Thought that I would let my Canadian heritage show this morning! I recently participated in an interesting Focus.com Discussion initiated by Kerri Groves, a
Brit from Vancouver now living in UK!
The following summarizes the discussion and my contribution including some
additional post-discussion thoughts. Kerri
started this Discussion with a question along the lines of “CRM has been around
for quite a while and maybe has not produced the expected (or hyped) business
impact. Yet many still believe that a
successful implementation is just as easy as downloading an app to your phone
or pad. No one views an ERP
implementation this way! So what’s up?”
I have participated in both CRM and ERP implementations – so I have
seen both sides now! It seems to me
that part of the answer lays in the starting point for each, in evolution of
the technologies, expectations for the outcomes for the resulting
implementations, and business priorities.
This sounds like Stages of IT Maturity (i.e., CMM)! A quick walk thru history might help put
things into a context.
The mainstream ERPs (e.g., Oracle, SAP) that have been around for a
while started way back in the days of mainframes with all that JCL stuff that
was not user friendly! In fact these
were big complex systems that required specialized IT skills just to install
the vendor software. That was acceptable
as IT had all the skills necessary, and it was seen as an IT responsibility. The vendor software was developed with the
assumption that these required skills would not be a limiting factor in the
success of their ERP solution. Further, the
top business priority was to get the operational part of the business done,
accounted for, and reporting on correctly and timely! The expectation was that the data when
reported was correct; after all the company used this data to take action, in
annual reports, filings, executive compensation, etc. Time
moves on, this stuff is pretty mature by now; people have realistic
expectations about what is required to implement a successful business system.
The sales guys were historically pretty much left on their own to
manage their sales opportunity tracking.
In the early days most nascent CRM software solutions could only survive
in a world where sales users could manage its implementation (the IT guys were
busy working on the latest ERP upgrade!).
As a result CRM solutions
developed on user accessible platforms; laptops initially then later “in the
cloud”. In order to survive the whole
implementation of the technical CRM solution had to be very easy, quick, and
not require a lot of technical support!
And in fact today a simple “stand alone” cloud solution for tracking
accounts, contacts, leads, sales opportunities can be turned on in a couple of
weeks, by non-IT people! Expectations for the data played a big role. Most organizations historically and perhaps
even today see this as “data for the sales guys”. It never leaves their department; the company
does not formally report this data beyond its internal use, and so forth. So most sales managers took the view that “close
is good enough” because in their view “It’s a lot better than those
spreadsheets we had before!” Early
implementation success was never broadly reviewed within the company; maybe not
even within the sales organization. However,
the CRM side is maturing as well.
The past few years have seen many developments and changes in the CRM
space and the satellite solutions around it.
In fact it could be said at a highly accelerated pace of
advancement! Vendors have been pushing
the functionality of their solutions with a significant focus on links and
integrations to other business systems (e.g., ERPs), internal and external sites,
and services. Sales management’s
expectation for what can be done has been increased (mostly by vendor
push). The very competitive business marketplace
of the past several years has raised the business priority on improving sales
results. The nature of CRM is changing
as well. I recently sat in on a webcast
by InformationWeek and IBM on “Becoming a Social Business". What Ted Schadler of Forrester Research
described looks like the next wave in CRM evolution – Social
CRM! Big implications! As result CRM implementations have now become
bigger, more complex (i.e., more money), more disruptive to normal sales and
other business operations, and with links into other business systems
(back-end, front-end, you name it!). Maybe
starting to take on that “ERP implementation look”! Hence people are asking a good question “Did
we get the value that we set out to achieve?”
And… maybe the answers are not so rosy!
At this point you could say that the industry is in or approaching the
Disillusionment Stage of IT Maturity for CRM implementation! If not now then soon as the “laws of IT Maturity”
hold that all must go through these Stages.
So how can an organization minimize the impact and time spent in this
Stage? This is where, as David Brock
pointed out, organizations need to shift their focus to Change Management. It’s not about the technology! It’s about identifying, understanding, and successfully
implementing the business change that will drive the business results sales
management seeks. The focus should be on
assisting sale management to enhance the maturity of their thinking about and
involvement in not only the functional aspects but the business change aspects
of CRM implementation. Change Management
is an organizational skill and capability, not something invested in a few
people. It is an organizational capability
that must be developed internally, over time; it cannot be acquired through service-for-hire
people (although they can coach you). It
is also has a maturity
growth curve so there are implications about how much change can be successfully
achieved depending upon the organization’s current level of Change maturity. To succeed the scope of a CRM implementation must
be broadened from “Is the system installed and turned on?” to “Has the new
behavior that we envisioned as result of new system been adopted and become the
norm, and are we getting the expected business results? If not, why not!” As the capabilities of an organization mature
the disciplines of Project Management and Change Management merge into a single
project plan, let’s call it a program.
So going forward in addition to the usual questions about objectives,
functionality and funding, sales leaders anticipating a CRM implementation (or
major upgrade/enhancement) should ask themselves the following “What changes in
the way we sell and what resulting changes in the behavior of my sales teams,
and myself, will be required to achieve my goal? Based on our organization’s ability to adopt business
change how much can we reasonably expect to introduce successfully? What do I have to do to ensure my sales
people and others adopt the changes? How
will I track progress in this change? How
long will it take for the new behavior to become the norm? What is my role and that of my sales managers
in making this happen? How much of my
personal time should I be engaged in this?”
Steps need to be included in the overall project/program plan to make
sure that these questions are addressed and appropriate actions taken to ensure
the expected business goals of the program are realistic, achievable, and achieved.
This Discussion started with the expressed frustration that people see
a CRM implementation as easy as downloading an app to their phones. The consensus seems to be that installing the
application is relatively straightforward, technical in nature, accomplished by
in-house staff and/or service-for-hire people. The major challenge for the overall CRM program
is getting the organization to successfully adopt the required change in
business process to yield the envisioned business results. The bottom-line: if you are a sales executive
anticipating the implementation of a new CRM then you must carefully assess
your organization’s ability to adopt change, be very pragmatic about what
change you introduce, and doggedly nurture its progress to a successful
outcome!
Along the way in this Discussion there were two interesting and related
Sidebars that came up. These have an
impact on a successful CRM implementation and must be considered.
- First one reminded everyone that CRM is really about Relationship Management, and that people need to think beyond the initial simple motivation for CRM of tracking sales opportunities, leads, or contacts. In the broader context mainstream CRM systems capabilities are intended for a go much beyond these few single things. They provide the capability to manage the relations between these and many other items including accounts, products, competitors, participants in sales pursuits; they support relationships over the entire lifecycle of business relationship with a client from sales to after sales service and support. They become true corporate data repositories relied upon by others beyond Sales. As Kerri eloquently defined “single elements converging within strategically positioned multiple dimensions”.
- The second dealt with the preponderance of electronic communications routed
through email and the obstacle that this poses to the advancement of CRM
success. Essentially if all electronic
communications is routed through email (primarily a point-to-point media) the
richness of the messages may never be associated with the appropriate objects
within the CRM and hence may not be available to all participants who need to
know, now and at some later date. Email has
a long history of use and is the de facto “norm” for electronic communications. However, email has its limitations! It is not always inclusive (i.e., key people
left out), typically does not include the history, and was not stored with the
Lead, Opportunity or Account records making it hard for remotely located team
members to stay current. In my
experience a sales pursuit runs on information.
The sales person starts with little information and works toward
developing more, a lot more. Maybe a
deal is won when you have perfect information!
Consider the following scenario. Today’s
selling of complex solutions involves virtual teams with several members often
remote from each other. A pursuit (to
win) may take several months to execute.
The same participants often participate in other parallel virtual teams
with different participants. To get to
“perfect information” it is incumbent upon all participants in a pursuit to
contribute information and to follow and use what others have contributed to
advance the sale. (BTW: the sales
business process should define what information should be available at what stage
in the pursuit, along with some management rules about what to do or not do if
the information is not available). It is usually incumbent upon the sales person
to take the lead in ensuring that this communication about information
pertinent to the pursuit is taking place.
The sales person, and other participants, all have high demands upon
their time. They wish to communicate
quickly and efficiently. To do so they
turn to the most ubiquitous means available – their old friend email sent from
their phone or pad just after leaving the client office! So in this scenario part of the constraint to
CRM adoption was the expectation that all participants would communicate
through the CRM which was perceived by Sales as more time consuming and perhaps
less timely way of communicating. This
had less to do with change management and more about a short term deficiency in
the technical solutions available. Time
is money to sales people! The last time
I tried this level of integration with ubiquitous email and CRM solutions the
result was pretty clunky and largely rejected by participants. When this perception is overcome one less
impediment to CRM success will be removed.
As Ted Schadler said in the recent webinar, and I paraphrase, “People
adopt when new is significantly better than old!”
Dean, Brilliant! In 18 years in the CRM Software Implementation business I have never read a piece as well done as this. And it has nothing to do with the fact I am mentioned, although I am happy to see I got you so inspired to take the Focus discussion to another level. :) Thank you for contributing this fine work of art to the universe of CRM evolution!! All the best, Kerri Groves
ReplyDeleteDean: What a thoughtful post! I'm flattered to have been referenced.
ReplyDeleteI tend to think we make the implementation of these systems much more complex than they need be--not meaning to trivialize the technical issues. I think we pay too little attention to why we are implementing, what we expect to achieve, what's in it for the users (sales people), how does it make their jobs better, etc.
So often, I see technical successes in the implemantation, but terrible business failures because we've failed to look at the user perspectives.