the crm journey from productivity to profit

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The CRM JourneyFrom Productivity to Profit

Executive Summary

If there is one universal truth in business today, it’s the likelihood that customers, prospects, and partners are shopping around—not just to get the most for their time and money, but for a product or service provider that is easy to do business with.

The same truth applies internally. Employees want to invest their efforts with a company that does its best to enable their personal success. When your company makes it easier for individuals and teams to meet and exceed their quotas—of closed sales deals, lead generation campaigns, or resolved support incidents— your company eases the path to corporate success, en masse.

In this business paper, you will read how companies across a vast selection of indus-tries are using customer relationship management to converge people, processes, and products more efficiently. This convergence makes it easier and more convenient for prospects, customers, and partners to do business. And with meaningful insight on what these constituents want, companies make smarter business decisions that improve the trajectory of their revenues, margins, and customer loyalty.

Pivotal CRM | White Paper 2

The Universal Paradox: External ChallengesBuilding momentum in today’s market is a matter of solving this challenging paradox: companies are tasked to reduce operational costs, yet they must also accommodate an increasing demand for richer, more personalized customer-directed interactions. Market forces are placing intense pressure on companies to become more efficient, while providing higher levels of value to all of their key stakeholders.

Reconciling the paradox comes down to one thing: getting smarter when it comes to integrating business, data, and people. And doing it now.

Herein lies the paradox to success. We know that today’s business environment grows more intense, more complex and more operationally demanding with every quarter. We also know that providing efficient, personalized, high-value interactions with key stakeholders is critical. So what now?

Reconciling the paradox comes down to one thing: getting smarter when it comes to integrating people, processes, and data. And doing it now. Because for every organization that leans, with the best of intentions, towards business as usual (“we just need to get better at what we do”), there will be another that gets closer to operating at a higher, more sustainable and more profitable level (“we just need to get smarter at how we work to achieve our objectives”).

Operational complexity is at the heart of what makes it difficult to adopt a more streamlined, more integrated business model. Across many industries—from manufacturing and high-tech to healthcare or services—complexity is caused in part by the sheer volume of information that is generated. Disparate systems hold vast amounts of data on products, inventory, and the supply

chain; on customers, partners and all the interactions that govern them; and on the inner workings of a company’s administrative nerve center.

Information is every company’s most precious commodity. Employees require a faster connection to higher quality data in order to do their jobs seamlessly. Customers and prospects demand faster response times, and they want proof that a company knows them intimately and treats them uniquely. This degree of business integration is no longer an added bonus, like a turbo-charger for a car’s engine. Today, it is as elementary as the tires. You would not be able to operate without it.

However, many companies are limited by legacy technology, or a complete lack of it. Information slips through cracks, and opportunities are lost. Company leaders recognize this trend, but often are at a loss to know where (or how) to begin. The last thing they want to do is disrupt the corporate ‘machine’, no matter how flawed it may be. The expensive and unfortunate consequence is a gradual breakdown of revenue-dependent relationships.

For those organizations that choose to integrate products, people, and processes, the necessary business platform becomes the Internet. Although paper-based processes and information may still be the norm for many industries, companies recognize that ‘the norm’ is the source of the obstacles that jeopardize their most important relationships. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has emerged as the Internet-powered tool that clears those obstacles.

Reconciling the paradox comes down to one thing: getting smarter when it comes to integrating business, data, and people. And doing it now.

The CRM Win-Win“We really have two drives in our company. We want to be the best place to work, and the best place to do business. Our CRM solution gives our employees a tool to be exceptionally good with our customers—and our customers see those good works. We win on both sides.”

Jack WebsterCEO, Farm Credit Services of America


The Cost of Doing Business: Internal ChallengesWe’ve looked at some of the external factors impacting today’s business environment—namely the paradox of an increasing demand for greater value (highly personalized sales, marketing and service) in conjunction with intense pressure to reduce costs. Now let’s examine the internal limitations and challenges that impact the day-to-day operation of a company.

Acquiring New Customers – Sales reps need to produce more proposals faster, with 100% accuracy. It sounds like a simple enough directive, however many companies suffer from a paper-based workflow or stand-alone quoting systems which makes it almost impossible to achieve. Often, the amount of time spent just to properly configure a complex product with an accurate quote and delivery date results in lost business. With poor inter-departmental communication and inefficient business processes, reps are focused on operational tasks rather than being focused on closing deals. Sales executives need to do whatever it takes to keep sales people where they belong—not in the office wrapped up in details, but in the field, selling.

Up- and Cross-Selling to Existing Customers – Customers are the ‘low-hanging fruit’ of revenue. A vested interest and warm relationship makes for faster sales cycles, and a lower cost of selling. The key is for sales, marketing, and service teams to proactively recognize up- and cross-selling opportunities, and raise the flag early enough.

Most often, reps are alerted with the right information too late due to inefficient, labor-intensive processes on the back-end. The time crunch means gaps are opened for the competition, and there is less time to strategically craft the right mix of special rates, incentives or bundle deals that reflect a customer’s preferred status. But if sales, marketing, and service teams can keep customer relationships warm and properly maintained, the foundation is laid for more dependable, expanded levels of customer revenue. Given the resulting faster sales cycle, sales can focus more on the more intensive process around earning new business.

Collaborating – When teams across an organization do not access and contribute to the same information source, the entire selling, marketing, and servicing process can be sluggish to respond to natural fluctuations, customer demand, and revenue opportunities. Separate processes are often in place for each line of business and market segment, making any degree of efficiency or cross-departmental communication almost impossible.

The right technology tools can establish a daily and constant connection across the entire front office. The impact is immediate, meaningful and measurable.

Service reps know when a major marketing campaign is launched into the customer base, and are prepared to encourage response. Marketers are able to track what happens to leads after they go ‘over the fence’ to sales—likewise, sales is able to anticipate spikes or lulls in lead creation, and adapt their workflow, follow-up, and prospecting strategy accordingly.

Marketing – The single-most critical task that keeps marketers awake at night is proving the worth of their teams and activities. This means drawing a quantitative line from a campaign to a group of targeted leads, then to a group of high-potential opportunities, and

Guarding the Revenue Stream“Companies are starting to realize the basic point about CRM. When you sell a Cadillac or a Harley or a ticket on a United Airlines flight, that’s just one event. But in fact, the real moneymaking is keeping that person driving a Cadillac, or a Harley, or flying United Airlines for 10 years or more. It’s that revenue stream that you’re trying to guard with CRM. To do that, you constantly need to know, ‘What does Jon Anton want? What can make him happier? What can we do to ensure he buys a United ticket versus American Airlines next time?’ I think that’s the beauty of CRM. Finally at the CEO, CFO, and CIO level, we’re not just driven for the next new name account. Now we are just as much driven by how well are we doing with that huge database of existing customers.”

Dr. Jon AntonDirector of Research,

Purdue Centre for Customer Driven Quality

Perspective: Generating Leads“Sophisticated marketing infrastructure enables us to cast the net farther, reaching more prospects with better-targeted messages. It also allows us to track the results precisely.

Today, more than 85 percent of our total leads are generated through online offers powered by marketing automation. We have a much more detailed understanding of our customers and that has boosted lead generation and conversion rates dramatically.”

Peter TaitVice President of eBusiness Strategy,

Documentum


finally, to closed sales deals. Most companies have disparate systems and methods for lead tracking, each of which provides an incomplete (and often inaccurate) perspective into success. In this case, the time required to bring multiple sources of data together for analysis is prohibitive.

Many companies also lack a precise understanding of what customers and prospects want and need, and how they prefer to interact with the company. Without this understanding, it is a challenge for marketing to identify the right mix of offers, products, and target segments. And with a lack of visibility into how many times a product was quoted or sold and by whom, marketing cannot formulate a win-loss ratio by campaign, by region, or against a specific competitor’s product line.

In order to produce campaigns that are relevant and compelling to the right audiences, marketing needs a clear ‘macro’ view of the market, the competition, and the company’s customers and prospect base. However it also needs a highly analytical, ‘micro’ view of the needs,

status and preferences of the individuals, segments, and geographies within those groups. In order to attract the highest possible response rates to a campaign, marketers need to apply analytics to that information, crafting one-tomany campaigns that appear to individual recipients as highly intimate, relevant, and one-to-one.

Partner Relations – For partners, selling, marketing and servicing customers and prospects can be laborious and frustrating. Outdated product information, limited configuration tools (or none at all), poor access to customer data, and response delays greatly limit how quickly the partner can turn around the right offer. Since partners are often not able to address their own needs and questions in a self-service manner, the customer-facing processes can be difficult.

Different industries have vastly unique approaches to channel selling or any sort of partner relationships. Regardless of the type of partners a company may have—agents for a healthcare payer, franchisees for a retail chain, or resellers for a software company—success comes down to the same principle that applies with customers. If you want to grow revenues, lower costs, and keep them happy, be easier to do business with. Partners should be able to work how and when they want, with a quick response and no barriers to access.

In addition, companies need to know how partners are performing. Which ones are pulling in the best deals? Which ones are especially strong in one product area? Which ones need training?

Perspective: Sharing Leads with Partners“We are using the marketing automation component of CRM to differentiate ourselves from other manufacturers in a highly competitive environment.

It gives us the ability to take the Sharp LCD product message direct to end users and create awareness, preference, and demand for our products throughout our dealer network—an essential strategy to building long-term relationships.

We began to see results within three weeks of using the system. We generated, qualified and distributed 96 percent of the entire previous year’s leads to our top dealers and resellers. We also achieved nearly a 100 percent follow-up on those leads, compared to about a 50 percent rate previously.

This improvement is directly attributable to the system, because it requires that dealers take action. Now that I have it, I can’t live without it.”

Fred KrazeiseDirector, Strategic Marketing, LCD Products Group, Sharp

The Power of Visibility“If you look at sales, marketing, and service as the three major buckets of CRM, they comprise acquisition, penetration, and retention of customers.

You want to be able to line those up and draw conclusions like, ‘Customer segment A needs to be larger. Segment B is doing well and we don’t need more there. Segment C doesn’t need more customers, but we need to penetrate them better.’ Companies definitely need to figure out how to gain that kind of visibility.”

Jeff HaldenVice President,

Cap Gemini Ernst and Young


The Solution: Customer Relationship Management

CRM: What it Does Companies who aspire to operate at a higher, more sustainable and more profitable level are those who say, “We need to get smarter at how we work to achieve our objectives.” Customer Relationship Management (CRM), a suite of software applications for integrated sales, marketing and service that sits on top of an Internet business platform, is the necessary ‘get smarter’ tool. CRM reconciles the paradox of increased demand for smarter selling, marketing and service, and increased pressure to reduce costs.

Where processes are weak, laborious or roundabout, CRM streamlines. Where the wires of important relationships are crossed, CRM reconnects the right people sensibly. And where visibility is lacking, CRM brings clarity into the market, sales channel performance, key stakeholder activity, history and preferences, and overall business trajectory.

CRM: What It Is Customer Relationship Management, or ‘CRM’, is a category of software applications used by companies to connect data, people and processes across the customer-facing front-office (sales, marketing, service and partner management). The simplest essence of CRM’s mission is to help companies know how their customers like to do business, so that customers keep coming back to buy more.

Not all CRM is equal—when qualifying vendors, make sure the suite of software applications has good breadth of capabilities across all customer-facing functions of your company. It should be capable of delivering everything from assisted selling of complex solutions to online catalogs, self-service websites, unified knowledge bases, marketing ROI calculation, and more.

To learn more about what Customer Relationship Management looks like in action, keep reading. This paper will provide specific examples of CRM at work in the areas of sales, marketing, and service.

The Power of Trust“I believe CRM is a way to address trust. This means making promises and keeping them for your customers, and doing that consistently over time. CRM is a key enabler to do that. It allows you to remember your promises, act on them, and keep them.”

Bo ManningCEO, Pivotal Corporation

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) … is the necessary ‘get smarter’ tool that reconciles the paradox of increased demand for smarter selling, marketing and service, and increased pressure to reduce costs.


Improvement Points in Today’s EnterpriseWhen CRM is embraced by front-line employees, the operational impact is dramatic. Redundant, laborious processes that once jeopardized the integrity of key relationships are redesigned. Let’s consider some of the most common barriers to efficiency, and look at a CRM-driven approach to smooth the path to a more profitable model of business.

RED LIGHT OBSTACLES GREEN LIGHT ACTION

Sales force is not focused on selling. Reps process quotes via fax and e-mail, and spend time re-keying information.

Automate sales cycle friction points. Enable online quoting, which allows reps to do most of the initial data entry. Allow internal sales to access a single, unified system so that all sales activity ‘lives’ in one place.

Sales reps are slow to respond to opportunities. Significant delays exist to generate proposals, configure products, and verify and deliver quotes.

Leads are not strategically managed, and many fall through the cracks.

Automate basic, labor-intensive tasks. Move paper-intensive processes and records online, with anytime, anywhere access. Automate lead qualification and delivery.

Data exists across multiple fragmented ‘islands’. Management is unable to report on business performance, analyze team activities, and proactively react to trends and performance patterns.

Unify data to a single platform. Create a single view of all customer-facing data, including product data, into a complete view accessed by all sales reps, marketers, and service reps in an easy-to-use, integrated format.

No integration between co-dependent sales, marketing, and service processes.

Employees spend time on duplicate data entry, resulting in significant errors. Quotes go stale and delivery promises are broken due to a lack of connection to the supply chain.

Integrate all processes to a single system. Recognize dependencies between teams, and verify offers or quotes in real-time. Make all product and configuration data dynamic, so that everything customers or prospects see is always optimized, consistent, and accurate.

Poor customer and partner loyalty. Slow response time for lead follow-up, proposals, support assistance, or product information gives the competition a chance to gain ground.

Increase agent ease-of-business. Offer instant, 24x7 rates, easy-to-use rapid proposal creation tool, and enable convenient self-service.

Reactive approach to up- and cross-selling. Potential customer opportunities are not recognized early enough (or not at all), and are often lost. This results in high rates of customer attrition.

Proactively keep customer relationships ‘warm’. Automate the flagging of potential opportunities, and alert the right sales rep. Give service reps the ability to cross-sell on the spot in multi-function contact centers that engage in outbound marketing and selling.

High demand for partner support. Partners are unable to access the latest information and tools for selling, marketing, and servicing, and have a lack of visibility into accurate customer and product data.

Increase partner self-sufficiency. Provide partners with online access to all front-office systems, such as knowledge bases, marketing collateral, lead management, customer history, and status.


Mapping the Results of CRM: The Spillover Effect

CRM delivers a great deal of functional, process-based tools to help employees and partners be more productive in selling, marketing, and servicing customers and prospects.

In the next section, we’ll examine how tactical productivity improvements map to increasingly profound impact at higher, more strategic levels of business. The first level of CRM impact is the improved speed, accuracy, and efficiency of internal processes—or improved productivity of individuals—in which labor and paper-intensive processes are streamlined. The second level of impact is measured when the company becomes easier to do business with, both from an customer and partner perspective.

The third and most profound level of impact is when the ‘sweet spot’ of optimal business profitability is revealed. When the right mix of products, markets, sales models, channels, and partners is identified, you have all the elements required to make smarter and more strategic business decisions. Let’s examine these three levels of CRM impact.

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Level One Results: Productivity Impact Improve the speed, accuracy and efficiency of internal processes At the most elementary level, CRM automates the front office processes that span sales, marketing, and service. Employees spend more time servicing, selling, and interacting with customers and prospects, and less time shuffling paper.

With an easy-to-use, tailored system, companies get measurably better at the front-office tactics that help to grow, market, and service customers effectively. The right kind of CRM is invaluable to all people and processes who interact with customers and prospects on the front line—and the impact of those productivity improvements make a difference to the bottom line.

Some of the most apparent bottom-line results include the reduction of administrative overhead through automation, shortened sales cycles, and easier collaboration and sharing of data. All lead the push towards greater profitability.

Increase Responsiveness – One of the most dramatic results from CRM is the improved speed and efficiency of internal processes. When front-office activities are unified into a single, centralized system, information is immediately available, and the paper-chase is eliminated. Employee focus moves to having higher quality interactions with customers and prospects, rather than on limited-value details.

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When users embrace an easy-to-use, tailored system, companies get measurably better at the front-office tactics that help to market, grow, and service customers effectively.


Create a Unified ‘Corporate Memory’ – One of the most valuable corporate assets is data. This includes customer history, preferences, and status, sales channel performance, quote status, market trends, product knowledge bases, and more. Unifying this data to create a cohesive corporate memory is vital to demonstrating trust and credibility to all stakeholders, from customers and prospects to partners. CRM grants instant access to data, providing revenue-critical people with the tools necessary to access the data they need to succeed.

Resolve Customer Incidents Faster – A call center is a necessary but expensive requirement. The faster a service rep can provide a resolution to an issue, the more issues can be resolved in a day. A CRM system puts everything a service rep needs in one unified place, with easily searchable knowledge bases, chats, and self-service options that ease the burden of customer support and increases satisfaction.

Increase Face Time with Customers and Prospects – Increasing face time is always an effective sales tactic, whether it’s building new relationships or strengthening existing ones. As the CRM system eliminates inefficient processes, employees can re-allocate time and resources towards managing key relationships more proactively and more profitably.

Find Out Why Your Sales Team Wins and Loses Deals – CRM precisely tracks the sales pipeline and win-loss ratios. Analyze why some deals are more consistently won, and why others are more likely to stall or be lost, and capture detailed competitive information for each proposal. Leverage this insight to focus on the areas that need improvement, and share the best practices of top performers with others who need the encouragement and wisdom the most.

Make it Easier to Replicate Successful Marketing Campaigns – Every marketing campaign consists of the same series of steps that pull from an array of data sources, content sources, and delivery vehicles. Through automation, CRM makes it very easy for resource-strapped teams to repeat a successful campaign, or hold back a poorly performing campaign mid-stream and improve it.

Intensify the Selling Focus – CRM makes the process of closing business easier. For instance, it accelerates the issuing of quotes, giving the sales team the ability to produce a complete proposal package with the click of a button. Sales reps spend less time on administrative tasks, and more time working with the prospects and customers. Clearly, the customer-facing teams of sales, marketing and service see dramatic impact from CRM at the tactical level. The productivity of individuals will increase, and labor and paper-intensive processes will be streamlined. Let’s look at the next level of impact, and see what happens when these operational improvements become apparent to customers, prospects and partners.

Perspective: A Smarter Sales Cycle“We chose to implement CRM to allow us to get closer to our customers—so we could respond to them in a more intimate and knowledgeable manner. We are now able to capture all the many interactions we have with our customers into a single database, which enables us to take a more personalized approach to our sales cycle.

“Through our implementation of CRM, our sales cycle is more structured and standardized. For instance, opportunity management capabilities give our sales managers much greater control over the sales cycle. Specifically, it provides much improved visibility of the sales funnel, and provides a way for our reps to manage that opportunity throughout all stages of the lifecycle.

“We are now in the process of leveraging our CRM system to map our customers’ buying trends, so that we can position ourselves proactively, anticipating and meeting their needs on a ‘just-in-time’ basis. This is just one example of how CRM enables us to capture and act upon much more customer information than previously possible. For us, it’s simply a more customer-centric way of doing business.”

Cliff WilcoxDirector, IT Applications,

Somera Communications


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Level Two Results: Ease-of-Business Impact Improve the customer experience and the likelihood of partner success The productivity improvements described previously manifest themselves powerfully from the customer, prospect, and partner perspective. Although it’s one of the more qualitative of results from CRM, the smooth, high-level convergence of people and processes is one of the most meaningful. When this convergence occurs, the company demonstrates a new level of efficiency outside the walls of the organization.

If there is one universal truth in this industry, it’s the likelihood that prospects and customers are shopping around—not just for cost, but for ease-of-business. A good example of ease-of-business is when companies provide self-service. CRM-integrated self-service results in increased efficiency for employees, and convenience for prospects and customers. Where there was once friction, sluggish response and unmet needs, there is now a sudden abundance of focus, familiarity and consideration.

Let’s apply the example of self-service to explore how CRM creates a more convenient, easier and more seamless customer and partner experience:

Sales Reps Issue Quotes More Easily – CRM eliminates the delay your reps face in getting a proposal to the customer. Moving the quoting system online means that direct or channel reps can access a secure portion of your website to produce proposals in minutes. This efficiency is clearly noted by the end customer, since they receive clear, accurate answers instantly rather than having to wait hours or even days. Online configurators make it easier to sell the most complex products or services, even those with intricate supply chain dependencies or technical specifications. Take away sales cycle friction, and reps manage accounts more responsively.

Partner Productivity Increases – Online portals extend streamlined processes to partners, giving them open access what they need to close business. Quotes created by channel reps are immediately fed into the unified ‘home’ system, and automatically trigger downstream processes such as lead distribution or inventory validation. Internal staff communicate with partners through more trackable methods than via phone. From the initial quote to order processing, every partner activity is tracked in a unified, automated environment.

Customer Interactions are Simplified – A unified customer database that stretches across sales, marketing, and service eliminates errors and streamlines every interaction. For instance, if a customer calls a support center, that customer’s history is onscreen before the rep even answers the call. Rather than answering a call with, “You have reached the Acme Support Center. Please have your receipts and customer number ready,” your reps greet customers with, “Hello, John—glad to hear from you again. Tell me, how did that adjustment we made last week work for you?”

Data Quality Increases – Extending self-service to customers and partners allows them to enter their own data. By removing the extra steps of writing down information and re-keying it, the quality of data is infinitely improved. The cost savings of this can be staggering. Eliminate the retouching of the same data multiple times, and gain the capacity to process far more. Constituents will not mind contributing the right information with an easy-to-use, intelligent system since they receive a better experience—reps deliver faster proposals, and customers receive what they need in less time and with fewer errors.

If there is one universal truth in this industry, it’s the likelihood that prospects, customers, and partners shop around for ease-of-business.

Perspective: Anticipating Needs“With a good system, you can avoid asking the same question twice, because you know your customers very well. Even with multiple locations like we have, we still know them regardless of how they engage with us. And they appreciate that. They want us to know who they are, and what they expect. And they really like it when we anticipate their needs. For us, the cost of not anticipating those needs is to lose in the marketplace.

“What it comes down to is that we’re a cooperative. We’re actually owned by our customers, and so our whole role is to serve and to serve them as best we can.”

Jack WebsterCEO, Farm Credit Services of America


We’ve seen how the second level of CRM impact is when productivity takes root on the receiving end. Prospects, customers, and partners, given more convenient access to your company, will notice an extraordinarily seamless experience. Next, let’s examine the third and most profound level of CRM impact in which companies begin making high-level decisions more intelligently.

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Level Three Results: Strategic Decision-Making Impact Identify the right mix for optimal profitability At the most profound level of impact, your company will no longer waste effort trying to squash square pegs into round holes in a market that is already crowded and very saturated. Instead, you will move forward based on a clear understanding of the trajectories of your corporate assets, customer demand, and the competitive landscape. With deep insight into business performance, you will direct high-level business decisions more intelligently.

Think of your company as a collection of assets. Products, services, people, processes. Data, expertise, relationships. The trick to maintaining momentum in a challenging business environment is figuring out the right mix—identifying that point at which all your assets converge ‘just so’ to result in profitability.

With CRM having delivered improved productivity and ease-of-business across the front office, how do companies figure out where to invest the additional resources, time, and money that’s been saved? The trick is to quantify operational strengths and weaknesses, so that you can make highly informed decisions that capitalize on the good and minimize the not-so-good.

The moment that CRM’s visibility helps a company to answer the most fundamental ‘what next’ questions is a breakthrough one, in which a new collective confidence is gained.

Why do we win more deals with Group X vs. Group Y? •

Should we create more variations of Product Y, or •should we sell more of the existing configuration?

Should we be even trying to sell in this particular target •market / competitive arena?

Why is Product X being sold well by our smaller •partners, and ignored by our biggest partners?

What tactics do our top performing reps follow, that our •lower performers do not?

We have a limited budget for training. Should we invest •it towards advancement of our top channels, or use it to help our smaller channels catch-up?

The moment that CRM’s visibility helps a company to answer the most fundamental ‘what next’ questions is a breakthrough one, in which a new collective confidence is gained. It is that invigorating moment when a company begins directing the strategic path of its assets—its products, services, people, processes, data, expertise, relationships—from deep insight gained from smart, timely analysis of business performance.

Identify the right mix of offers, products, tools, and information, and then take a targeted approach favoring the most valuable employees, customers, and partners. This is the ‘sweet spot’—that point at which all the right assets intersect for maximum profitability.

Getting Ready for the Upturn“In a downturn, sales and marketing organizations start reducing expectations, financial and emotionally. They start doing less and less of the top part of the pipeline, more and more of trying to close the closest deal. When the economy comes back, they are ready to re-energize, but they have nothing at the top of the funnel.

“Sooner or later, this thing is going to turn around. If you don’t want to get left behind, you need to invest in new strategies, systems and approaches that are going to feed the top of the funnel. When the upturn comes around, you’ll be ready to gain momentum.”

Geoffrey MooreCEO, The Chasm Group


The Final WordIn this paper, you’ve learned about CRM as a breakthrough tool to help companies thrive despite the increased complexity, operational demands and competitive pressures of doing business. But this statement...

CRM is a breakthrough tool

is not complete without making an important edit:

CRM can be a breakthrough tool … if your company chooses, designs, and implements it in a way that makes sense for your goals and your business.

CRM is a journey, not a destination. It is not a matter of installing software, and being ‘finished’. By its very nature, a CRM system should always have an open door for continued, on-the-fly development and tweaking. Your system will never be set in stone—and you shouldn’t want it to be. Through this journey, you’ll learn a great deal about how your employees like to work, where you all excel, and what could be done differently. Your business needs to keep pace with the natural evolution of your people, processes, and products—and that includes your CRM system.

KNOW YOUR:

Top Producers

Partner Needs

Market Trends

Customer Needs

Employee Needs

Most Important Interaction Points

Most Revenue-Impacting Processes

...THEN IDENTIFY THE RIGHT MIx OF:

Training

Support

Site Visits

Advertising

Sales Commissions

Marketing Campaigns

Process Improvements

...TO GROW YOUR:

Win Rate

Product Penetration

Employee Efficiency

Customer Satisfaction

Level of Responsiveness

Partner Value & Loyalty

The Importance of CRM-to-Fit“We have a unique business model. In every deal, we need to respond rapidly and effectively to market change and to changes in our customers’ circumstances.

“As we moved to automate our sales process, it was paramount for us to select a CRM system that could be easily adapted to our way of doing things. For instance, we needed to customize the basis on which sales territories were defined. And most important, we needed to adapt how the system assigned leads —since we distribute leads not only to buyers, but also to sellers.

“If we had chosen a CRM system that would not easily customize to meet our unique business structure, it would have been more an impediment to our workflow than it would have been a solution.”

Cliff WilcoxDirector, IT Applications,

Somera Communications

This brings us to one simple conclusion: CRM is not a software purchase. If it were, it would be relatively easy. Companies who excel at CRM see it for what it is—a results purchase. This means working with your CRM vendor to realize and report meaningful business results. Following are some further resources that introduce the ‘making it work’ aspects of CRM, including how to stay focused on business results, and how to navigate through two key categories of selection criteria—system suitability, and vendor suitability.

For more information or a complete list of our worldwide offices, please visit www.pivotal.com.

Copyright © CDC Software 2007. All rights reserved. The CDC Software logo and Pivotal CRM logo are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of CDC Software.

CRM Discovery Kit

At Pivotal CRM, we’ve held fast to one simple truth from the very beginning. There’s no such thing as ‘one-size-fits-all’ CRM. When it’s 100% designed to fit your business, CRM has impact where it counts. Revenues. Margins. Loyalty.”

Part One: How to Choose the Right CRMPart Two: How to Build Impactful CRMPart Three: How to Measure Results from CRM

To get this paper and access further information, visit www.pivotal.com.

Further Resources

The CIO’s Sensible Guide to Delivering the Right CRM for your Company (How to Keep your System Integrity, Budget, Resources and Sanity Intact Through CRM)

When it comes to CRM, today’s CIO is squarely focused on risk mitigation, resource management and cost predictability. How easy is this CRM system to buy?

Can we deploy in a predictable timeframe? Will it fit with our current and future business IT strategies? In this business paper, you’ll gain a TCO-oriented framework for choosing the right CRM. Find out about:

Breadth, Depth and the 80/20 RuleCustomizability and the Metadata ConnectionScalability, Performance and the User Perspective

To get this paper and access further information, visit www.pivotal.com.

the crm journey from productivity to profit

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