Customer Relationship Management

Join us as we discuss the evolution of the cloud and try to understand how the clouds might transcend horizons and come offshore.

Have you ever watched a video online or shared snaps of your loved ones by using one of the many photo hosting services on the web? Do you read news online or watch your favourite Television shows on the internet?

If your answer to any of the above is ‘YES’, then you are more or less a part of the cloud fraternity. The term ‘Cloud Computing’ has gained immense popularity in the recent times and is being touted as the way forward in IT services. So what is Cloud Computing? All the service examples given above suggest that any service we subscribe to over the internet is part of Cloud Computing. In a more refined way, Cloud Computing encompasses any subscription based or pay per use service, that we avail real time over the internet. But wait, Cloud computing is not only this but much more. 

In fact the term “Cloud” is derived from the way we represent internet in network diagrams in the form of cloud. While service or computation over a network has been present for ages, formal cloud service offering have come to the fore only in the last decade or so. There were many free services offered in the internet like storage in a limited way. Many niche players ‘mushroomed’, offering photo storage and sharing or media storage, and then there were bulk storage service providers who charged for their service. News sites and online journals had subscription based services. The term cloud computing was rarely used for such services. While all these can be considered as service over the network, these were mostly targeted at individuals or small businesses. The real push towards commercial use of cloud computing took advent after the dot com bubble burst, but even then most of the commercial software services provided over the network were referred to as Software as a Service. Marc Benioff launched Salesforce.com in 1999-2000. Today, it has emerged as a front-runner in the SaaS space. 

Cloud computing really took off in the past couple of years, thanks to the trend where not just software, but IT services were offered over the internet by providers. Amazon attained such efficiency by revamping its data center, which it is now offering as a utility computing service to its clients. Small businesses and start ups that cannot afford to buy huge storage spaces or maintain them make use of this Simple Storage Service offered by Amazon. Many providers have entered the market with many such Cloud offerings.

What Cloud computing offers is all the functionality required to run an IT organization, but without having to face the overhead of running the IT infrastructure in-house. This is what is drawing enterprises towards cloud computing. Consider this, an enterprise can be using cutting-edge technologies but there is no need to buy any infrastructure upfront, no need to license software, no upgrades are required for either the software or the hardware and no training needs. The provider manages the service and the user, be it individuals, small, medium or large businesses, pays based on how much computing is used.

Cloud computing is truly the top buzz word for the current year. A huge number of seminars, webinars and forums have been planned for the rest of the year and one hears of a new offering being launched almost on a daily basis. Needless to say, there are many players investing huge amount in cloud computing research. The cloud is becoming real with giants in the IT software, hardware and services space moving in to capture a piece of the pie. IBM,Microsoft,Dell

My friend Pradeep and I have developed an avid interest for the ‘cloud’. We have been tracking this topic for some time now and have seen it mushroom into a formidable IT paradigm. We feel it will not be long before the cloud transcends horizons and moves offshore. How would the cloud computing space evolve? What role would the Indian IT majors and India based captive units of global IT services giants play? How long would it take for the cloud to become a mainstream paradigm in the CRM world?

We hope to provide answers to these questions through this blog. Another objective is to try and provide a ‘primer’ on the topic in terms of its definition, evolution, market trends, characteristics, problem areas that will need to be addressed, enterprise adoption of the cloud etc. so as to benefit the larger community.

Join us as we discuss the evolution of the cloud and try to understand how the clouds might transcend horizons and come offshore.

Posted by Haresh Parmar at 06:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Around twenty billion has been earmarked for digitization of medical records by the US government. One of the primary drivers for the increased emphasis on the IT adoption is to reduce Medicare costs. Enabling IT would improve productivity of the Health delivery service organizations.  

 

Health Organizations have always concentrated on physicians their sole customers. Bringing Patients into ambit of "customer" would provide a comprehensive view to these delivery organizations. The new "customer" definition will improve efficiency and effectiveness of the service especially around customer / patient enquiries, patient interaction management, 360 degree view of the patient et al. Most of the initiatives around a comprehensive patient management are still in its infancy. Data definition management around the "customer" is the first step for Health delivery organizations to build an optimal, efficient and a cost effective process.

Posted by Ranjit Jagirdar at 06:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

CRM, the term is old enough as an application area. Across the broader market, lots of vendors are moving towards verticalization including Oracle and SAP. Businesses are relying more heavily on vertical solutions to address the demands of current economic climates and to take advantage of the next iterations of the technology.  

It is well known that companies within the same vertical will have some unique requirements. So even a vertical application will require some tailoring. Implementing an appropriate vertical application in a given industry provides many benefits to a horizontal solution. It (Vertical application) enables ease of implementation and lowers cost of implementation. Recently I have read through a white paper 'Oracle Vertical CRM Applications: Realizing Business Benefit Through Industry Best Practices' by Mary Wardley published in Oracle website.

The author has explained the two strategies for addressing the demands of vertical business requirements:

1. Purchase a horizontal solution and customize it to their requirements - In this case the customer is purchasing a product for which the supplier's stated strategy is to maintain one code base and iteratively expand its functionality over time. To address specific vertical industry customers, these vendors will customize the software each time.

2. Purchase a vertical solution and tune it to their requirements - In this case, the customer is purchasing a product for which the vendor has committed to supporting specific vertical solutions for each market segment. The horizontal application is often the base code, and this code is iteratively upgraded into specific vertical-focused products.

At high level I am under the impression that vertical CRM applications are easy to implement and upgrade instead of buying a horizontal CRM application (licenses). 

What about your ideas on the above mentioned two approaches? Would like to know if there is any other approach?

Posted by Raja Sekhar Ravi at 06:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This seemingly naïve question has been troubling me after yet another recent, not-so-pleasant air trip. I continue to think of ‘customer experience’ every time I fly (and can possibly write a book every time I travel a never-ending international segment!). I don’t know when this association between airlines and customer experience started for me personally; maybe because this is one industry that has never made me say ‘wow’. Maybe I wasn’t a part of the miracle on the Hudson!

 

According to ACSI, a research group based in University of Michigan that measures satisfaction quarterly, the airline industry is one of the lowest scoring industries in Q3 2008. (Others include cable/satellite and newspaper industries).

 

There are many expert opinions on what customer experience means to the airline industry (or any other industry, for that matter). It is a prevalent belief that ‘commoditizing’ industries, like airlines, cannot create a unique and lasting customer experience. Another industry myth that floats around is that customer ‘satisfaction’ and ‘loyalty’ automatically lead to enhanced customer experiences. In other words, a frequent flier is a loyal customer is a “woo”ed customer. I also feel that experts today have started talking less about the ‘customer’; it’s more and more about the company’s service levels vis-à-vis the competition and the playing field. Best practices and best-in-class processes are free flowing and the inevitable ‘360 degree view of the customer’ is used everywhere.

 

This recent trend disturbs me (I am keen to know what you think about it). To me, a best-in-class customer strategy is about ‘customer experience’. It is not about satisfaction, loyalty, wealth of information, 360 degree view etc. It is about a 360 degree view FOR the customer.

 

Let me elaborate on this point with an example for the US airlines industry. My pre-travel planning and shopping for a ticket is an important starting point in my in-flight experience. Another important pre-travel portion is my travel to the airport (by cab or car), waiting time at the security checkpoint etc. Yes, the airline will have minimal to zero control on this process but I strongly believe that my flying experience is influenced nevertheless. Disney, a clear leader in the customer experience space, sees it precisely this way. The Disney experience is not restricted to the theme parks but covers every aspect of the guest’s stay in the area. Their oft-quoted ‘Magical Express’ initiative provides complimentary round trip transportation from the airport to your hotel. In fact, with some assistance from (guess what?) the airlines(!), the luggage lands in your hotel room. No longer is my trip a hassle but infact it ends up being a magical experience.

 

I am not saying that airlines can influence the guest’s process the way Disney can, but the industry can definitely think in this dimension while attempting customer experience improvements.

 

Another important dimension is that how you deliver ‘customer experience’ is in your company culture. Ask Nordstrom employees. There is a huge focus on customer experience and it has been this way (The Nordstrom Way) for the past 100 plus years. There are many amazing stories from Nordstrom on how the process was looked at from the customer’s perspective. Like other companies, Nordstrom will face macro recessionary slumps but will continue in profit mode and grow in strength in the future.

 

Now, coming to the all-important question. How relevant is your customer experience initiative to the profitability and longevity of your organization?

 

From successful customer experience organizations, we can tell that customer lifetime value has a strong correlation to shareholder value of a corporation. Measuring and quantifying customer experience vs profitability is not prevalent in current CRM initiatives. The role that predictive models and CRM analytics will have to play here in the future is enormous.

 

In the near term, if you are revamping your CRM technology initiative, look at the number of customer-relevant data fields that are available in your customer information construct. Specifically, data fields that thrill and add value to the customer (this concept is what I referred to earlier as 360 FOR the customer). Maybe, their likes/dislikes about your product/service, ideas on how their experience can be enhanced can all be captured in a few customer-centric data fields. Take that data and use it to enrich your customer experience. As a next step, link this to MDM as a means of consolidating customer information from multiple toiuchpoints and deliver it to your operational and analytics apps.

 

Try it out and let me know how it goes. I can assure you, if this trend picks up, not only will we have a perfect flying experience five years from now but the airline industry will have some good success stories to share!

 

Posted by Badrinath Srinivasan at 01:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

During the past decade, the usage of cell phones has taken an interesting turn. From the fashionable statement of the rich and famous, it has become a necessity for communication for common man, engine for economic growth, tool of productivity and a necessary medium for the ever-shrinking world. The past decade saw the amalgamation of two most important revolutions of the business world - Email and Cell Phones - creating a very potent mix for productivity. 

Throughout the 90s, companies such as IBM and Nokia had been trying to optimize Email connectivity to the cell phones. In 2001, RIM released its first Blackberry version, which optimized email for wireless use. This was followed by Microsoft's PocketPC, Apple's IPhone, Google's Android and various other Smartphones and PDAs.

Throughout these interesting times, the impact on organizations had been limited. However, RIM's Blackberry changed the viewpoint and organizations started looking Email over Cell Phone as the 'real' productivity tool. They started adapting positively to the Smart Phones and Wireless connectivity, empowering their employees to access their data while on move. The road warriors of the organizations, typically the sales and Field services workforce, immediately saw the benefit of having more relevant data to their jobs other than just Email, while on move. This created the business case for Mobile CRM from the user perspective.

However, I still feel that this is a very nascent area for CRM, which has a huge potential for growth with few established players. This arena has been mostly been fuelled by the Third Party Product vendors of COTS packages as there are multiple factors which require re-thinking when it comes to Mobile CRM. Some of these areas that I can think on the top of my head are:

- User Interface (Navigation)
- Data Integrity (Integration to Back-Office with other systems)
- Offline/Online capability (Ability to cache data when networks are not available)
- Security considerations - Is my data on wireless networks secure?
- User Adoption (how would the sales/Field service people adopt the application)
- Roll-Out of Applications for the Sales/Service People
- Is the internal IT department geared to support Mobile CRM app?

The key factor for slow uptake and longer sales cycle of Mobile CRM is the inability to articulate the ROI of implementation to the stakeholders. I usually advocate the measurement of ROI for Mobile CRM on the following factors:
- How much of the business is done 'on-move' for Sales and Field Services?
- How much time do your Sales and Field Services spend out of office - unable to access your key Apps (ERP/CRM or Customized app) ?
- What is the impact of availability of right data on the Sales / Field Services on Top-Line and Bottom-Line of the organization?
- How much customization of Mobile App is required for successful End User Adoption?
- What is Organization's 'Technological Adoption Maturity' (i.e. propensity to adopt to new technologies) ?
- How portable the App is for other devices (i.e. Does the vendor support Pocket-PC, iPhones, Androids and Blackberry and other PDA devices as well)?

In my next blog, I shall try and evaluate some of the factors which Vendors/Third Party service providers might want to re-think when they are making a CRM Mobile App for the End-User and Organizations.

Till then, Happy Surfing on your Mobile :)

Posted by Diptesh Singh at 09:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

No this is not about a terrorist plot to spread communicable diseases rapidly to bring down an economy :) This is more of an advertising concept which utilizes the immense popularity of social networking in today’s age of Orkut, twitter & Facebook. This is an online and more advanced, quicker and larger form of the traditional Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing. This has been around for more than a decade now but it is yet to be leveraged by CRM product vendors.

So what exactly is viral marketing and what impact does this have for companies and for us CRM practitioners?
Many of us have already experienced viral marketing in one form or the other, one of the most commonly (ab)used is all the mails that are forwarded to you by well-meaning friends talking about diverse topics from the ill-effects of coffee, danger of using plastics in microwaves to contributions for people suffering from obscure diseases like Small cell lung cancer to the benefits that you can derive from some vague mantra which has traveled the world 111 times and which must not remain in your inbox for any longer than 2 milliseconds after you have seen it and must immediately be forwarded to a zillion friends so that you get all the good luck and your recipients a time-bomb.

Viral marketing is based on the idea that a satisfied customer will evangelize a service/product which she likes (WOM) and each of her like-minded friends who gets converted to this service/product becomes "infected" and will go around infecting others eventually snowballing into huge sales for the company.

We are all part of different groups both on and offline based on our likes and dislikes. These groupings can be strongly knit e.g. Rajnikanth (a hugely popular Indian Actor) fan association or loosely connected e.g. An Orkut community for those born under a zodiac sign. Each of these can be utilized to spread information about a product/service which are relevant to them e.g. a newspaper that Rajni reads everyday – if this is made aware to a few of these fans then this news will catch on like a wildfire and very soon the readership of the newspaper will go through the roof - or a book on "What Leos need to look for in a prospective partner".

That is a Marketer already has a segmented audience waiting to be captured - and ready to get other customers - with suitably positioned offerings.
One of the earliest examples of viral marketing has been of Hotmail putting in an advertisement at the bottom of all mails sent out using hotmail inviting readers to register on hotmail. Of course this concept has become much more advanced now and the rate at which people get "infected" by viral marketing has zoomed exponentially due to larger and more receptive audiences that are a click away in today’s networked world.

These days creative messages which tickle the funny bone or target the good social citizen side e.g. environment related messages or patriotism e.g. the new 7 wonders campaign for Taj Mahal, stand a bigger chance of being forwarded.
So what impact will Viral marketing have on a CRM package? Will the new age CRM combine analytics with web-crawlers to identify suitable forums for new marketing messages? Can the Marketer define only the traits of her target audience and let the software hunt for online discussion forums or online opinion makers (having high Social Networking Potential) who can be used instead of depending only on the traditional campaign management module? Will it become proactive rather than just a passive tool? Will it incorporate intelligence to understand the motives and behaviors of its prospects by analyzing their browsing patterns on the company website?

Tell me how you think Viral marketing will change CRM or is it just a fad?

Posted by Shreedeep Panicker at 06:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

In a recent assignment I came across a situation where a company had planned for hundreds of compensation plans for its partners. Needless to say the amount of effort involved in designing, developing, testing and maintaining all these plans is significant. That brings us to the question which is also the title of the post.

But before that, are more plans better or worse? As with many answers in business, it depends. More plans give the organization more flexibility in tailoring the plans specific to the resource. A sales manager in one territory might want to increase revenue while another manager in somewhere else might want to increase profits. Different products could be in focus in different parts of the country or the globe, for that matter. Service levels could be the priority in one plan while customer complaints could be in another. In short, there is no end to all the factors that can be built into different compensation plans.

Lesser plans have their advantages too. Plans can be more closely integrated to the overall company strategy and direction. Lesser plans allow easier performance evaluation across the sales force. And of course, it is easier and cheaper to build and maintain plans when they don’t run into the hundreds.

In my opinion, the number of plans that the organization may need depends on a few key factors-

Role - You might need a different plan for a different role. You cannot have the same performance parameters for a sales rep as well as a service representative. Both roles have different job descriptions and need to be evaluated separately. The same could be the case for a sales rep and a sales manager.

Products - The product basket that are sold or serviced could also drive the design of the compensation plan.

Customer - Sometimes the customer profile whom you service could drive the plan design. If you service one large customer vis a vis hundreds of small customers, there could be valid reasons for a specific compensation plan.

There could be more but in the end, the company has to evaluate every new compensation plan proposal and decide if it makes sense to design and build it. Can an existing plan meet the objectives? Is the additional cost worth it? And most importantly, is the new compensation plan aligned to the overall company strategy and objectives?

Posted by Anand Bharadwaj at 07:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)