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July 16, 2007

How To Maximize Your CRM Software Investment
I received a great email from a UK user in which he asked “What else can I do to maximize my Aplicor CRM investment?” Fortunately, the answer for his organization can be applied to many organizations so I’m posting my response as a blog entry. My response to this good question is five-fold - Remember that CRM is a business strategy, tailor your system to meet your highest impact objectives, implement business process automation, seek to achieve enterprise-wide integrated information systems and provide recurring user training.

First, it’s important to remember that CRM is a business strategy and CRM software is a tool to enable and facilitate CRM. While the definition of CRM varies (according to your analyst firm, consultant or guru of choice), our own definition which acts as a pretty good starting point is that CRM is a business strategy aimed at understanding, anticipating and responding to the needs of an enterprise's current and potential customers. While CRM definitions vary, they seldom include the word ‘software’. In my opinion, nobody achieves CRM by simply implementing CRM software. To really achieve the promise and benefits of CRM, a CRM software project should start with and be continually steered toward a defined and recognized CRM business strategy.

Second, it’s been my experience that in the CRM SaaS industry, many clients are reluctant but willing to modify their business processes to accommodate their CRM software. This is generally a mistake. Aplicor has made a mark with the analyst community, industry pundits and our user community by providing easy to use and graphical tools which permit users to modify their CRM or ERP system in order to better accommodate each clients’ unique business processes and CRM objectives. Further, these type of modifications do not change source code or impair our clients from benefiting from future upgrades and new releases. If you’re not using tools such as the Navigator Designer, Workflow Designer, Forms Designer, Menu Editor and List Item Manager, I encourage you to reach out to your Aplicor Relationship Manager and find out what value and benefits these tools may deliver to your organization.

5 Steps To Maximize CRM Software

Third, we’ve learned many times over that implementing business process automation using our Workflow Designer is for many organizations the single greatest effort in accelerating user adoption and achieving the most significant labor savings. During all Aplicor-led implementations, we take time to identify the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) for each user group. Many times, we find automating business processes to be the biggest WIIFM for several types of user groups (particularly sales and customer support processionals).

Fourth, the only way to truly achieve a 360 degree customer view is with enterprise-wide information systems. When CRM does not integrate to back office accounting or ERP systems, the sales person loses visibility to sales order progress and fulfillment, outstanding receivables, credit terms utilization, products purchased, products returned, year to date or life to date sales histories, profitability or margin per customer and other meaningful client metrics. Aplicor of course provides a back office accounting and ERP solution which integrates to CRM, however, we recognize many clients have their own ERP or accounting software so in that case we highly recommend using our web services approach to integrate the two systems. The benefits to enterprise wide systems include reduced manual entry, reduced errors, faster cycle times and real-time information that can be analyzed and acted upon.

Lastly, my final recommendation is to implement continual user training. All CRM software systems evolve over time. Further, your use of the system will evolve over time. Continual periodic training classes increase users’ awareness of new features or functions in order to provide greater efficiencies and bolster their confidence to do more with the system.

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Posted by Chuck Schaeffer on July 16, 2007 in CRM Strategy
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