Customer Relationship Management

The recent acquisition of Chordiant by Pegasystems has created a lot of buzz in the CRM BPM space and several communities like the customer base, systems integrators, analysts are welcoming this news and watching the acquisition very closely to see how the synergy between the two companies would work out in the future and how they will collaborate to bring new products to market. While the deal will clearly provide synergies to both companies, it is also a function of the general consolidation in the CRM and BPM space. There has been a couple more acquisitions in the past in the BPM space i.e., IBM picked up Lombardi in December and Progress Software acquired Savvion earlier this year.

Pegasystems has established itself as a leading business process management player and offers a highly sophisticated, rules-driven approach to defining, modeling, and executing business processes. It offers roughly 30 industry specific templates, and well over a dozen cross-industry frameworks such as customer process management, control and compliance, procurement, loan origination and underwriting, wholesale banking, and retail bank account opening and so on. Its Customer Process Manager (CPM) delivers a rich framework of best-practice processes for multi-channel interaction management, case management and service automation that can be deployed as a departmental solution, an enterprise-wide service backbone, or part of a composite application. Pegasystems leads in customer service, lead management and workflow capabilities but lacks depth in the marketing capabilities.

Whereas Chordiant covers what it calls “customer experience management,” which tracks customer interactions and offers predictive analytics for optimizing cross-selling, up-selling, or customer retention strategies, or for predicting risk or churn. It also offers vertical templates for financial services, healthcare, and telecom for customer contact and service centers. Chordiant’s Decision Management offers adaptive decisioning capabilities where the rules can change automatically based on trends in customer response.

The acquisition, when complete, will see the two companies seek to leverage their respective strengths. The general industry feeling is quite optimistic at this moment as the Chordiant clients will be able to incorporate Pegasystems intent-driven process automation to enhance customer experience in their existing foundation and marketing solutions. Pegasystems’ clients can take advantage of Chordiant’s predictive decision management solutions, extensive CRM assets, and expertise in customer experience. The combination of the two companies would allow an expanded partner network, create new opportunities and incremental growth.

“This combination creates a broader portfolio which will offer an expanded client base new capabilities to meet next-generation CRM needs,” said Alan Trefler, Founder and CEO of Pegasystems. “We are excited to add Chordiant’s technology and domain expertise to bolster our previously announced investment plans in BPM and CRM.”

However, there are mixed views of this acquisition, some industry watchers feel that this could lead to a merging of the companies' synergies, resulting in an Oracle-type solution at a lower cost or, it could lead to conflicts over which technology to keep and which to let go, which might ultimately affect the integration of two products.

“Once the integration is complete, a combined Pegasystems-Chordiant could target enterprises looking for Oracle-like or SAP-like functionality, but at a smaller scale and price point - as well as a better focus on the end user”, as noted by Nucleus Research Vice President Rebecca Wettemann.
The industry watchers are saying that there are a number of interesting possibilities that could emerge from the acquisition. However there are significant risks as well, for instance, the "fairly serious difference of perspective between decision-centric decision management on one hand and rules-driven BPM on the other" could lead to conflicts in the integration of the two products.

There are basic architectural differences between the products, as decision management consultant and author James Taylor has pointed out. Taylor has traditionally been skeptical of Pega’s approach to embedding rules inside its process engine, rather than loosely coupling the two.

However, in my view combining Chordiant’s predictive analytics and simulation capabilities to Pega's rules-based platform could potentially lead to powerful solutions. Even the Chordiant Marketing Director and other CRM assets can enrich the merged company’s overall product basket to provide complete CRM solutions. Of course, the technical differences need to be taken care of while integrating the two products to bring out the strengths of each product. It would also be interesting to see a clear statement on product direction and the market positioning of the merged company.

It is evident that Pega is buoyed by the traction it has seen out of CPM offerings and the number of clients using its Customer Service Desktop. And it has made its intent clear that it wants to play in the CRM space. So on paper, Pega has made a sound deal. Apart from new technology and features, this acquisition gives Pegasystems a strong focus in CRM space specifically on the financial-services sector. Chordiant was recently named 73rd on the FinTech 100 rankings of top global technology providers to the financial-services industry.

However, one has to wait and watch how the synergy between the two companies would work out and the kind of benefits it would offer to the expanded customer base. Please do share your thoughts and views.

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On 15th Feb an announcement was made in the Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona.Two dozen of the world's largest mobile-phone companies, including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, NTT DoCoMo, Deutsche Telekom, China Mobile, Telecom Italia and Vodafone are teaming up to create an "open international applications platform," in direct response to Apple's success with its own iPhone App Store, Called the the "Wholesale Applications Community" (ref.).

On 17th, Google CEO has launched new mobile technology bits like how Google phones could already perform voice recognition and translate spoken phrases into different languages and claimed that people who don't even speak the same language will soon be able to have live conversations and Google phone cameras will translate items like foreign restaurant menus in seconds. (ref. ).

New Skype apps for the iPhone and Symbian platforms will allow mobile users to bypass telco voice networks completely, making calls using the internet over the 3G data network (ref.).

Already these facilitites have reached a common consumer like you and me who use skype for voice/vedio chat or some local provides which provide 5c/min call to UK, 3c/min to India from Australia with a great quality whereas the local national call is still 20c/min. So while enhancing the technology and making it handy (mobile), these innvotions puzzling the analysts and frightening telcos, who are unsure whether these companies are friends or "frenemies".

The telcos are being confined to only bandwidth providers turning them to dumb pipes which is causing tension to the Telcos and their monopolies, whether it is Telstra in Australia or AT&T, Verizon in USA (even after 1986 FCC resolutions in dividing the Bell company).

Another angle to this is from the innovations from traditional equipment manufacturers like Mobile - Nokia, Samsong etc. Network manufacturers - Alcatel-lucent, Nortel, Siemens etc. IP device manufacturers - Cisco, Juniper. So running a telco business with these many variety of suppliers (device, technology and services), ensuring the quality of service from to the end customers is a great challenge. These are some of the challenges in communications industry. 

Similar challenges and trengs can be seen in other industries also. From all these developments (being an IT oriented person) a serious question arises in mind. Will to-day's IT applications be able to satisfy these requirements and new developments? I doubt even tomorrow's IT applications (as per the roadmaps from big IT suppliers like Oracle / SAP etc.) can fulfill these industry challenges. I would be interested in knowing your immediate thoughts on this.

Posted by Raja Sekhar Ravi at 8:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

by Shyamalee Pramod Samvatsar

In this era of product commoditization and soaring customer expectations, manufacturing companies are transforming their business model to reduce their dependence on product revenues and cash in on the demand for Services. Based on my experience and reading, I have noted the following trends in customer service:

1) Companies are moving from product focused to a service focused model.

Owing to decreasing revenue and margin contribution from new product sales and stagnating new product demand, manufacturing companies are increasingly focusing on post sales service for market differentiation as well as revenue generation. Increase in installed asset base and life of the assets generates demand for maintenance activities over the lifetime of the assets. Therefore, services for these installed assets are becoming very lucrative.

2) Revenue via services is growing as a % of overall revenue.

Companies have begun to derive a greater proportion of their overall revenue from Services owing to the following:
• Revenue from services is more steady, predictable and counter-cyclical to product revenues.
• The profit-to-revenue ratio in services is higher than in the traditional products business, given the eroding margins on products from increased competition.
• Customer potential spend on services and consumables is far higher than the initial sales price of the equipment.

3) Companies are leveraging service channels to increase revenue. 

Customer service is being seen as a channel to cross-Sell/Up-Sell and increase revenue and profitability as below:
• Multi-layered service contracts help win long term business from customers as these assure the customer that all their service needs will be addressed by the company.
• A customer service rep with a 360 view of the customer is in a position to understand customer needs and make recommendations about other products/services that are of relevance to the customer. Customers are more receptive to this message as it is communicated at the time of service delivery and would be seen as ‘tying in’ to their requirements.

Specific to Field Service channel, these trends can be extended as below:

4) Field service is transforming from a cost center to a profit center.

Companies are no longer looking at field service as a ‘necessary evil’. They are enabling their field force with processes and technologies to provide quality service that will help transform the service function to a profit center as below:
• High quality service delivery can act as a tool for customer retention and therefore increased revenue in the long run.
• Efficient service delivery in terms of having the ‘right technician at the right place at the right time with the right parts and tools’ can help increase the profitability of the service function.
• Proactive repair and maintenance of assets can reduce costly SLA violations and warranty charges down the line.

5) Mobility has become a key to field service delivery.

Organizations are providing their Field force with mobile devices that give them access to real-time data on the field and keep them active, productive and efficient. Mobile solutions for Field Service can achieve the following:
• Eliminate Manual and Paper work
• Provide ability to get real-time customer data
• Provide access to product and inventory data
• Provide ability to invoice on-site and reduce the daily sales outstanding
• Provide ability to cross-sell/up-sell service

In my subsequent posts, I intend to explore how these trends have influenced IT solutions for Field service and how these solutions can be leveraged to enable the field force deliver better value to their customers. Would love you hear your thoughts and observations before proceeding.

About the Author

Shyamalee is a Lead Consultant with the Enterprise Solutions unit. She has end-to-end implementation  experience in CRM modules spanning sales, marketing, service and analytics. She has successfully managed a transformational CRM program at a global logistics provider and is currently anchoring a CRM solution initiative. Shyamalee will blog on various aspects of CRM, specifically around service and mobility solutions.

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by Amrith Rajasekaran

What are companies and corporations doing to enhance their presence on the social sphere? For starters, they create accounts on sites like Twitter, Facebook and mySpace. They use these forms of social media to spread awareness about products and also do a lot of branding and marketing activities through these.

With the advent of Twitter, more and more companies are offering ‘help-desk’ like features. They create accounts and employ people to constantly monitor these accounts and provide assistance. The idea is to leverage these social media platforms in helping reduce call center traffic and thereby cutting costs. In addition to just cost cutting, the aim is also to firmly establish a ‘connect’ with the customers. Increasingly, companies are realizing that however great a product they come out with, in the end, it’s the acceptance that determines how well the product does.

Companies now are developing dedicated ‘social media strategies’. They invest heavily on marketing on the internet and create entire marketing campaigns online. By getting to be ‘one-with-the people’, they essentially try to create a fan base by creating not just fans but ‘influencers’, people who go around and actually build the company’s image by recommending it’s products and services. In this day and age, when trust is not really the most easily obtainable thing in the world, companies try to win the trust of the customers by projecting a friendly image and making themselves inherently more sociable.

While some companies merely have a social presence to advertise and spread awareness about their products, others have entire strategies based on these social media sites; a few that instantly spring to mind are Dell, Zappos, Comcast and Starbucks. Frank Elaison, a senior Director of National Customer Service Operations of Comcast set up a Twitter account, ‘@comcastcares’. This account has become a massive hit in the ‘Twitterverse’ with thousands of queries being posted and people receiving quick solutions to their everyday problems. Not just limited to solving everyday problems, they have been very good at channeling the negative comments they recieve. Anyone who has a complaint against Comcast is sure to be heard and responded to. This truly sets them apart from the competition.

Zappos is a unique site that sells apparel and footwear through a website. Now what makes them unique is that they were probably the pioneers of the use of Twitter to do business. Social media is inbred in the company’s corporate culture. Almost all the employees have an active Twitter account and use these to share interesting information with the clients and thus establish a firm relationship with them.  The CEO of the company, Tony Hsieh, also plays a vital role in being accessible and providing a heartwarming personality to the entire company as a whole. Such was the tremendous growth of Zappos that it crossed over $1 billion in sales in 2008 itself and was acquired by Amazon for $1.2 billion. The reason for the tremendous business has most certainly been the relationship that it has managed to forge with its customers.

Starbucks managed to capture the imagination of its customers by opening up a site that called out to them to give their ideas for what they would like to see in their favorite coffee shop. Not just limiting the customers to ideas about new beverages, Starbucks also asks people to give ideas about merchandise, involvement and the whole ‘Starbucks experience.’ They then actively participate with the customers and incubate these ideas and implement the most feasible ones. Seeing their ideas getting implemented creates a ‘sense of belonging’ among the people and thus improves business.

Lastly, Dell. If one brand has been able to make the utmost use of the social media platform, it’s Dell. They were one of the pioneers in the initial e-commerce model and have now seamlessly integrated social media into this model. They shifted from the broadcasting to the direct communication with such ease and simplicity that no one actually noticed the change. Through their Twitter account, ‘@DellOutlet’, they have managed to garner more than a million followers, which has translated into a revenue of roughly $3 million. Also, they have platforms like ‘Idea Storm’ through which more than 350 user ideas have been implemented. ‘After three years of experimenting, listening and learning, however, we have concluded that social media is ultimately about connecting and communicating across all aspects of our business. This means that while a core social media team remains, the marketing, sales, service and support, and product groups all need to have their own fingers on the pulse and arms around their customers. While social media started as a way for Dell to distribute news and special offers, it has evolved into a critical relationship builder, integrated into all business units’, says Richard Binhammer, a senior manager in corporate communications at Dell.

Thus, it’s quite safe to conclude that social media is a phenomenon that is indeed taking the world by storm. Companies have shown that it is the way forward and they have shown that with a little bit of innovation and out-of-the-box thinking, customers can be converted into ‘friends’ and ‘well-wishers’  who can further your business by reaching out to the people who actually matter, the customers. Social media is the present, and by the looks of it, will be the future too. 

About the Author

Amrith Rajasekaran is part of the Product Incubation and Engineering unit. His areas of interest are  social media, its impact and potential.

Posted by Guest Author at 8:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here is what Mark Killens had to say on my last blog post on functionality coverage in CRM products for Marketing Automation: “CRM systems and marketing are very important sales enablement resources. They both must include tools to manage and report on how marketing is helping and enabling sales and how to keep track of the customer after a sale closes”. Please find the post, the comment and my response here.

I perceive Mark’s comment as referring to one of the long standing challenges for Marketers – how do you attribute the end Sales revenues to the original Marketing efforts? This ability to tie the eventual revenues back to the campaigns, thereby closing the loop, has largely been either impossible or a difficult task to accomplish for Marketers - thus making it a Holy Grail.

One of the reasons for this is that the leaders in the Enterprise Marketing area today evolved differently. For instance, the enterprise vendors typically started with database / eMail marketing (capitalizing on the contact / account data already available in the sales automation system) - the ‘execution’ area - and gradually integrated (and integrating) backwards into Marketing Resource Management (MRM) area. And there were point solutions aimed at fulfilling the needs of MRM area – the ‘planning’ area - which integrated forwards into eMail Marketing. This resulted in organizations large enough with needs in both planning and execution areas investing in more than one application for Marketing needs. And the result is the familiar story of issues with tying these multiple systems together.

And just tying the systems together – or, for that matter, having just one integrated solution –has not been sufficient to address this either. You have the classic attribution problem. You can run eMail campaigns, have prospects/contacts respond to them and capture them as leads in the system. But, what if a prospect just talks to one of your sales guys who just decides to ‘pocket’ the lead and just creates an opportunity without tying it back to your email campaign?

The good news is that vendors are making progress in addressing issues like these. For instance, in version Siebel Marketing 8.1, Oracle introduced Inferred Responses functionality, which in a sense addresses the above attribution problem. While that certainly does not address all the issues, that indeed is a step towards closing the loop – Marketers’ Holy Grail.

Posted by Alex Rishi Sankar at 10:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

by Vinod Nag

A “dispute” in the context of credit cards pertains to questioning the validity of a card transaction. Most dispute complaints begin in a similar fashion - the card holder communicates with the card issuer bank through one of the channels – telephone, e-mails, direct mail (posts) etc. The customer service representative will then collect the necessary details and determines how this enquiry has to be dealt with.

It is common for dispute cases to be processed by the back office, which involves identification of appropriate reason codes, analyzing validity of dispute, requesting additional documentation, processing chargeback and re-billing, finally closing the dispute case or taking it to arbitration. Back office agents spend a good amount of time resolving disputes, however, they sometimes ends up forwarding cases to another agent for analysis and closure. Banks aim to minimize excess fund spent on resolution, charges/fees and write-off disputed amounts in favor of their customers. It is seen that a huge number of small value write-offs totals to a big amount which is a loss to the issuer bank. Similarly, the time spent on dispute investigation and fees/charges paid to a third party for transaction retrieval and document processing will also account for a reduction in profit margin. It’s been a challenge for banks to minimize write-offs and reduce the dispute resolution time to increase profits.

At the same time, a card holder who has raised a dispute will be not sure of processes and reversal of disputed amount. He will be in a fear of losing dispute case and unaware of the prevailing status of the dispute case. Thus any unclear communication or delays caused can irritate the customer and become concerns for customer experience.

On the other hand, the merchant involved in a disputed transaction is required to furnish details/documents if he thinks the presentments (bills produced to the Issuer bank through merchant bank called Acquirer) are correct. In such a situation, the merchant need to spend time in verifying reason codes, transaction details, related documents etc and represent them to his bank to stand by his initial presentment. Merchants are at a risk of losing the disputed amount if representments are not made on time and details verified are incorrect. The merchant then not only loses the disputed amount, but he will end up paying a service fee/penalty to the acquirer. He will also have the risk of fraudulent transactions and cases getting ended up in arbitration.

While attempting to please all the parties involved in disputes case processing, is it not a good idea for banks to expose some of the dispute resolution processes to card holder and merchants? Online dispute processing can work smoothly for onus-onus transaction wherein a bank is acting as an Issuer and acquirer for a given disputed transaction. Enabling online processing may be a challenge if the merchant bank is different from the issuer bank as he will be represented by his acquirer bank.

Following is a representation of what steps/processes can be exposed to the card holder:

Issuer banks can invite card holders to submit their disputes on a secured portal. This portal can be supported by integrating with the existing CRM system with a little customization for case management for tracking and update purpose. To help a card holder respond to the required questions, forms should be made available on the portal which should be driven by a decision engine for foolproof data entry and assignment of correct reason codes.  There should also be a facility to upload documents and images supporting dispute. With this, a customer can easily raise a dispute case, continuously monitor the status and respond as required. The back office will review this and request the customer for more details, decide whether the card holder is liable and if otherwise, route it to merchant for chargeback.  The merchant with a notification would review and respond quickly. This would also minimize his paper work and the time spent in correspondence with his acquirer.

Listed below are a few benefits that might set banks thinking on the lines of externalizing some of the steps involved in dispute resolution and increase its satisfied cardholders segment.

Benefits to Issuer

• Reduced time for data capture, analysis, validation, routing and decisioning
• Elimination of misinterpretation during data capture
• Increase in back office productivity of
• Efficient communication and correspondence system
• Reduces expenses on documentation processing and management
• Satisfied customers
• Increased customer trust with the issuer bank
• Reduced number of write-offs
• Controlled number of Chargeback initiation
• Possibility of externalizing the back office tasks (off shoring or sub contractors)

Benefits to Card holder/ Merchant

• Customer understands the importance and relevance of the data being furnished
• Card holder knows what went wrong better than analyst – a feeling that he was able to express his concerns completely
• Provides clear and required details even for low value disputed transactions
• Cost and time saved as case is created electronically – no posts, re-posts, confirmations etc.
• Transparent processes appreciated by card holder
• Right status at any time across all communication channels (email, web, telephone…)

With an online support system, it is possible to fast track dispute cases, reduce the time and money spent on dispute investigation, reduce write-offs and minimize cases getting into arbitration, and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. Will such a provision for interaction not be beneficial to both cardholder and merchant besides improving customer experience?

About the Author

Vinod anchors the Chordiant Centre of Excellence within the Enterprise Solutions unit, besides being involved in presales. He has managed offshore delivery of projects for major North American banks, achieving high customer satisfaction in these engagements. He has also been active in initiatives for competency development. Vinod will blog on marketing, campaign management, and various aspects of CRM.

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Data streaming, so what does this mean? What does MDM means for data stream? Good question read on.

Data stream is an entirely new concept, which effectively means do not query onto a consolidated data set, but stream the data through a set of query to obtain the result. Too complicated to comprehend. Let me explain this through a diagram.                                                                  
Good. An image typically describes this better than 1000 words. So where can this be applied? Well in Master data management, most of us would have heard about a concept called Identity resolution (please refer to my previous blog for additional details). It means effectively identifying positively relationship between two individual based on who you know? and whom your relationship (network) know through direct or indirect interactions? There are specific tools in the market which does this especially to perform risk profiling, calculating risk delinquency etc.

So where does, MDM fits in? Master data management implemented in a transactional style of implementation may have to pass the data stream at real time for providing the business insights. This could be based on the domain the implementation is done. In case this is for a health care provider it may be to quickly collate whether a prenatal baby is subjected to higher risk incidence of a particular type of disease or not.

How is this implemented? Well a prenatal baby that is tagged into the emergency ICU will have probes that captures various vital signs at real time and pass this data to a correlation engine where the disease and risk incidences are profiled and reported. This effectively means lower effective work load on doctors and helps to detect medical conditions in advance to that of an experienced nurse. The advantage of data stream on top of MDM systems are

• obtain real time insights from data in motion
• sufficient level of nimbleness in decision making 
• support for mission critical applications

The opportunities are unlimited and the possibilities are constrained by our limitations to imagine. So the aim of this blog is to identify possible business scenario, to collaborate and develop this solution?

Posted by Jairaj Asok Kumar at 3:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We have seen the tremendous rise in internet usage in the recent past. Even with such fast growth, internet penetration is only about 25% of the world population with a large scope for further growth. Also, commerce over the internet is growing due to increased transaction security and ease of operation. Companies should take advantage of this online channel for trade to increase customer satisfaction and reduce cost of operations through a self service facility. But in order to take the full advantage of online channel, companies should conduct a detailed study of the various factors involved before embarking on their online strategy.

Some points worth considering before implementing an online Self Service application are:

• Identify the type of customers who are going to use the self service application (e.g. consumers, business users, distributors etc).
• Check if self service functionality is absolutely essential for the company to increase revenue / improve customer experience / reduce operational costs.
• Perform a Cost Benefit Analysis (investment vs. the revenue/cost reduction) before making a decision to implement self service.
• Conduct an analysis of the requests made by the customers through retail stores / call centers and apply 80-20 rule to decide the functionalities to be offered through self service.
• Keep in mind the broadband penetration in the geographies where the self service application needs to be launched.
• Try to keep the functionality very simple so that customers can use it easily and effectively. Simple websites can fetch quick and more revenue.
• Transaction security is one of the factors that need to be considered.
• Check if the current trend of Social Networking (through Facebook, Twitter etc) can help increase customer satisfaction, loyalty and increase order conversion rate etc.
• Identify the services that you would like to offer to the customer via the self service mode based on the cost-benefit analysis. Some of the services like disconnection of services are not advisable to be offered through self service channels.
• Segregate the functionalities into real time service or non real time services.
• Ensure that you have appropriate teams to handle requests received through self service channels.
• Try to implement the self service functionality in phases in order to minimize risks and improve usability.
• Ensure that your current systems are capable of handling some of the most important services offered through internet like up-sell / cross-sell, product comparison, personalized offers etc.
• Try and ensure that the customer experience obtained through self service is comparable with the experience through retail stores by providing functionalities like click to call or click to chat etc.
• Find ways to motivate customers to use self service application rather than call centers.

It is very essential to perform the analysis of the above factors before deciding on an online self service strategy. A carefully designed self service application can go a long way in improving customer experience, and customer satisfaction rates while reducing costs of operation.

Posted by Suhas Kanade at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For companies to innovate, it is largely understood that there are two components involved: exploiting existing internal repository of knowledge and secondly, exploring new ideas, some of which can be directly adopted from external sources including customers, suppliers, partners etc. On one hand, managers may experience a cultural inertia on the idea of customer as a collaborator; on other hand, there is also an access issue - how do you make relevant customer feedback flow through the organization?

Lego, for example, used a virtual platform legoclick.com to invite customers to suggest new product features and the company rewarded those whose ideas were marketable. Others like Dell are collaborating with customers through online forums, helping it identify new avenues for growth. SAP has a formal program for inviting "expert" customers (or partners) to test out new functionalities in SAP products. At the end of the testing session, partners are required for fill out an online feedback form on areas including usability, performance, functional completeness and correctness.

An IBM study reveals that collaborative partnership with customers makes sound business sense - it not only reduces overall costs, but also helps increase revenues by approximately 40%. Moreover, customers tend to be better retained (loyalty) and enjoy a close partnership with the company.

Which brings me to the question: Is CRM the untapped avenue for innovation? Customer-led innovation can occur when CRM system essentially captures ideas from customers by engaging them in a community-like forum, and some of these ideas could be pursued by the company and tracked through the CRM system. Nowhere this is more relevant than in context of social CRM, that attempts to use external social conversations for business benefit. Customer roles in such an engagement can be broadly formalized into conceptualization, design, testing, support and marketing stages. However, currently, CRM systems are not equipped to incorporate customer involvement in the first three stages. CRM vendors need to explore the possibility of modifying existing capabilities to fit in new ones - for example, in conceptualization, which includes suggestions for new products or for product improvement, the current opportunity management could be modified, the key difference being the change from sales-driven approach to a value-driven one. Linking to other areas of CRM such as loyalty management should also be explored.

Posted by Arun George at 2:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Some of you might have read the recent blog entry titled “How CRM products can aid Marketing” by fellow Infosys CRM blogger Vamsi Krishna. He ended his entry with the question “are marketers really using these CRM product capabilities to the maximum extent?”

While that certainly is a relevant question to ponder for small scale and stand alone marketing implementations, a deeper look at the needs of large scale Enterprise Marketing departments seems to indicate that functionality coverage in today’s CRM products is not sufficient.

Let us look at some of the key capabilities that Enterprise Marketing departments need:

• Capability to manage strategic planning process. This groups most of the requirements that are normally clubbed under the umbrella term Marketing Resource Management or MRM. Marketers need the ability to
• Manage plans for the upcoming plan period
• Manage budgets 
• Manage approvals with appropriate audit trails
• Manage goals and track metrics
• Capability to prepare for Marketing Tactics that have been identified from the planning process. Once the plans are finalized for the upcoming plan period, Marketers need the ability to
• Break down the strategic plans to execution tactics level
• Manage tactics like single or multistage campaigns and events
• Manage purchased lists
• Manage the creative or collateral development process
• Manage segmentation of the target audience
• Manage outside vendors for creative development 
• Manage related approvals
• Manage Marketing Calendar 
• Capability to execute Marketing Tactics. During the execution phase, Marketers would need the ability to
• Launch tactics across different channels like email, direct mail, phone, fax, etc.
• Run automated, triggered, multistage and recurring tactics
• Run campaigns in manageable chunks or waves
• Test launch campaigns
• Integrate with outside organizations partnering in campaign execution
• Capability to capture Responses and process them: Once campaigns are launched, Marketers need the ability to
• Capture responses to tactics coming in from different channels
• Associate responses to the right campaigns with minimal manual interventions
• Score responses based on a configurable set of scoring criteria
• Pass Responses / Leads back and forth with Sales department
• In addition to the above, there are also ongoing needs like Knowledge Management and Reporting that are commonly part of Enterprise Marketing requirements. And then there are other other industry specific requirements - like for instance, a brand marketer from consumer goods industry may require the ability to track the market share of the brand compared to competitors.

Current offerings from product vendors - including the ones from the Market leaders like Unica, Aprimo and Oracle – do not address all the above needs in a holistic and integrated manner. In fact, not all products seem to have all the capabilities mentioned above.

Would love to hear what your take is given the above needs and any other needs that you may have come across - Is functionality coverage in CRM products today sufficient for Enterprise Marketing?

Posted by Alex Rishi Sankar at 3:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)