Graduating CRM Beyond Pipeline Management CRM

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1 Graduating CRM Beyond Pipeline CRM

2 Graduating CRM Beyond Pipeline Graduating CRM Beyond Pipeline So you ve got your CRM deployment running smoothly. Congrats to you! If you re like most of our customers, you probably started your CRM system with the sales department in mind, and focused on getting better sales forecasting and pipeline management capabilities. Assuming all is going well, you might be tempted to think you re done. Unfortunately, we're here to inform you that your work is really just starting. In order to achieve the often-described 360-degree view of the customer, you need to develop a roadmap to expand your CRM deployment beyond the sales department. Fortunately for you, the CRM system you already own is probably capable of performing a LOT more workloads for your organization. We estimate that most prospects we talk with only leverage 10-15% of their CRM system s potential! While many people tend to think synonymously about CRM and sales automation, we want to try and expand your horizons about all of the possible workloads your CRM system could deliver for your organization. We estimate that most prospects we talk with only leverage 10-15% of their CRM system s potential!

3 The goal of this document is to outline the major pillars of functionality that we think a CRM system can reasonably accommodate. Some of these areas include robust features right out of the box (we re looking at your sales and services). Other areas contain starting points in an out-of-the-box CRM but will probably require additional customization and integration to get an enterprise class solution up and running. The figure below shows what we consider the top six pillars of CRM functionality and the next sub-level of feature categories: The Six Pillars of CRM Functionality Employee performance Employee recognition Internal social network Internal & CRM help desk Sales opportunity management Sales effectiveness Sales performance management Employee & Internal Sales Customer feedback Social listening Surveys Voice of the Customer CRM FUNCTIONALITY Marketing Multichannel campaign management Marketing resource management Partner and distributor marketing Internal apps Master data management Mobile Application Infrastructure Customer Service Incident and case management Customer service contact centers Web and community Field service management We think this framework provides a great starting point to evaluate your business needs and see how your CRM system might fit in. Please note that we are NOT saying that that you need to use a CRM system to address all of these areas. Lots of companies rely on point solutions to help fill gaps, and that certainly makes sense in a lot of situations. However, it s possible to leverage your CRM solution to address almost all of the needs outlined above.

4 1 Graduating CRM Beyond Pipeline > Sales Sales Sales force automation (SFA) systems help organizations standardize and manage their key sales functions. These functions could include order processing, contact management, commission calculations, customer management, sales forecast management, and pipeline analysis to name a few. A majority of our customers begin their engagement with CRM software because they want assistance automating these tasks. If you re looking to invest in CRM software and believe that sales force functionality needs to be the foundational layer of your platform, you should begin by asking yourself the following: Sales Opportunity How do you distribute leads amongst your sales representatives? How do you manage contacts? How would like to manage accounts and contacts in 5 years? How do you manage sales opportunities? How are sales forecasts created and published? Sales Effectiveness How do you assess if your sales process is effective? How do you measure sales performance management? How do you determine if a prospect is qualified? How do you generate prices, quotes, proposals? How do you handle contracts? How do customers place orders? Sales Performance How do you set and manage territories for sales reps? How do you set and manage quotas for sales reps? Do you run any short-term incentives for sales reps? How are sales commissions calculated and communicated? Share this ebook!

5 2 Graduating CRM Beyond Pipeline > Marketing Marketing Marketing and sales functionality go hand in hand. How are you attracting leads and opportunities that will eventually convert into customers? Understanding your marketing tactics and layering them into your CRM software can help you better manage your marketing campaigns. You can track your activity across a variety of channels - from online ads to social media - and ultimately manage your leads from capture to close in a single application. Furthermore, advanced marketing functionality can help you score and route leads to the right sales representative to ensure that your leads never fall through the cracks. If you re looking to incorporate marketing functionality into your CRM platform, you should ask yourself: Multichannel Campaign Which systems do you use to manage marketing budgets? What are the different types of marketing campaigns you re utilizing? How do you manage online digital marketing? How do you segment your customer and prospect lists? How do you analyze your marketing efforts? How do you track and measure website analytics data? Can you correlate web traffic data with individual customers or prospects in your CRM system? How do you track and measure campaign effectiveness? Do you have a loyalty program? If yes, how do you manage the loyalty program? Marketing Resource How do you track and manage marketing assets like sales literature, technical specifications, presentations, case studies, etc...? How do your sales reps and partners access your marketing assets? When assets change, how do sales reps and partners get notified? Partner and Distributor Marketing Do you partner with other organizations (like distributors) for your marketing efforts? How do you share key marketing data and customer lists with external partners? How do you report on the effectiveness of partner marketing?

6 3 Graduating CRM Beyond Pipeline > Customer Service Customer Service You have successfully turned your lead into a customer, now how do you keep them? We ve seen it time and time again: clients don t factor customer service management into their CRM engagement. Failing to implement a concrete system for recording customer feedback can lead to lost information and inaccurate customer profiles in your CRM. Once you ve sold your product or service you should make sure that your support systems align with your customer service plan to make sure that your team can respond quickly and consistently to customer inquiries, questions, and feedback. If you think Customer Service functionality needs to be included in your CRM platform, you should ask yourself the following: Incident and case management When customers have a problem, who do they contact? What are the different channels customers can use to submit a case? Chat? Phone? ? Social? How do you track and manage customer problems and incidents? Do you have a knowledge base (KB) to address frequent customer issues? What types of service level agreements (SLA) do you have offer customers? How do you track and manage SLA compliance? Customer service contact centers What types of automation tools do you provide to service agents? What types of workflow and automation do your agents utilize while delivering service? What are the different types of channels agents can use to interact with customers? Chat? Phone? ? Social? Co-browsing? What type of phone automation do you use? IVR? Dialers? Call routing? How do you track and measure agent performance? Web and community Can customers search and browse a knowledge base to solve their own problems? Do you leverage any crowdsourcing techniques to have customers answer questions/issues from other customers? How can customers access status updates and data related to their service requests? Field service management How do you staff and schedule field agents? What types of tools, hardware and systems do your field agents utilize? How do field agents access key customer data such as technical documents, contact information, case information, etc.? How do you track manage the effectiveness of field agents? Share this ebook!

7 Graduating CRM Beyond Pipeline > Application Infrastructure 4 Application Infrastructure CRM systems offer pre-built features for sales, marketing, service and other areas of your business. However they also offer a robust application framework that you can use to build out entirely new areas of capabilities. As you document your list of current business systems, you ll probably find a bunch of home-grown applications or old legacy applications. Common examples we see include: internal and external processes, Lotus Notes apps, Microsoft Access apps, internal process apps, employee training apps, new client onboarding apps, internal help desk, etc. Many customers replace these older systems with a custom application built on their CRM framework. Some of the main benefits of leveraging a CRM application framework instead of building a custom app include: Automatic integration with other customer data in CRM Pre-built application plumbing such as security, metadata, reporting, user interface, social capabilities, etc. Standard platform makes employee training and long-term support easier for IT The CRM platform will receive updates over time so it doesn t turn into a legacy system As you consider using your CRM system as an application platform, some questions you should consider include: Internal Apps What are all of the multiple systems you utilize track customer data? What are the home-grown apps or legacy apps you currently use? Who s responsible for maintaining and supporting these old apps? Has you specified a development platform as the corporate standard? Are development practices standard across the company? Master Data How do you maintain consistency across these systems? How do you know if a customer is in one system but not the other? How do you determine the master record? Do you have a Master Data strategy? If yes, which solutions are you using? Mobile What type of mobile capabilities (if any) do the home-grown and legacy apps offer? Do you have a corporate standard selected for mobile platform apps?

8 5 Graduating CRM Beyond Pipeline > Voice of the Customer Voice of the Customer Voice of the Customer (VOC) describes the process used to capture customer s expectations, preferences, and aversions to a company and its process and products. It s an important part of the sales and service cycles that may not be part of your CRMs functionality. Yet. VOC is typically broken down into four categories: marketing, sales, customer service, and e-commerce. Within these it is typical to measure a customer s impression of your brand s reputation, work-of-mouth marketing efforts, lead generation tactics, customer service and website experience. If you re considering Voice of Customer functionality as part of you CRM platform, you should ask yourself the following: Customer feedback How do you get feedback from customers? How does VOC feedback get used? Who is responsible for managing VOC feedback? Is this feedback related to customer service, sales, or both? Social listening How do you collect customer feedback from social channels such as Twitter? How do you score and benchmark your VOC? How do you use your website to collect feedback? Surveys Do you leverage any 3rd party customer survey services or tools? How do you track and manage feedback about specific agents? Do you capture customer feedback about their sales process? Share this ebook!

9 6 Graduating CRM Beyond Pipeline > Employees and Internal Employees and Internal Historically, CRM systems focused almost exclusively on external customers. However, more and more businesses are leveraging the power of a CRM platform to help them manage their employees and other internal tasks. While you might think that employee data belongs in some sort of HR system, companies like the idea of leveraging CRM because many of the key data points for employee management (such as sales and service metrics) come from a CRM system. The other benefit of using a CRM system is that it typically offers a faster deployment and more flexibility than traditional HR systems. Lastly, leveraging CRM for internal apps can make IT s life easier because they have less systems they need to learn, manage and support. So if you re considering using CRM for employee and internal management, these are some questions you might want to explore: Employee performance How do you track and manage your annual employee performance reviews? How do you track and manage employee onboarding and certifications? How do you track and manage a database of employee skills? How do you track and manage individual, team and company goals? Internal social network Do you leverage any type of internal social network for employees to collaborate? How do you share informal knowledge between employees? Share this ebook! Employee feedback and recognition How do you collect feedback from your employees about the company? What types of tools and systems do you use to recognize strong performers? What types of tools do you have for peers to recognize work from their peers? Internal and CRM help desk When your employees have IT questions or problems, how do you track and manage those requests? What types of SLA do you have for internal employees? Where do you track and manage feedback about your CRM system? If your employees have ideas or suggestions, where does that feedback go?

10 Graduating CRM Beyond Pipeline Contact us to see if we can help... We hope this document helped illustrate how you might utilize your existing CRM system for much more than just basic sales and pipeline management. If you have any questions about these capabilities, please don t be shy. We re here to help you understand the capabilities of these powerful platforms. Contact us to see if we can help you complete your CRM functionality checklist and help your business decide on a CRM system to use. Share this ebook! about us: us: info@sonomapartners.com call us: (866) stay connected: CRM Functionality Checklist Contact Sonoma Partners Contact Sonoma Partners 525 West Monroe Street, Suite 500, Chicago, IL The CRM Experts