Aj. Khuanlux Mitsophonsiri CS.467 Customer relationship management Technology

Planning and implementingCustomer relationship management

projects(Cont’)

Chapter 3

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Having created the CRM strategy the next phase involves building the foundation for the CRM implementation.

1. Identify stakeholdersStakeholders include any party that will be impacted by the Change-this could include senior management, users of any new system, marketing staff, salespeople, customer service agents, channel partners, customer and IT specialists. Their participation in the CRM project may be required at some the future point. Research suggest that the early involvement of parties affected by change help pre-emt later problems of resistance. Vendor experience indicates that the early involvement and participation of senior management is likely to promote a more successful implementation.

Phase 2: Build the CRM project foundations

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System users are important stakeholders. The importance of involving system user in the implementation of new technologies Is reinforced by research conducted by Fred Davis and others. Davis found that intention to use a new technology is predicted by the perceived ease-of-use of the technology and the perceived usefulness of the of the technology.

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2. Establish governance structuresCRM projects are designed and implemented by people.

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3. Identify change management needs

Even small CRM projects can prove challenging in terms of change management. A sale-force automation project might involve centralizing data that is presently kept on individual representatives’ computer and making that available to everyone in the team. Representatives will need to learn to share. In a distributed sales-force, these representatives may not have even met each other. If they also have to change their selling methodology, record keeping and reporting habits, there might be some worries, if not outright resistance.

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John Kotter whose eight-step approach to managing change is widely cited and deployed. The eight steps are as follows:1. Create a sense of urgency so people begin to feel ‘we must do

something’2. Put together a guiding team to drive the change effort3. Get the vision right, and build supporting strategies4. Communicate for buy-in5. Empower action by removing organizational barriers to change6. Produce short-term wins to diffuse cynicism, pessimism and

scepticism7. Donงt let up, but keep driving change and promoting the vision8. Make change stick by reshaping organizational culture.

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4. Identify project management needs

CRM implementations can place considerable demands on project management skills. A CRM project plan spells out the steps that will get you from where you are now (customer strategy situation analysis) to where you want to be (CRM vision, goals and objectives), on time and within budget. The CRM programmed director generally performs the project management role, but some time it is outsourced to a consultant. A project plan sets out the tasks to be performed. The order in which they are to be executed, the tasks (including people and money) and deliverables from each each task.

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5. Identify critical success factorsCritical success factors (CSFs) are the ‘must haves’ that underpin project success. critical success factors can be defined as follow

CSFs are attributes and variables that can significantly impact business outcomes.

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6. Develop a risk management plan

It has been claimed that a large number of CRM project, perhaps as many as two-thirds, fail. Of course, there can be many potential causes of failure, ranging from inadequate project management to resistance of end-users to the adoption of new technologies. At this stage, you’ll be trying the major risks to achieving the desired outcome. Once identified, you can begin to put risk mitigation strategies and contingency plans in place.

Gartner names a number of common cause of CRM failure: Organization culture that is not customer-focused; poor-quality customer data and information; creation of the CRM team happening last, and the team lacks business staff; no measures or monitoring of benefits and lack of testing etc.

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Risk mitigation strategies are your responses to these risk. Let’s take the risk of management having little or no customer understanding. How might you respond to this? There are a number of things you could do management could work in the front-line serving customers (McDonalds’ executives do this), listen in to call centre interactions for at least one hour a week or mystery shop your own and competitor organizations.

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Having built the CRM project foundations, the next phase Involves specifying need and selecting suitable partners.

1. Process mapping and refinementThe first task of Phase 3 is to identify business processes that need attention – making them more effective or efficient or flagging them as candidates for automation. Business processes can be defined as follows:

A business is set of actives performed by people and/or technology in order to achieve a desired outcome.

Phase 3: Specify needs and select partner

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Put more simply, business processes are how things get done by your company. Processes can be classified in several ways:

Vertical processes : are those that are located entirely within abusiness function.

Horizontal processes : are cross-functional. New product development processes are typically horizontal and span sales, marketing, finance and research and development functions.

Front-office (or front-stage) processes : are those that customers encounter. The complaints handling processes is an example.

Back-office (or back-stage) processes : are invisible to customers, the procurement process. Many processes straddle both front and back-offices: the order-fulfilment process (see Figure 3.11) is an example. The order taking part of that process sits in the front-office. The production scheduling part is back-office.

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A distinction is also made between primary and secondary processes.Primary processes have major cost implications for companies or,

given their impact on customer experience , major revenue implications. Customers may have different perspective on what is Important. They typically do not care about back-office processes. They care about the processes that touch them. In the insurance Industry these are the claims process, the policy renewal process and the new policy purchase process. In the courier business they are the pick-up, delivery and tracking processes.

Secondary processes have minor implications for costs or revenues, or little impact on customer experience.

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2. Data review and gap analysis

Having identified processes that require attention, the next step is to review the data requirements for the CRM implementation and to identify shortfalls.

At this stage of planning the CRM project, you are identifying the data that is needed for CRM purposes and creating an inventory of data that is available for these purposes. The gap between what is available and what is needed may be quite significant. A useful distinction can be made between ‘need-to-know’ and ‘like-to-know’ that is, between information needed for CRM purposes and information that might be useful at some future point. Give the costs of developing and maintaining customer-related databases, companies need to be rigorous in screening data requirements

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3. Initial technology needs specification and research alternative solutions

Earlier in this process you began to consider technology requirements Now you can return to this question with a clearer focus on the process and data issues. There are a huge number of software applications that fall under the heading of CRM. They are show in Figure 3.13. You need to decide what applications will deliver you CRM vision and meet the business case requirements.

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4. Write request for proposals (RFP)

Before calling for proposals you need to write a detailed RFP. This document becomes the standard against which vendors’ proposals are evaluated. It summarizes your thinking about the CRM programme and invites interested parties to respond in a structured way. Typical contents of the RFP include:

1. Instructions to respondents2. Company background3. The CRM vision and strategy4. Strategic, operational, analytical and collaborative CRM

requirement5. Process issues:

- customer interaction mapping- process re-engineering

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6. Technology issues: - functionality required – sales, marketing and service

- management reports required- hardware requirements and performance measures- architectural issues- systems integration issues- customization requirements- upgrades and service requirements

7. People issues:- project management services- change management services- management and staff training

8. Cost issues9. Implementation issues – training, support etc.

10. Contractual issues 11. Criteria for assessing proposals 12. Timeline for responding to proposals.

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5. Call for proposals

The next step is to invite potential partners to respond to the RFP. You’ll see from the RFP contents that CRM projects sometimes require input from several process, people and technology partners. On the technology side, if your company is already paying for CRM modules as part of its enterprise IT system, you’ll certainly want to add this technology vendor to the list of those invited to respond. Between three and six potential technology vendors are typically invited.

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6. Revised technology needs identification

Proposals from technology vendors will sometimes identify opportunities for improved CRM performance that you may not have considered. Perhaps there is some functionality or an issue that you had not considered. For example, you might not have considered the need to provide implementation support to sales representative in the field. A vendor who indicates that they’ll be able to help representatives learn the new technology in remote locations might be very attractive.

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7. Assessment and partner selection

The next stage is to assess the proposals and select one or more partners. This take is generally performed by an evaluation term formed for this purpose and reporting to the steering committee. Assessment is made easier if you have a structured RFP and scoring system. There are two types of scoring system – unweighted and weighted. An unweighted system simply treats

each assessment variables as equally important. A weighted system acknowledges that some variables are more important than others others. These are accorded more significance in the scoring process.

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Evaluation and selection should involve more than just the written vendor proposals. Short-listed vendors should be invited to demonstrate their solutions in relevant sceneries. Vendors may be required to provide proof-of-concept for technical solutions such as e-mail integration or mobile synchronization. Finally, preferred vendors should be subject to reference checks. The results of all these inputs are then scored to support the final decision.

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By now, you have developed the CRM strategy, built the CRM project foundations, specified your needs and selected one or more partners. It is now implementation time!

1. Refine project planThe first step of Phase 4 requires you to cooperate with your selected partners in refining the project plan. Remember, this was originally defined without consideration of the needs and available of your partners. You may find that your partner’s consultants are already committed to other projects and that you’ll have to wait. Your partners will be able to help you set new milestones and refine the budget.

Phase 4: Project implementation

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2. Identify technology customization needsIt is very common that off-the-shelf technology fails to meet all the requirement of users. Some vendors have industry-specific versions of their CRM software. Oracle, for example, offers a range of CRM suites for banking, retail, public sector and other verticals. Even so, some customization is often required. The lead developer, database developer and front-end developer, in partnership with vendors, can perform these roles.

Customization needs are typically specified using a gap analysis approach. The required business process is supplied to the vendor, who (after some preparation) presents how this process is supported in the software. The resultant gap registers is then assessed, priorities are established and customization of their software and/ or modification of the business process begins.

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3. Prototype design, test, modify and roll-outThe output of this customization process will be a prototype that can be test by users on duplicated set, or a dummy set, of customer-related data. End-user tests will show whether further customization is required.

A new service automation solution might be rolled out to newly acquired customers first, before the existing customer base is imported. The idea is to iron out any problems before company-wide adoption.

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The final phase of the CRM project involves an evaluation of its performance. How well has it performed? Two sets of variables can be measured: project outcomes and business outcomes. Project outcome focus whether the project has been delivered on time and to budget. Your evaluation of the business outcomes requires you to return to the project objectives, your definition of CRM success and the case, and ask whether the desired results have been achieved.

Phase 5: Evaluate performance