lifestyle can lapse, organizations can lapse in their commitment to
data-driven decisions.
- Encourage the executive team to follow the steps we have outlined.
- Follow-and encourage other managers at your level to follow-the steps
we have outlined for you.
Keeping the ball rolling and the good things happening is not rocket science-it
simply involves maintaining the connection and reconnecting. Just as people
who have reached their fitness goals say they recommit to a healthy lifestyle daily,
organizations must recommit daily to CRM success.
Onyx will be there to help you along the way.
Call Onyx today
Call us toll-free in the United States or Canada at 1-888-ASK-ONYX or
425-451-8060. Outside the U.S., contact an Onyx regional sales office:
Asia +65-6332-6880, Australia +61 (2) 9409-4300, Europe +44 (0) 1344-322-000,
Japan +81 (3) 5157-0700. For information online, visit www.onyx.com
Table of contents
- Introduction
- Creating a fanatically data-driven organization
- Once they're convinced
- Tip sheet: tips from the pros
- Keeping it going