Customer Relationship Management

Twitter – This concept has been so much in news these days, that it was a matter of time before I deep dived into it. Well, you can call me a laggard but I am not to be blamed for living in a cyber odyssey where every second day a new social networking site mushrooms, sending me an invite to join. So by the time I joined Twitter, I realized that it has already taken the world by storm.

The most amazing thing about Twitter I liked was the by-products it has created in its usage. The max 140 character Tweets were to tell the world - “What are you doing?” But incidentally the next-gen users have started using it for news broadcast, customer & public relations, micro-blogging, product promotions and what not.  The result – Twitter just redesigned its home page and changed the theme to “Share & Discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world”, which gels well with its new found usage patterns.

So that is where I tried to evaluate, that can Twitter be really used as an extended CRM tool to manage customer relations? Well to begin with, I must acknowledge that there are already many companies, who claim to have achieved considerable success with this. As an example, Cleartrip has been proactively engaging its customers through twitter to reply queries, resolving issues and requesting feedback to enhance its customer service levels. Similar effort & success have been achieved by other companies like Comcast, South West Airlines and many others. But my “personal” evaluation of Twitter carries a cautious optimism.

The Pros

• Twitter gives an amazing platform to the companies to find customers or prospects talking about their products and services, which gives you a ready data to follow. But how well you act on that information is CRM all about. So in my opinion Twitter is a great CRM enabler but companies need to integrate it with organizational processes, so that follow up actions can be created on the data getting originated from Twitter.
  
• Example: Your company’s follower tweets about the outage issue in the broadband connection in his area. Next step is to create a business task in internal process to resolve the issue and assign it to next service representative and provide update to the follower.
  
• Another advantage of Twitter is that it works on the pull factor and “not” on the traditional push mechanism of sales & marketing. And that is where it differs from other social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut and MySpace. Consider a set of followers who love you or hate you but they have tried to reach you. As an organization, you have a chance to convert these prospects into your trusted customers.
  
• Another interesting feature of Twitter is that it actually publishes the tweets on the web, which are searchable by the web crawlers of search engines like Google, making it a great tool for data mining.

The Cons 

• Lots of Noise on the platform - Noise is the first thing, which scared me on twitter. Presently I am only following “@sapcrm” but I can safely say that I would like to see one consolidated SAP Newsletter in my mailbox in comparison to 10 tweets about several articles dropping in my inbox or phone. There are tens of articles on web on how to reduce noise on Twitter but the bottom line is that you are subscribing to a tiny little message of max 140 characters from users. No matter how specific you are, but consolidation is always appreciated. So I will not be surprised if in future Twitter comes up with a platform to consolidate the tweets.
  
• Lack of structured information – Tweets are published without any structured classification making it difficult to search. Though concepts of #hashtags have evolved over the period of time but without any regulatory mechanism they will become as unstructured as tweets.

Nevertheless even with these limitations, it is also a fact that Twitter is a new phenomenon on the block for which the rules are still undefined. Whom to follow, how many to follow, how much to tweet, how soon to respond, channel to be used for response (web/mobile/apps) are still the questions for whom no finite answers are available. So whether to use Twitter for CRM or news broadcasting or sharing personal updates is open for evaluation.

Twitter as an organization knows the curiosity it has generated and the potential it holds for the future. The revamp of its home page, broadening of the site theme and real time search are a step in the right direction to capitalize on the ground breaking invention they have done.

Well, irrespective of its pros & cons, Twitter has already achieved a great momentum and is being considered as the next big revolution in cyber space. Like any other tool, its utility will actually be evaluated by the measurable benefits it brings to its users. Whether it becomes a successful CRM tool or only remains a public broadcaster of the teens, time will tell.

Posted by Vishal Mani at 7:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Business rules are typically in an organization and these define the various process measures that organizations depend on for hardwiring various departmental activities. Business rules are typically imbibed in the way organization do business and the agility of an organization depends on the way an organization is able to configure, modify and manages these business rules. Retail Industry is predominant with business rules and it is ideal to externalize these rules into a central rule engine that can be configured once and consumed many times.

Business rules are core-features by which process engine work and it is this business rule set that separates one company from another. The strategic initiatives in most organization are to externalize these business rules into a centralized rule engine. Many business rules players such as Savvion, Pegasus, Lombardi and Aqualogic have externalized the business rules into a separate rule set that is seamless integrated with an MDM hub.

Recently I happened to read a blog by Dan Power and was then doing a head to head comparison of which best of breed MDM vendors have integrated the business rules with the BPM tooling. The list given below show case a couple of such integration with the major players still yet to jump onto the bandwagon:

• Siperian offers built-in integration with Lombardi Teamworks and Oracle/BEA AquaLogic BPM products.
• Initiate Systems has integrated with numerous BPM platforms to synthesize master data from externally orchestrated business processes and is developing integration with the BPM capabilities of Informatica PowerCenter based on joint customer use.
• D&B Purisma have taken a vendor-neutral approach to BPM and can integrate with the major best-of-breed BPM vendors. Purisma also has some workflow capabilities built into their data stewardship user interface.
• Cordys, a BPM specialist based in the Netherlands, provides some MDM capabilities as part of its business operations platform.

So essentially we are looking at a stage where the BPM tool majors such as Savvion, Pegasus and Lombardi collaborating with the MDM pure play vendors to provide a better value to market proposition. Surely such a move will instigate the major MDM players such as Oracle and IBM to quickly wire up a BPM integrated MDM hub. Collusion of complimentary technology and co-partnering with best of breed vendors would help more and more client organization to look at implementing an MDM solution that can help it to retain a strategic edge from its competitors as soon as the economy surges ahead.

Posted by Jairaj Asok Kumar at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My earlier blog Convergence: The Customer Perspective focused on an in-depth analysis on the market.

As I sat pondering on my phone call to the customer service department – in the context of the focus on CRM, I felt two interesting trends emerging.

From the past of having multiple steps in the process of reaching a customer agent, slowly the scene seems to be changing – calls are picked up directly by the call center agent. Have found it to be happening more often than usual and as a user am pleasantly surprised.

Another very interesting aspect, is the ability of the call center agents to provide a complaint reference number. What this has done to consumers like me is that in case of the first call resolution not existing, there is always a path forward where I can know the status of my request and also do not have to really wait for the new operator to be told the entire story.

How do these two things help the process of CRM:

1.     If I encounter two call centres, one where calls are picked directly by the call centre agent, and the other which forces me to wait – I will definitely go for the one with an immediate response and resolution. And knowing the experience will tend to buy from a service provider which will give me a quick response. For the service provider, this may mean additional call center agents but this also challenges them to improve their services and would directly see the impact vis a vis the call volume.

2.     The second is logging of a formal request – the service provider can actually analyze multiple metrics around this call, categorize them, analyze them and over a period of time determine the root fix of the problem which hampers majority of the customers.

This forces me to think on a question – most of the customers only call a call center in case of a problem resolution. Suppose someone calls back with a positive experience, what is the impact on the cost and does it/should it be tracked and to what extent? How best can this information be used in the win win context of CRM?

Posted by Ravi Agarwal at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The government is a big customer when it comes to IT applications. As tax paying citizens or as non-immigrant skilled workers in our various assignments, consultants like me would have had opportunities to interact as a customer with various CRM applications in many countries. You might have applied for a Tax or a Social ID related requirement. What has been your experience? Have you experienced customer delight in any situation?

Generally, I have found people to be much more accommodating of poor service when it comes to the government. The same people who would log service request after service request of a listed company would grumble, throw their hands up in frustration but ultimately not do much about the poor service that they receive from the government. The reason is not far to fathom. It’s easy to change your broadband service provider but there’s only one place from where you can get that tax refund. Or only one place which will reissue your passport. Government is a monopoly in many cases.

But, in spite of the advantageous power equation, governments would like to keep their customers happy since citizens are the only customers who get to choose their CEO once every few years. This special fact is probably a big reason which ultimately explains the spending by the government on applications which improve governance, transparency and CRM.

My online experiences with governance in other countries have been limited to Visa related interactions, which I have found to be more or less hassle free or an experience with acquiring an important ID number. In this instance, my experience was mixed. While I was delighted to easily locate the nearest center online, I had to make multiple applications and trips to the center to ensure I finally received the said ID. I was partly to blame since my address changed during the time period but I couldn’t help wondering if a more customer friendly process couldn’t have said me and the government both time and money. I must say that tax related interaction in two developed countries that I have faced have been very prompt and hassle free.

In India, over the last few years, we have seen consistent improvements in this regard. Whether any of the CRM channels has reached a best-in-class standard is open to debate, but their very presence is at least a step in the right direction. The Indian Railways website, which provides online booking and reservation facility is one of the most successful e-commerce websites in India clocking close to INR 4 Billion a month! Apart from booking tickets, you can check the status of any waitlisted tickets or enroll into their loyalty program. Many other government agencies also have an internet presence, thus reaching out to the citizen in a more seamless manner.

Today, I can log complaints against errant auto rickshaws on the Road Transport Authority website, request the Chief Vet Officer of the Municipal Corporation to take action on stray dogs in my locality on the Municipal Corporation website and also book a new cooking gas connection online! Even the local Police Station in Hyderabad now has its own website and publishes the names and contact numbers of the concerned Police officers. Whether the service delivery against these requests is up to the mark is subject matter for the comments section, but the day of paper based applications to the maze of bureaucracy is coming to a close in India slowly, albeit surely.

Posted by Anand Bharadwaj at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

For a long time, enterprises have been embracing CRM initiatives for different reasons and over the period have been building up functional capabilities on top of those systems. These capabilities that were being built have often made the applications more complex to manage and enhance. Over a period of time, however, these enterprises are bound to cross through a juncture at which they will be forced to take a decision on whether to upgrade or re-implement their existing CRM packaged application(s) to leverage the capabilities from the latest product offerings. While this is the case, each enterprise might have different reasons and criteria to decide between these two approaches, some of which include but not limited to, leverage additional functional capabilities, beat competition in the market place, reduce time to market, streamline & improve process efficiencies, meet the changing industry trends, enable regulatory compliance, leverage technological advancements etc. I would like to discuss some of the key aspects that I think; an enterprise should consider before choosing between these two options and would be using Oracle’s Siebel CRM application as my example.

 

What Oracle’s Siebel CRM has been doing?

Over the last many years, Oracle’s Siebel CRM has been continuously expanding its breadth and depth of functional offerings, technical capabilities to meet industry standards, provide focused industry specific vertical solutions along with significant architectural and data model improvisations. Siebel has been the market leader in offering the broadest set of CRM functionalities & capabilities around Sales, Service, Call Center, Marketing, Analytics, Field Service, Channel Partner Management etc., in addition to a wide range of Industry specific solutions for Communications, Financial Services, Energy, Pharma, Retail, etc. It has been on a constant flux of improvisation leading from the front. With the acquisition of Siebel by Oracle, it has only strengthened the gamut of offerings like the Oracle RTD, OBIEE, Haley’s Rules etc.

What Enterprises have been doing?

During this course, however, enterprises have been evolving simultaneously to meet the changing demands in the market place, ensure better customer experience & loyalty, expedite the decision support mechanism, gain control and vision over the customer data within the enterprise, comply with regulatory requirements, differentiate themselves from the competition etc.  Some enterprises have been successful in leveraging the latest Siebel capabilities that were available at regular intervals while some have chosen to configure and customize their existing CRM applications on the same version to meet their growing and changing demands, and in the process, fostered a monstrous application. Maintaining such an application is not only difficult but also adds to high cost of ownership, increased dependency on few individuals with the required context, and application inflexibility etc.

What Should an Enterprise do?

With the advent of internet, the world becoming a level playing field, and the customer becoming more knowledgeable and demanding day by day, enterprises are facing stiff competition in the fierce market place today to retain existing customer base and to acquire new customers. Added to this is the economic uncertainty that engulfs the enterprises even before they can realize and react to correct the situation. Enterprises are eager to leverage the enhanced capabilities from the latest CRM product offerings, in order to differentiate themselves quickly from their competition, to improve customer interaction experience, enhance customer loyalty, improve time to market capability, enhance customer service levels, ensure data integrity, leverage current architectural and integration frameworks etc., the list goes on.

This is where enterprises have to make decision, on whether to out-grow their existing CRM application(s) or to leverage the enhanced capabilities from the latest versions of the CRM Products. Enterprises which choose to leverage the advanced product capability over customizing the existing CRM application, have two distinct options in front of them – either to upgrade and enhance their existing CRM instance or to re-implement these capabilities in the latest version of the package. I don’t think there is a single pill panacea for all such situations. There are some key criteria / aspects that need to be considered before an enterprise can take the right and informed decision on these two available solution options.

Will discuss these aspects in detail in my next post, meanwhile, do pour in your thoughts on this :-)

Posted by Ramkumar JHS at 6:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In the ongoing economic mayhem, we have seen many small to even big companies are taken over by other big and bigger companies. This act of merging two companies leads to consolidating key business entities across companies so that the merged entity performs better and benefits from this merger and/or acquisition (M&A).

When it comes to customer data, we immediately start talking about customer experience, single version/truth of customer data across enterprise, 360^o view of customer data, golden record etc. or alternatively a Master Data Management (MDM) Solution for Customer data. But what happens practically when it comes to a big activity like M&A? Everyone talks about MDM as a strategic solution but starts designing to put a more tactical solution using Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to get through transition. They say that with tactical SOA, MDM would be overkill. I am sure they say this because they have a pressure from business to not mix strategies with transitions and instead focus on integration and maintain business continuity. What they end up with is exploiting SOA approach and developing point to point integrations while maintaining data silos.

I am not saying that SOA is not the right solution but I am also not saying that MDM should take a back seat in such high profile projects like M&A. Most companies believe that these two approaches are mutually exclusive tracks. After all, one focuses on architectural side and the other on information side. I was reading a blog on Gartner recently where Andrew White mentioned “MDM needs SOA and SOA needs MDM”. I agree with him that these two approaches are complimentary to each other and help organizations achieve strategic goals if planned and even developed in parallel.

It’s not like the past when business teams used to provide requirements to the technology team and waited in the wings for the delivery of an application. What we see now is that business teams have become partners in such delivery. They are fully involved in the planning, approach, and the ultimate delivery of the application. SOA is built on business processes so it becomes more relevant and necessary for SOA and MDM to go together.

Posted by Sandeep Gandhi at 3:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Many times people ask me to share the CC benchmark data/ metrics which may be asked by customer care executives / organization for comparison to gauge how their CC operations are performing. It is very important to have comparable metrics to have the confidence to say we need to make some changes or our performance is not up to the mark. But, are we also looking and considering the factors/methods behind the collection of metrics to find the correct reason for the gap?

After doing lots of research and hours of study, I am unable to find any single or specific report to co-relate or refer. All the benchmarking reports vary not only with respect to the research companies, but also depend on many other factors apart from what was being measured and how it was being measured.

Apart from the research reports, the benchmarking is also carried out by comparing with the selected industry leaders in similar field, considering all the apple-to-apple sort of integrity conditions. However, one thing we forget to consider does our CC / organization and CC industry leaders share the same objective and processes? If not, then I don’t think we are doing justice to the benchmarking. Consider, for example, Average call handling time (AHT) for your CC is 10 minutes but the industry average is of 6 minutes. We can conclude from these numbers that agents are doing a poor job - they should speed up and handle more calls. Or we might conclude that agents are doing a good job, taking their time to answer/handle the entire customer query effectively hence increasing the customer satisfaction. Either of the conclusions could be correct and best suited based on there business strategy and objectives.

So, how or which research reports to use or with which industry data/metrics to compare from the diverse, complex and mature market for doing benchmarking exercise? As per my understanding, we should know or consider following factors before selecting any report/metrics for benchmarking of your CC:
1) How & from whom, the researchers gathered the metrics
2) Should support same geography & location
3) When the metrics/ data were collected and during which time period
4) The size, maturity and type (Sales, service etc.) of CC matches with your CC
5) Should support similar Domain (Telecom, banking, manufacturing etc.)
6) Should have similar type of customer based on urgency or type of service
7) Should be identical in type of call (inbound, outbound etc.) handling
8) Should have similar sort of mix-skill of agents and supervisor
9) Should have similar technology in CC
10) Should support identical number of contact channels (voice, email, etc.) used in CC
11) Should also consider Business objective
12) Should have all the key performance metrics to benchmark

While selecting the report/ metrics, these factors, if considered, could really help us to ensure accuracy of benchmarking of Contact Centers.

Posted by Sushil Jadhav at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Can anyone tell me how many Telecom Service Providers are there in a Circle/State in India as on Date? It is an intricate question to answer given the scale of expansion in the Indian Telecom Market and a new operator being added day on day.

Indian Telecom market is one of the fastest growing markets in the world. The Indian Telecom service providers have come a long way since 1994 when the Telecom sector was liberalized by the government and in 1995 GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) Mobile Telephony entered India. In the last 14 years, the telephone density has soared from a mere 0.8% to above 33% and the total subscriber base has grown to more than 384 million with just the mobile subscriber base being over 346 million. With the increasing adoption of Telecom services, it is imperative that the existing and new Telecom service providers improve their operational efficiency continuously.

 

Traditionally, Indian Telecom service providers have outsourced the functions like inbound/outbound call centers, managing Order to Cash systems to different third party vendors. Although this has helped the Telecom service providers in managing the complexity of these functions, coordination, control and monitoring of different third party vendors brings with it a new set of challenges. The Indian service providers should concentrate more on their core activities and outsource the rest strategically without any service gaps. Hence, a better model would be to move towards service bureau based outsourcing model where the end to end solution from Customer Service Delivery to Order to Cash processes is hosted by a single vendor. The relationship between the Telecom service provider and the service bureau should be based on feature based/outcome based pricing and governed by detailed SLAs with results measured by Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). 

The Service bureau based model would trim down the CAPEX of the Telecom Service Providers to a great Extent. The OPEX will also be well managed and predictable with this model. We feel this is need of the hour for any service provider. With the expected 10+ operator market and 3G,WIMAX entry, it is imperative for the operators to look for an effective model of this sort not affecting the baseline. Moreover the market is heading towards Service consolidation as the new operators are focusing more on Prepaid to penetrate into Rural Markets. This would change the market perspective and the operators will have lot to do on their Core activities and concentrate on Brand building to sustain for long run in the Highly Competitive Market.

 

               

Posted by Sripathy Srinivasan at 1:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Going back to ERP vendors pre-take over(read merger and acquisitions) era, CRM and ERP was well segregated in the usage of applications.The CRM suite usually meant marketing, sales and service applications while anything other than these was ERP applications .Few years back ,a lot of ERP vendors realized that separating these two was not giving any substantial benefit to the implementing organizations. Not to mention in lot of cases it was an opportunity lost for these vendors as customers would never think of a single product vendor for both of these applications. 

CRM application alone was nothing more than a desktop(or analytical)application which defied the entire purpose of implementing CRM or ERP.

Probably the answer to the following questions will help us understand this truth which prompted lot of ERP vendors to launch single business suite(instead of CRM,ERP)

Can an organization realize the benefits of Implementing:

a.Marketing-Sales Online application without implementing order management
This can be debated at length however the bigger truth is unless the leads and opportunities convert to a visible revenue ,an organization will not realize the return on investment on such an application. Not to mention that sales analysis will be a lot better in an integrated environment than in a standalone environment

b.Quoting application without Order Management
This will unnecessarily put a load on the order entry representatives to enter the order details again in case a quote ahs been converted to an order.Not only that, it will also result in data loss in capturing as to how many quotes have been converted to order since the information is not maintained in a single system

c.Financials and Order Management without implementing customer data management
An inappropriate customer modeling will  introduce issues in terms of managing credit limits for customers in Account receivables.Not only this in absence of a clean customer data(which can be achieved using customer data librarian),customer search ill become nightmarish for ERP applications

I would say that not only from product vendor's view, even the CRM implementers must take a holistic perspective (including ERP applications) while designing any system. After all, ERP is all about designing an integrated system and not a silo!

Posted by Naveen Anand at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am a Liverpool fan. I regularly follow all the matches they play and visit a set of websites to capture the news at the club. Sometimes I don’t get to watch all the matches, if I’m travelling or attending some important meeting or busy with some personal task. I would be yearning to see if someone can send me the details through SMS for matches with video clips of the goals scored. I get some updates from a website which charges me way too much since it’s a UK based service. I have a Liverpool theme on my desktop and constantly discuss the club in Facebook and Orkut and other public forums. And this month when I visited the website of my mobile company to pay the bill I saw the link to download Manchester United ring tones etc. If you knew about the rivalry between Liverpool and Manchester United in the past season, you would realize how much that link irritated me.  I was thinking, “if only the company knew there are enough Liverpool fans in this part of the world. If only they knew I would be interested in such content on my mobile. If only there is a way for them to realize that I leave enough clues in public forums. If only…” This situation could be very true with IPL fans or in general any sports fan. This can be further extended to any interest that a regular person might have including cooking, travelling, etc etc.

The need of the hour is for organizations to understand the customer in much more innovative ways and to go along with the customer like a true friend. A traditional CRM tries to go after the customer. The systems and applications which are part of the traditional CRM are very good in capturing leads, following up the opportunities and closing the sales. These tools have matured in capturing customer information right from contact details to the entire interaction history for all past inquiries, orders and service requests. Analytical CRM has gone further to see how to get ahead of the customer by predicting behavior using past data and market trends.

There are success stories in traditional CRM where companies have been able to avoid cumbersome applications and have been able to follow industry best practices. Analytical CRM too has given organizations the benefits of slicing and dicing their data. But what we see here is either we are after the customer or we try to get ahead of the customer. While going with the customer is the place everyone wants to be, there is a lot of ground that any organization needs to cover before I can get updates on my mobile about Liverpool. They need to understand on where are the possibilities for a customer to leave digital footprints. They need to know what kinds of footprints are left behind. They will need to figure out how to channelize the gazillion bytes of unstructured data that they are going to deal with. Organizations have to be conscious of the privacy of the social citizen, since another Liverpool fan may not like to get any content on his mobile.

Even though there are many CRM systems which already integrate social networks, they do not provide the kind of understanding of the customer that is needed to be a true friend of the customer. Rather those kinds of integrations only enable another channel to go after the customer or they tend to be too smart and get ahead of the customer. There are no social CRM applications in the market (like we have analytical CRM applications). There are trends towards integration, but there is no application that will extend the traditional CRM into the Social CRM space. While the benefits are clear and the trend is developing and we are stepping into the Social CRM era, let us hope Liverpool wins the premier league next season.

Posted by Pradeep Baptist at 5:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Reading Anshuman's post on transactional data elements in the MDM repository for increasing business value, I was reminded of an interesting solution we defined for a Japanese publishing company. I am a fan of Japanese culture, and it was exciting to work with people who produce manga, anime, and lots more cool stuff.

This was a “meta-data based enrichment” solution implementation done for a publishing company, based in Japan, with multiple lines of business. The two-fold objective was to consolidate the consumer data across businesses and provide a Unified content Index across businesses. The master data was designed to consolidate three types of consumer data: 

• Basic/ Static information – demographic master data
  That which refers to the information that do not change during the lifecycle of association of the consumer with the company during the normal course e.g. Name, User_id, Date of birth
• Enriched Dynamic information or meta-data
  That which refers to the information that changes during the lifecycle of association of the consumer with the company e.g. Education, Income, Usage of Vehicle, weight
• Transactional Information
  That which refers to the information that changes depending on the activity of the consumer on his purchase behaviour. This information is different from the other two in the way of ingestion as this is the information that is captured automatically. 

The consolidated view of consumer information, aggregated from demographic static master data and enriched with dynamically generated meta-data was sent to an analytical search engine for recommendations generation, where the static data (basic data E.g. name) would be augmented based on the transactional details (publication details search query) and the dynamic data (interest area or previous buying pattern).

In order to implement this, whenever the user queries his/her static data is used to trigger web crawlers. The web crawlers, monitors web log activity and tracks his/her buying propensity and stickiness on the website (dynamic data). Based on the meta data so received, the transactional data, sent back to the user is enriched with additional details. The enrichment data, is customized based on offering set up by the publishing product promotion manager (in this case magazines or book ranges).

It is solutions like this that presage the convergence of data repositories and operational systems, mediated through intelligent middleware. We are also seeing convergence on the other side, with data marts consuming real time data from the repository. The information ecosystem of the enterprise will emerge as a seamless continuum of producers and consumers, facilitated through closed-loop data quality.

Posted by Aaman Lamba at 8:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today, globally the Communication Service Providers (CSPs) are facing challenges in terms of reduced average revenue per user, stiff competition - due to reduced price and service differentiation, advancement in technology, change in government policy/guidelines, and customer demands, to name a few.

As users of telecom services in our day today life, I have listed down some of the best practices which Customers would look for from the CSP’s during various stages of the life cycle...

I. Marketing & Sales:

1. Offer a wide range of good products/services, for the customers to pick and choose, as per their
    specific needs and requirements

2. Offer excellent sales support, by promptly responding to customer queries and helping them to
    choose the right product/service most suitable to them

3. Make the offer very attractive, with the combination of, best product, at the best price and along
    with the best service support

4. Make every customer interaction a pleasant experience for them, be it at the Point of Sale,
    Contact Center or Web Interactions, to name a few

5. Always honor the commitments made during marketing and sales campaigns/interactions

II. Customer Service:

6. Provide prompt update on order status, ensure timely delivery of products and quick activation of
    services

7. Present unified view of the customer information across access contact channels (e.g. Web,
    IVRS, Mobile, Call Center)

8. Continuously educate the customers on various new features introduced in the service offerings,
    to help them to use it to their advantage

9. Always ensure accuracy of billing and quickly resolve any issues related to billing, as it involves
    their hard earned money

10. Ensure ‘First Call Resolution’ every time. Provide prompt response/quick resolution to critical
     customer service requests like out of service, billing issues

11. Ensure ‘High Availability’ of services by preventing network/service downtime and ‘High Quality
     of Service’ by scaling up the network/services proportionately

12. Quickly provide alternative communication service options in case of unexpected
      network/service outages (e.g. due to natural/man made disasters)

13. Ensure smooth migration of services, during organizational changes (such as new branding,
     mergers and acquisitions), without affecting the end users

14. Proactively guide customers to adapt to new service/tariff plans, by studying their usage
      patterns and show them the effective cost savings to their advantage

15. Collect customer feedback periodically and promptly act upon areas of improvement and keep
      the customers duly updated on the action taken

III. Retention and Growth:

16. Develop customer retention programs to make existing customers feel their importance and
      the benefits of their long term relationship

17. Provide attractive buy back offers and affordable upgrade options for products, to prevent them
      from becoming obsolete and to ensure that customers have the latest version of the products
      in the market

18. Make Cross/Up Sell of products/services very useful and attractive to existing customers, by
     offering it at a very special pricing, to ensure long term relationship

19. Periodically publish the product and service road map for the next 5 years, to encourage
     customers to have the confidence to stay with you

20. Finally, continuously and consistently feel the pulse of the customer and make them feel ‘really
      proud’, by ensuring all that it takes to ‘Delight the Customer’

If CSPs are able to take care of these best practices, they are sure to retain their customers and grow their business through repeat business and referral business.

I request you to share your thoughts on this subject, as end users of telecom services, in your day today life…

Posted by Shanmugam Gnanasambandam at 4:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

People Change Management is one of the most important task that determine the success of the CRM Implementation. As we know, most of the people are reluctant to change because of factors like sense of insecurity, inherent inertia, insufficient knowledge about the change etc. Hence it is very essential to plan for the People Change Management well in advance before the CRM Implementation (in fact right from the time we capture business requirements) otherwise people (front office / back office people) will either reject the new CRM Application or will start complaining about it. It is very important to address some of the questions coming to their mind like:

• What is the benefit that I am going to get out of this CRM Application?
• Will I lose my Job if this gets implemented?
• What should I do differently after the CRM Implementation?
• What is the benefit of this CRM Application to my company?
• Is the CRM Application going to satisfy my customer needs?
• Is the CRM Application easy to use? (e.g. Can I use both Keyboard shortcuts and Mouse?, How effective is the search in the application?)
• Is the application fast to reduce the call handling time?
• Can I save customer call handling time by doing some settings / personalization?
• Have I got enough training including hands on training on the CRM Application?
• Is there sufficient training documentation to make myself comfortable with the Application?

Some of the techniques that could be employed to address these people change management issues are:

• Involve the operational people (call center agents, back office people) in the requirements gathering exercise and capture operational requirements along with Business Requirements.
• Understand their pain points and show your inclination to address these operational pain points.
• Inform the benefits of implementing the new CRM Application in the organization through user workshops, meetings and through emailers.
• Inform them how the new application is going to address their operational pain points, increase operational convenience and reduce their workload / effort.
• Provide detailed training including hands on training prior to launch and address all their queries with the application.
• Provide support and guidance to the people through gold users in their learning phase to make them comfortable.
• Enhance employee moral through rewards and recognitions.

Thus in short, people change management if planned well in advance, will ensure co-operation and participation from the operational people and will lead to successful CRM Implementation.

Posted by Suhas Kanade at 4:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Meta data management, so what does this mean? We all know that “meta data” means data about data. However how many fully fledged, Master data management project starts off with a Meta data definition project. A true “strategic” level adoption of Master data management requires having a fully fledged meta-data management solution integrated seamlessly with a master data management solution. I happened to work in an enterprise data warehouse solution for an insurance major in US, where the primary stakeholder and project sponsor realized the need to arrive at a consensus on the various KPI’s used across insurance LOB's (be it Buyer protection plan, Property and Casualty - Mortgage based insurance, Life and Health insurance etc.). A brave initiative, leading to humble beginning of an Data governance initiative, very critical, in a fully fledged enterprise level MDM initiative.

Now the downside, let me quote another example, this time for a retailer, where Meta data management figured in the overall IT strategic road map, however failed to be implemented due to the need for prioritization of the core systems revamp and enablement of an MDM project. The project still adopts capturing of business rules and meta-data in spread sheets etc.

Many thought leaders in the MDM space talks about automated knowledge discovery using tools which can shorten the “time to market” for deployment of an MDM initiative. Typically 70% or more of the time and effort involved in completing most data integration projects is consumed by defining and implementing the business rules by which data will be mapped, transformed, integrated, and cleansed. Any organization aiming to shorten the time to market for an MDM implementation would look out for implementation of a Meta data management solution as the key starting point for the Master data management solution.

The truth thus arise that Meta data management and Master data management needs to happen together and recently I happened to get an opportunity to work on evaluation of an Analytical MDM, the Oracle Life Sciences Hub. You can read more about this from my blog in UKOCN (http://www.ukocn.com/blogs/jairajak/analytical-master-data-management-driven-through-meta-data).

The Meta data captured from internal subject matter experts is leveraged to set up an Analytical MDM which can seamlessly create data mart of the fly.  The master data management extensively leverages the meta-data defined for “information management”. I now realize that Master data management and Meta Data management now need to be implemented in an organization, though the stage of implementation of one over other may be delayed or implemented together based on priority, budget and precedence envisioned in the overall IT objectives.

Posted by Jairaj Asok Kumar at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In my previous post,” The white labeling business and importance of CRM”, I was trying to find the CRM impacts because of white label products. Continuing the topic in this post, I would like to highlight some of the technical solution to introduce white labeling (communication) products into market and also sustain the business from a proof of concept work and related white paper that which I drafted along with other colleagues. The paper addresses the solution for four important areas to introduce white label products.

1. Branding - Each Retail Service Provider's (RSP) brand needs to be catered and so the product labels should appear different. The RCPs customer should be able to view the RSP branded products without any difference to the wholesale service provider's (WSP) products
   
2. Solution for co-creation of products - One of the areas of reducing the time-to-market of white-label products is to improve the flexibility of wholesale and retail IT systems.
   
3. Solution Approach for order management, bill processing and assurance - When white-labeled products are introduced in the wholesale systems, there would be changes needed in the important processes like order management, invoice presentation and handling the customer/network related problems.
   
4. Solution for Intelligent Unified Fallout Management - It is known that as a part of order fulfillment process or customer problem (trouble ticket) resolution process, many activities needs to be completed and in a particular sequence. With the introduction of white-labeling products there is an increase in the number of activities and also complexity in processes. Often, the business process requires a responsible individual to be notified for manual intervention or to automatically compensate for the failure. The current fallout-handling solutions lack consistent management and resolution of exceptions across BSS/OSS applications, supporting systems, and work centers. They rely on costly manual resolution methods which makes the support groups tough to resolve leading to breakage of service level agreements (SLAs).
   

For more details I would request you read the white paper “Framework for Rapid Rollout and Service Management of White-labeled Wholesale Products” 

These are some of the areas that we were able to address through a TMForum catalyst project (proof of concept) for a leading UK telecom service provider. Of course some of the important areas that is not addressed from CRM point is Partner Relationship Management and customer interaction management, detailed CRM related B2B interaction between RSPs and WSPs.

I would like to see/view your suggestions and comments in addressing such impacted areas and respective solution options.

Posted by Raja Sekhar Ravi at 3:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the most often heard grievance about CRM Implementation is that it doesn’t deliver its promised value. After putting in months of efforts both by the implementation partner and the client, an absence of RoI would be dismal – more so in the current financially pressing times.

 

CRM Implementations are the most thought of and talked about as well , owing to its direct impact on the customers and thereby revenues and corporate brand image. The conventional package evaluation exercise along with fitment analysis and later stages are definitely necessary but not sufficient in themselves for a successful CRM Implementation.

 

A successful CRM Implementation is NOT the one where there are no defects or usage hiccups ( as this is almost a hygiene factor these days than a customer delight parameter ) but the success of an implementation is gauged by the measurable business benefits yielded.

 

It is a combined responsibility of the Client, the Implementation Consultant and the Product vendor to chalk out a clear RoI framework and plan towards a phased accomplishment of the RoI metrics.

 

A few sequential steps for this critical activity would be to

1. Identify Key Customer Touch Points
   
2. Prioritize the areas where an impact can be immediately felt from business and customer standpoint
   
3. Identify key pain points and areas where there is a revenue leakage /cost overrun
   
4. Re-engineer and Improve the business process to include industry best practices (could be prior to or  a part of the CRM Implementation exercise )
   
5. Measure As-Is value of the metric
   
6. Breakdown the functionality of the product/CRM Package that can address the pain points
   
7. Measure post CRM Implementation value of the metric in steady state
   
8. Associate a dollar value to the benefit accrued or cost saved
   
9. Calculate the RoI using established models  taking into account the Rate of Return , Breakeven period and Cost structure.
   

 

 

An analysis to identify areas that require improvements is key for RoI estimation . These could be metrics like Resolution Time, number of calls where first time resolution is provided , Number of Customer service agents using and updating Knowledge Repository etc for the Customer Service Operations. Ability to route calls and service requests based on skills of the customer service agents has clearly been a time-saver and a cost –cutter in many organizations. Measuring this would also lead to utilizing the agents’ time in other productive tasks aimed at increasing revenues in addition to customer satisfaction owing to quicker resolution based on skill-based routing. Apart from the clear value-add to the organization, these modules , as my colleague Badri states, do empower the frontline to do render better customer service.  

 

In case of Sales function , metrics like Sales Closure Lead time, Win-Loss Analysis , Deal Conversion rate and margins would act as key performance indicators. Mobile Sales and Sales Online are features that have enabled Sales force to quickly access the price list and create quotes on the fly right at the customer site  . These have cut short time spent by the Sales personnel in the office and enables them to be where they are most productive – the Field !   The sales force performance can be enhanced by innovative models to provide incentives for achievers.  RoI is not elusive in Marketing activities despite many believing so . Intelligent segmentation and targeted marketing efforts would reduce marketing  costs , thereby increasing Return on Marketing Investment (RoMI) . If 20% of customers contribute to 80% of the business , it is  prudent to invest in focused marketing than a mass –scale campaign with lukewarm response which may not always translate to sizeable financial returns. The CRM packages enable assigning RoI targets and track budgets (costs) and sales figures (revenue) as an outcome of a campaign. These tightly link the campaign’s outcomes as leads and tracks them till the order booked stage traversing opportunity and quote creation phases. An interesting blog on RoMI by my colleague Indivar is worth reference here.

 

For organizations that execute  CRM Activities in association with the resellers or partners , Partner Relationship Management modules help gauge performance of collaborative Sales and Marketing activities .The PRM Modules enables resellers performance measurement  and to rollout plans for rebates or rewards.   Pricing and Promotion decisions in independent and collaborative Sales and Marketing activities can be effectively done using pre-integrated  framework between Partner Relationship Management and Trade Management Modules [Oracle E-Business Suite ]. The decision makers  can easily identify  the offers that were most profitable in the past and plan for new offers based on marketing strategy and business goals (revenues)

 

Self Service Modules to purchase products (like Oracle iStore) and avail services / information online  ( like Oracle iSupport and Knowledge Management  ) are aimed at reducing the expenses in human resources and brick and mortar setups . A good way to gauge RoI for these would be to compare the investment and maintenance costs for the implemented CRM Suites and compare it with the revenues generated or costs cut using the modules. The intangible benefits would also be increased customer satisfaction that can be captured using surveys . A delighted customer who gets his concerns resolved immediately is likely to be more loyal and thereby cutting down massive acquisition costs for the organization . As a bonus, you also have an engaged customer who would spread positive Word of Mouth and bring in referrals.

 

In essence , the idea is to consciously identify areas of impact and quantify the benefits /cost saved to measure the financial success of your CRM Implementation .Performing a thorough scientific RoI Analysis thereby goes a long way in building a stronger business case for IT spends in large organizations and provides the much-needed relief for the CIO. Afterall , anything that cannot be measured cannot be improved !

 

 

Posted by Khanchana at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

by Vamsi Krishna Paramjyothi

My previous post on ICRM, "How ICRM can aid in decision support for enhancing customer relationships" would have raised a few questions like, “How does ICRM differ from ACRM?”. Though they sound similar, there is a huge difference, ICRM is a framework where as ACRM is a technology. ICRM stands for Intelligence CRM as it derives customer related intelligence.

When implementing an Analytics application along with CRM, most companies expect to gain the customer insights from the analytics application, but are they really gaining those insights? Even if the answer is yes, what is the accuracy? In addition to this there is a limitation to the range of insights that can be derived using ACRM. ACRM system has two major limitations:

1. ACRM is mostly developed on CRM data only

2. ACRM is not supported by any statistical models & tools that are designed for deriving a particular insight.

If one looks into the details of conventional analytics implementation one can easily understand that the reports that are generated are mostly to measure the operational efficiency or performance of a department or to an extent support in planning. But that data has to be further analyzed to make some decision but again this will be mostly for corporate level planning like sales planning, marketing planning, target setting, etc rather than for gaining customer insights.

But ICRM starts with an insight that has to be derived, it is modeled to give you an input which one can directly use to take a decision, it can be a probability value or Yes/No decision, etc. ICRM is a framework, it starts with identifying the insight to be derived like, predict probability to churn,  then one has to identify different triggers to churn, then one has to identify various data sources which stores relevant customer data, if the data lies outside the enterprise - build a system to capture that data and build an enterprise OLAP to derive the data from all sources, then model the solution using a statistical modeling tool like SAS, etc and then build the logic in decision support tools like Real Time Decision, which will run on real time data and finally give the exact value to take a decision.

From the technical perspective, Analytical CRM is limited to CRM data base only and uses analytical tools like Siebel Analytics, etc and sits on CRM OLAP. But ICRM sits on Enterprise OLAP, takes data from several data sources, uses statistical modeling tools for modeling the solution and uses decision support tools like RTD, etc. ACRM is only a part of ICRM. ICRM is more accurate and provides exact, ready to use insights for effective decision making.

Posted by Guest Author at 8:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Confinement has always been meted with a rebellion to move out free. The desire to be your own boss, to plan your own schedule or to work on your own terms has always been inherent in every living species (I did not want to state and confine these desires only for humans).

Though not all mortals are lucky enough to fulfill these desires but some of us get this opportunity, because of the very nature of our job itself. “Sales Force Professionals” could be cited as an example.  Organizations plan and spend to keep this mobile force active, productive and efficient.  But in this ever-changing technology world, the choice of tools to be given to your mobile workforce should be planned cautiously.

Primarily application service providers have been offering mobile services on two technology platforms:

·        Laptop based

·        Handheld based

Both the solutions might have different technology platforms, but the intent was same: “To provide an offline medium for your workforce to manage their work, which could later be synchronized with organization’s central servers upon finding the connectivity”.

Both the solutions were evenly placed so far but with the emerging technologies of SOA and Convergence, the tide seems to be tilting more towards handheld when it comes to mobility.  The reasons are as follows:

1.      Wireless networks dominance

a.       Gone are the days of physical LAN connectivity when it comes to internet. Wi-Fi networks are prevalent everywhere from Starbucks to Airports. So why companies should invest in a laptop based mobile solution for CRM/ERP when the users can get connected to their central application servers despite being outside their offices?

b.      Does it make a difference if a Sales Executive accesses his organization’s CRM application from his office or from Airport lounge or from his client’s wireless network? His laptop in Wi-Fi  network is as good as his office PC connected to LAN.

2.      Web-Services based offline content/documents

a.       Companies like Adobe have revolutionized the offline document content and storage facilities. Why should companies invest in expensive laptop based mobility solutions when offline content can be stored in Adobe forms and synced up with servers through web services?

b.      These solutions are economical and easy to implement instead of setting up heavy mobility infrastructure requiring multiple servers and development workstations.

3.      Rich internet applications availability on handhelds

a.       It is needless to state that the likes of Blackberrys, Palms, iPhones etc. are leading the convergence revolution like never before.

b.      Most of the leading packaged applications provider including SAP and Oracle have out of the box solutions for hand-held devices like Blackberry. 

c.       In this context, why a Sales Executive need to open his laptop to update an opportunity after meeting a client? All he needs to do is to open his CRM app on blackberry, attach the meeting note to an existing opportunity and save. And huh… he is done !!!

 

Though these few points should no way be considered as writing an obituary for Laptop based mobility solutions but this is just an indication of the things to expect in mobile world for the future.

Lastly, some of the specific industry’s business processes will keep utilizing the services of Laptop based solution due to the inherent nature of their business. One example could be the Pharmaceuticals, where the Medical Representatives will keep using the laptop to discuss drugs, formulations, regulations and order booking on his/her laptop irrespective of connectivity.

Considering the fact that mobile infrastructure needs heavy investment and longer implementation cycles, decision to choose optimal devices for your mobility needs can go a long way in managing costs in these challenging economic times.

Posted by Vishal Mani at 7:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)