How CRM can Sow the Seeds of a Better Business Ecosystem

(Dec 9 2009) CRM Blog

Categories:
Technologies: Cloud Computing, CRM, CRM Blog, ERP, ERP Blog, Green IT, on-demand, SaaS, web-based

Quotes

  1. “ Sales is still the leas productive and most variable part of business. ”
    By Swayne Hill
  2. “ We decided to work backwards to a solution. ”

Authors


  1. By Chris Bucholtz, CRM Blogger

    It’s been said thousands of times that CRM is not by itself a solution to all your business’s woes, and that’s true. It can only succeed when there’s an appropriate mindset among the people who use and implement it. But even when that’s accomplished, an organization can keep ratcheting up the effectiveness of its CRM system by adding to its capability, often by integrating other pieces of technology into the mix. Those technologies include marketing automation, ERP, financial software, HR, product development and other key parts of your business infrastructure.

    In my past blog, we dubbed this customer-centric business ecosystem the “CRM-isphere,” and Forester’s Bill Band articulated a similar concept (minus the goofy manufactured buzzword) in a report last summer.

    Like any critical business system or process, building this extended software infrastructure should be done deliberately and should seek out a key pain point first to build momentum for the next phase of the project. One of the best areas for this is business intelligence (BI) and analytics, especially since the advent of SaaS BI. In many cases, what managers are looking for in CRM is the detailed, actionable sales analysis that BI delivers.

    “Sales is still the least productive and most variable part of business,” said Swayne Hill, the CEO of Cloud9, a SaaS analytics firm, and someone who’s also though long and hard about the CRM-BI relationship. “We’ve figured out how boost the efficiency of manufacturing, logistics and most of the other back-office operations, but only half of all sales people make their numbers. Clearly, there are plenty of challenges.”

    Cloud9 made a decision to focus its analytics on sales management, as opposed to focusing on more general sales and marketing issues. “We decided to work backwards to a solution,” he said. “That meant focusing on sales’ problems, and providing visibility that leads to changes in sales behavior. That’s different from core CRM functionality. Then, if you can understand your account drivers, then you can look at what marketing is working on and then align your team goals.” In other words, Cloud9’s approach is to provide visibility into the sales pipeline first so managers can understand how and why deals move through the pipeline. Once that’s understood, that knowledge can be exported to help with what might be called “data-driven marketing.”

    That’s Cloud9’s take on how an extended business system infrastructure might begin to expand. Depending on your company’s orientation, it might start with marketing, manufacturing or finance – although most organizations will be based around sales at first.

    This expansion in the past represented a major up-front investment and a decision process that had to get it 100 percent right, resulting in delayed action, conservative moves and the mere repetition of past successful processes. With SaaS, the risk is less and the flexibility is much greater, so organizations really can seek out competitive advantage from building a more effective business ecosystem.

    CRM’s still not the solution to all your business woes, but with some determination and a well-planned growth strategy, it can represent a bridgehead between where you are now and what you envision you entire business can be.

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