Business Intelligence Masterclass

We are delighted to announce two more BI Masterclass event dates!

13th June in London, UK

9th October in reading, UK

Free 09:00 – 13:00

More details about these free Business Intelligence events below:

Business Discovery with QlikView BI

Business Discovery – BI Masterclass

Discover why Manufacturing companies have turned to CapricornVentis and QlikView to overcome their Business Intelligence (BI) challenges and improved their business performance.

If your business needs to…

• Gain real-time business visibility of its entire manufacturing value chain
• Eliminate the wait to make critical business decisions
• Collaborate more closely with manufacturing partners and key customers

…then you need to attend this CapVentis BI seminar!

You will learn how QlikView can improve business agility for intelligent, demand-driven manufacturing.

If you want to discover how the right Business Intelligence (BI) system that will enable your organisation to make a step change transformation in its performance, then attend this CapricornVentis seminar.

Our Masterclass seminar brings special expertise to manufacturers looking to benefit from a ‘single version of the truth’ – access to a single, consistent view of accurate data from disparate systems.

Come along to these free morning sessions in Birmingham and London where CapricornVentis will share their extensive knowledge on using Business Intelligence and Business Discovery using the QlikView tool.

QlikView offers a complete analysis solution

Dashboards and alerts, multi-dimensional analyses, slice-and-dice of data – without the limitations, cost or complexity of traditional OLAP cubes.

• Solutions can be deployed in minimal time
• Users can be trained quickly
• Giving a rapid ROI
• Easy Business Transformation

Join us and discover how real-time performance management across business functions can improve profits from products and processes.

CapricornVentis is an international provider of CRM and Business Intelligence solutions in the UK and Europe. With regional operations in the UK and Ireland, with multi-lingual capabilities, CapricornVentis has the ability and reach to implement business systems on an international scale.

Register for our BI Masterclass – Business Discovery

As a bonus for registering, you’ll also get a limited availability white paper about “The 8 most common BI mistakes“!

Business Discovery with QlikView BI

17th May in Birmingham, UK (cancelled)

31st May in London, UK

Free 09:00 – 13:00

Business Discovery – BI Masterclass

Discover why Manufacturing companies have turned to CapricornVentis and QlikView to overcome their Business Intelligence (BI) challenges and improved their business performance.

If your business needs to…

• Gain real-time business visibility of its entire manufacturing value chain
• Eliminate the wait to make critical business decisions
• Collaborate more closely with manufacturing partners and key customers

…then you need to attend this CapVentis BI seminar!

You will learn how QlikView can improve business agility for intelligent, demand-driven manufacturing.

If you want to discover how the right Business Intelligence (BI) system that will enable your organisation to make a step change transformation in its performance, then attend this CapricornVentis seminar.

Our Masterclass seminar brings special expertise to manufacturers looking to benefit from a ‘single version of the truth’ – access to a single, consistent view of accurate data from disparate systems.

Come along to these free morning sessions in Birmingham and London where CapricornVentis will share their extensive knowledge on using Business Intelligence and Business Discovery using the QlikView tool.

QlikView offers a complete analysis solution

Dashboards and alerts, multi-dimensional analyses, slice-and-dice of data – without the limitations, cost or complexity of traditional OLAP cubes.

• Solutions can be deployed in minimal time
• Users can be trained quickly
• Giving a rapid ROI
• Easy Business Transformation

Join us and discover how real-time performance management across business functions can improve profits from products and processes.

CapricornVentis is an international provider of CRM and Business Intelligence solutions in the UK and Europe. With regional operations in the UK and Ireland, with multi-lingual capabilities, CapricornVentis has the ability and reach to implement business systems on an international scale.

Register for our BI Masterclass – Business Discovery

As a bonus for registering, you’ll also get a limited availability white paper about “The 8 most common BI mistakes“!

Getting CRM Right Masterclass

In association with Oracle in London, UK

22nd May in London, UK

12th July in London (City), UK

Getting CRM Right – Masterclass Registration

Aimed at anyone who has at any point considered changing their CRM solution but does not know where to start, our free Getting CRM Right masterclass will help provide a great deal of information and value.

Our CRM Masterclass is ideal if you’re facing any of the following CRM issues:

• The CRM solution has been a big let-down
• You have spent a great deal of time, money and resources purchasing and implementing the CRM system
• You believe CRM is too focussed on IT
• The CRM system needs a re-launch but you want to make sure it’s a success this time
• The CRM system is not bringing you the results you thought it would
• You are considering implementing a CRM system but want some impartial, best practice advice
• You believe the CRM strategy should focus more on the business and what the business values

The CapricornVentis Master-class brings special expertise to firms wanting to realise the value from a CRM system that isn’t quite living up to expectations.

Come along to these morning sessions in the City, where CapricornVentis with Oracle will share their extensive knowledge on CRM for free.

Even a dysfunctional CRM system may be well positioned for future success.

The trick is to step back and think about your real goals. CapricornVentis can show you how.

CapricornVentis is an international provider of CRM and Business Intelligence solutions in the UK and Europe.

With over 14 years of operational experience and regional operations in the UK and Ireland, CapricornVentis has the ability and reach to implement business systems on an international scale.

Register for our CRM Masterclass on Getting CRM Right

If you have any questions for our CRM event or would like to book a specific assessment of your organisation’s CRM, please contact Stuart Smalley on 0845 313 8696 or email stuart.smalley@capventis.com

When it comes to the choice between utilising workflow or server script for automating the business processes in your customer relationship management (CRM) system, there are several points to be considered.

To a certain extent, the decision will be based on the personal preference of those who will be designing and maintaining the logic. However, a workflow process does have some restrictions that need to be taken into account.

CRM solutions for all kinds of business have been around since the eighties and are still popular today (though the big-bang all-encompassing IT systems of the nineties are largely accepted as not the best route today). By organising and automating routine business processes, a business can run more smoothly and accelerate growth. The information that we need (data) can be easily accessed and compiled, and most importantly, delivered to the right people at the right time in the right way which in turn leads to the effectiveness of business strategies.

By aligning the right CRM solution (IT) to the business, CRM provides businesses with the ability to spend more time on things other than record keeping and document management.

Objectives can be achieved sooner because data is more readily accessed and better organized, so it is easier to evaluate.

Making the right choices when setting up and implementing a CRM system can make all the difference in the ultimate value to an organisation.

Wofklow for business logic and process automation

Different CRM systems provide different options and capabilities with regard to server scripts and workflows. MS Dynamics for example has an extensive workflow engine. As does Oracle CRM On Demand. Sage’s CRM systems (SageCRM and SalesLogix), while they have workflow, are more inclined towards server scripts as the technical solution to business process automation (BPA).

Workflow processes are not as descriptive as script, and so they may require extra steps to complete the same action, which means more time. The complexity of the loop design may also affect the speed of workflow. Workflow is fairly inflexible which makes it less powerful than scripting, and it cannot (typically) perform complex data verification processes.

We are big fans of Orbis TaskCentre a Business Process Automation (BPA) tool which allows us to access information in (more of less) any location or system, run through several steps of business logic and transformation and then output into any number of different ways (including SQL, FTP, HTML, Crystal Reports, Excel etc.). TaskCentre isn’t actually part of any particular CRM system and there are plenty of organisations who use it purely to automate cross-company processes and information requirements.

However…

It’s important to remember that whenever hardware or software is added or upgraded, the workflow(s) may need to be rewritten to take the change in architecture into account, which can be time consuming. That said, with something like TaskCentre, it takes less time to test workflow logic, because the design is done through a tool and is therefore simpler and more user friendly than trying to wade through pages of code.

Scripting and bespoke apps for business logic and process automation

Bespoke scripting and apps designed for specific business requirements have the advantage that they are just that : designed with one purpose. This means that there’s minimal overhead in terms of hard drive space, server memory, processor time and indeed pretty much everything.

However, like the mobile phone; single function devices are on the way out. Are scripts and bespoke apps going to follow the same path? Scripts can be more expensive to create and maintain than workflow. Production workflow systems are particularly inexpensive due to being built into the solution, though excellent systems like Orbis TaskCentre can (and we do) be used for cross system workflow and BPA.

Bespoke scripts and apps can very neatly and effectively solve specific business problems, but what happens when the business changes and those problems are no longer problems? The script or app must be re-written or at least decommissioned both of which will cost.

The other big problem with bespoke scripts and apps is the same problem companies implementing “open source” CRM systems face : what happens when the company or personnel that wrote the custom code moves on? They’re left with a solution that is no longer a solution : it’s a problem and now they have to find another company or team to undo or replace it.

There are reasons that workflow can be a good choice for defining the rules and logic for your operational CRM processes. Workflow monitoring and event logging is more useful than instrumentation that has been built in to script which has to be costed and built into a bespoke script further adding to the cost of the initial build.

Decision time

The decision to go with workflow over script needs to take into consideration how the system will be used, who is going to maintain it, how often business logic and requirements change and the available technological architecture available to run it.

We have written both bespoke scripts and applications as well as utilising workflow and BPA tools such as TaskCentre for clients across many different requirements and industry sectors.
If you would like a free consultation on your business requirements, please fill in your details and we’ll be in touch to arrange a meeting with you today.

In the last article we looked at some of the things that are wrong with Business Intelligence, so it’s only fair that we also look at some of the things that are right with BI.

There were very good reasons technical reasons why the single big datawarehouse emerged as the way in the 90’s and after. There was no other obvious way to achieve the required outcome, as described earlier above.

Even the concept of multiple separate warehouses to address multiple issues, as argued below, was accepted in industry; multiple data marts, feeding off a single large physical or conceptual data warehouse. The issues remained however that the whole proposition was too complex, took too long and was far too inflexible.

Today, there are technologies and implementation methodologies that allow the traditional proposition and approach to be completely challenged. That is, it is possible, with newer technology propositions to extract, transform, load and deliver relevant business value, and to do so quickly and easily. The technology available for Business Intelligence is very different to before. The kind of changes, improvements and revolutions taking place in areas such as the internet, the mobile phone, the tablet/pad and the “cloud” are also happening in the world of Business Intelligence. Technology was always the enabler. The problem was that it also became the inhibitor purely because it promised more than it could deliver. The difference now is that we can do very powerful things with technology and the technology inhibitor or hassle has been largely removed.

If BI is about taking data and information from one or more sources, bringing it together in a way that provides insight that is of value to the business, then the tools will allow us to do this easily today.

That still leaves the business issues, the business value, the information perspectives and the approach. What is it we want to achieve, why and how we will approach it and deliver it? The vehicle (technology) is available and easy to drive (implement), so let’s focus on where we want to go and for what reason. Then when we get there, what are we going to do or achieve? Whatever the questions, or the answers, the business can focus on what is valuable to them. They can also get into the driving seat and start the journey straight away.

But we are still left with the issue of defining what constitutes value and what constitutes good BI? In the past the focus tended to be on delivering the insight (report, analysis, query etc); the IT solution part of the overall project only. Once that was achieved the project was considered finished. That is, BI was about the technology and once delivered, there is nothing more to do.

That is a similar characteristic of almost all technology projects over the past 20 years. They stop at the critical point; just when the business can leverage the solution and actually deliver the change of behaviour from which the real benefits can only be realised. Therefore it should come as no surprise that technology projects, including BI projects, cannot easily be equated to Return on Investment.

So our definition of BI needs to continue past the solution and onwards towards actually achieving tangible change in behaviour, policy, direction, action or whatever. BI cannot be just the last process in the chain of processes; do things, and then (at the end) create a report to show what was done.

Business Intelligence Success Factors
	The ingredient of BI is information. The BI solution can, with the right information, help us to achieve all sorts of things. It can deliver information to let us know something in the right place at the right time. It can deliver information to help us make decisions. It can tell us what decisions to make and when to make them. It can allow us to empower our people to make decisions because it can allow us to monitor those decisions easily.
It can provide very targeted views of information and analysis that apply to different business areas, for different types of function/role, for the purposes of achieving different outcomes.
	Each of these BI perspectives or challenges can (and usually should) be treated separately. This allows the scope of the BI project to be less complex, speedier to implement and more targeted at value that can be defined and achieved more easily by everybody concerned. While the business focus might be very tight and specific, all too often the information need is still very wide and disparate across the business. Historically, that would make the project difficult to justify.
In prior years the end would not justify the means (technology cost and effort) because the complexity (diversity of information sources and need to do the ETL) put up too much a of cost, time and effort barrier. The difference now, is that the technology challenge is greatly reduced while the quality of the outcome can be greatly enhanced. Just like the instant and intuitive experience of the internet today, results can be achieved quickly and easily.
	BI and the tools associated with BI become infused with other aspects of the business. It becomes much more an operational thing, because it can become part of the operational solution, embedded from both a technology perspective and business (process) perspective. If the summary customer statement is relevant to the marketing analysts, why not deliver the same view, or a different flavour of it, to the customer service agent in the call centre. Why? Because it saves time and empowers the agent. The customer might be impressed too!

So the business already has all of the information available to it. Like plankton in the ocean, it’s all there.

The difficulty is that we just find it hard to get at it, leverage it, grow it, use it and eat it. But what if we can define what all of these things mean and why, when and where they would be good to achieve. Then wouldn’t it be great if we could just grab what we need, from wherever it is today, and just start doing what we want to do straight away?

Each person has a view. Each person has a role, each a need, each a desired outcome. Each to their own.

We don’t need to reconcile all of this in order to move forward? Just attack each challenge, one after the other, according to priority and value. Do it quick and allow the solution to evolve. Try something, review the result, improve / fix it, and move on to the next challenge.

Multiple solutions that singularly address multiple problems, opportunities and challenges. Not one single view, rather many. Multiple single views for multiple business problems.

Multiple Single Views

The best and most elegant business solutions are ones that are simple.

The argument that business is (or must be) complex needs to be challenged.

Maybe if complexity is measured as the number of components that make up the whole, then so long as each component is simple in its own right, then we have a good and harmonious business model. If each component draws on information that cuts across the whole business, then they can be addressed separately, so long as the technology and challenge to gather that information is easy.

Today, the Business Intelligence software we use makes that a reality

Multiple single views applies because there are multiple facets to any business and multiple components underpinning them. Even when, some of those multiple single views are business-wide (i.e. genuinely needing everything to answer the question), the same fact applies. It’s just another view, singularly for the bigger picture.

This has been part two of two articles on what is wrong and what is right about Business Intelligence. If you you would like to have a full copy of the white paper that these articles come from, then please follow the link.

⇒ Multiple single Views for BI

Business Intelligence (BI) is big business for a lot of people; those who make the technology (vendors), those who implement the solutions (IT), those who hype it (standard bearers) and those who follow it (everybody else). This “BI” business came about gradually over the 90’s and 00’s, spawning and developing into a broad, deep and complex industry. Its purpose was, and remains so, to deliver information to business people in such a way that people could leverage, derive and action something of value.

Here’s a fictional, but not-uncommon, conversation…

“We must implement the data warehouse to achieve the 360 degree view of the customer and the business, and all of the other stuff that is important to everybody”. says Bob.

“How long will that take?” asks Lucy, “We don’t really need much, and I wish we could tackle this sooner rather than later.”

“Really Lucy,” says Bob, exasperated, “it’s accepted industry best practice, and it is critical that we establish a design that works for everybody in every scenario. That requires good and careful design! Let’s get it right, this time around.”

“Oh dear”, Lucy tries not to sneer, “sounds like the corporate data model project we started 6 years ago… has that finished yet?”

“That was a very important concept and remains so”, retorts Bob, “without that model we wouldn’t have delivered the aligned-to-our-future concept. In any case, the warehouse is the next logical phase of the grand plan. It is not easy and we must get each scope, design, technology build, presentation and deployment stage done properly, each following the last.” Bob is on a roll, “the benefits to the business will be fantastic!”

Lucy feels a bit bamboozled. “There is no other way in the meantime?”

Bob shakes his head.

“So when will you be asking my area to input our requirements?” asks Lucy.

Bob is ready, “Well, you come after Finance and Sales, possibly in the next 2 months for a week or so of workshops, then after you comes HR and purchasing to complete the picture – 1 more month. Then we will go away and create the design during the next month, presenting back to executive for review and approval later in the summer, followed by ETL, cubing and presentation projects, starting with the core systems for Finance, after which… … …”

Lucy slips away to an early lunch; at least she is in control of that.

The fundamental problem (and challenge) is that the raw data for BI is captured in databases that are

1. Many (multiple / separate), and
2. Structured the “wrong” way for BI.

The wrong way for “BI”, but the right way to support operational processes (doing the business) and related data storage (relational databases and such like).

Extract, Transform, Load

According to firmly established industry best practice, the solution is to take such information that is needed, out of the operational databases (“Extract”), reorganise the data in a way that is suitable for BI (“Transform”) and save it off into a separate repository (“Load”).

This ETL process results in the datawarehouse. Once the data is in the datawarehouse, it can now be worked on to deliver the views of information that the business wants. This leads to the need for more structuring of the data (often into highly optimised cubes) to create views and presentations to address the business questions; reports, queries, analysis… On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) and related terminology.

There are a number of issues with all of this. BI projects all too often fail to meet expectations.

• The information that is needed, along with everything else needs to be specified up front so that the BI solution is properly designed and aligned to those predefined needs. The issue is that the stakeholders don’t, and can’t be expected to, know up front exactly what those needs might be in future.
• One question leads to another; not good for solutions that need to be properly designed, implemented and deployed well before the first question can be answered. The technology is traditionally very complex, as are the solutions to deliver the results.
• Timescales are too long. The typical BI project can take months and years. Not just because the technology and approach is complex, but also because the information landscape in a typical enterprise is silo’d throughout many departments and databases, is inaccessible, inconsistent or poor in quality.

Because of the above issues, and as a result of practicalities as well as myth, the concept of the single (all encompassing) data warehouse is very prevalent. As per the story at the top of this article, the industry and related thinking supports/promotes the concept of single solution to suit the entire enterprise. Whether this is a good idea or not, the fact is that people, all too often are advocating that one model and one joined up datawarehouse is needed to deliver “one single version of the truth”, the “single view” or “360 degree view”.

This single datawarehouse and the established industry technologies that support them lead to very cumbersome, complex and extended projects. The results are that BI projects are delivering business value too late, and that value can be very questionable. Or worse: these strategies are not delivering business value at all because the projects don’t get completed, or when they are, the business cannot work with the results.

A more subtle point is that the large datawarehouse / single view concept can be impossible to achieve in the first place.

The reason is that different people have different perspectives and different needs when it comes to information. If (or rather, when) these needs conflict with each other, then the single view / single datawarehouse can be pulled in different directions.

The answer is not to try to circumvent or cater for these conflicts. That just leads to even more complexity, longer projects and compromises. It also puts BI where it finds itself all too often; an IT project that is disconnected from the needs of the business and a business that can’t understand why everything has to be so difficult.

The next article will explore what’s right about Business Intelligence and the concept of multiple single views. If you would like a complete copy of both articles for download, please head over to our resources page and download the full white paper.

⇒ Multiple Single Views in Business Intelligence

There are many reasons CRM Project fail and there are many mistakes that can be (and are) made which contribute to those failures. In this series, we are looking at a number of common mistakes and how best to avoid them. If you haven’t already, read the first parts to this series about CRM project mistakes:

1. CRM Project mistakes 1 & 2 : Customer experience, CRM Project Definition and Scope
2. CRM Project mistakes 3, 4 and 5 : Project complexity, CRM Skills & Experience and Loosing sight of the project objectives

This last part brings in the final two of our seven common mistakes and we aim to provide project success factors that should help you mitigate those potential issues.

Mistake number 6:

Hoping CRM will work

Realising the value and benefits of CRM require changes to the operating model as well as changes in behaviour of people. The big mistake is not to put the project centre stage in the business. If it is not centre stage it is probably because the executives of the business do not recognise or believe in its fundamental value.

The CRM strategy must have the highest value attached and must be very high priority for everybody in the business; “Doing CRM will definitely benefit our business”.

We need to ensure that everybody does CRM (however that is defined)

And it cannot be optional.

Much of the value comes from everybody in the business working, in harmony, to a core set of optimised processes and procedures. The executives must also do CRM and must be seen to promote and support its value.

Mandating something requires us to be very sure that, whatever it is, it makes sense. The CRM strategy, when defined in discrete things we want to do and achieve in certain prescribed ways; achieving the outcome in the most efficient, repeatable and optimum way possible. A combination of people doing the right things at the right time, using good technology.

It must make sense from :

• A company/organisation/departmental perspective,
• The individual/user perspective, and
• The customer perspective; that is all three perspectives and more (where identified).

If we can put some measure of value across all of these mandated things (pillars of the business strategy), then the strategy is real and properly articulated.

This mandate must apply across the whole organisation

It is very common to see the operational side of a business using a CRM system, which is not touched or leveraged at the executive level, and vice versa.

The key system ingredient is the database or information store.

At its most basic level the technology pillar is about having confidence that all the information (of value) is contained within the technology, or accessed through it. Only through consistent behaviour and adoption, across the whole business, can the solution and strategy be really successful.

Mistake number 7 :

Fogetting that CRM is an evolution

The CRM strategy and any related system does not happen on go-live day.

It does not happen once the users are trained either.

The mistake is to assume that the strategy and system is going to deliver the value immediately and without further effort. When such projects do not take root after go-live, people will point to any number of reasons.

The system itself is usually an easy target.

Even if such criticism is justified (e.g. a misaligned or poorly designed CRM system), it’s important to look at the behaviour of people. Are they trying, are they changing, are they adopting / adapting to the new model and (if relevant) the new system.

Rome was not built in a day, and human behaviour can be an obstinate thing when it comes to change. The strategy must be followed, then reviewed and then fine tuned according to what works and what doesn’t. A good CRM strategy should apply to as many people as possible as early as possible so that the benefits can be felt by all at the same time. It’s better to make the first step low (easy) so that everybody gets on board, positively. People should be given the opportunity to get going, and also to provide feedback. The strategy should be sensitive to that especially where the goodwill and enthusiasm of all the stakeholders is so critical to success.

The 80:20 rule applies here too

There is usually a disproportionately high degree of value and benefit from everybody moving in the same direction with a relatively simple unified / core set of processes and single enabling system. For example have a single customer database with a log of all key activity, regardless of what it is about and between whom, can provide high value return to both the people dealing with the customer and the customer perception itself.

The technology demands on such a requirement are relatively simple, but the change management aspect does require people to work in a different way than before; drop a fair bit of past behaviour and local systems. This could be a difficult behaviour change to actually do things in a much simpler and more sensible way.

Measurement and comparison is a proven way of changing behaviour

We all react to comparative measures, whether it is a negative (change poor performance) or positive (highlight / reward good performance. Usage of a CRM system, if the value of the system is to get people to do things a certain way and transact the right information, can be positively impacted through measurement. There are two levels of value here from a business insight perspective :

1. The business uses behaviour measurement to drive the desired actions of its people, and
2. That behaviour (in itself) delivers better customer and other valued information back to the business.

Evolution requires the result to be leveraged further, thus driving further action to improve business performance, at any and all levels.

Summary to 7 common CRM project mistakes

CRM can be very successful when it is focused on what matters to the customer and the customer experience. It follows that the business must have the primary role in defining what that customer experience looks like. From that, the business can define how it should operate and align itself to those things that bring the most value to and from the customer.

The business should not feel pushed by IT people, but should leverage the potential of technology by involving IT in all aspects of the strategy and project.

This can be done and articulated by the business in its terms, in its language and without unnecessary jargon.

Such a strategy must, by definition make absolute business sense and hence deliver an overwhelming business case.

Technology is not a cost

It must be viewed as an investment. The architecting and design of the technology enablers is a specialist task, requiring experience knowledge and skills. It is not for the business to do that. Nor is it an IT centric thing. It requires understanding not only about the business and about the technology, but also experience and knowledge of best practice; how to make an elegant solution that is truely aligned to the business need. Finally it requires knowledge and experience of how to go about creating the roadmap (plan) and executing it efficiently and effectively.

Today the technology is allowing the customer to reach right into the business and the business to engage with the customer no matter how remote he/she is.

Everything is (can be) connected and the business can push its applications right into the personal space of the customer (social media environments to the mobile app).

This is a revolution that is happening now and is breaking down previous barriers as well as creating new opportunities for the innovators and leaders.

The strategy must start with the customer and end with the customer

The business looks after the interests of the customer and is looking to do so at the best balance of benefits over costs. It can be done easily, as is anything, when you know how.

This has been part three of three articles on common CRM project mistakes. If you would like to have a copy of the full text to download, follow this link to the full white paper:

⇒ 7 Common CRM Project mistakes and how to avoid them

There are many reasons CRM Project fail and there are many mistakes that can be (and are) made which contribute to those failures. In this series, we are looking at a number of common mistakes and how best to avoid them. If you haven’t already, read the first part to this series about customer experience, definition of “CRM” and scope.

So onwards with the common CRM project mistakes. Mistake number 3:

Assuming CRM is big and complex

The scale of investment in terms of time, people resource and money that can go into (so called) Operational CRM projects can be over the top when balanced with what really needs to be done. This is even more difficult to comprehend or rationalise when that investment (over spend) relates just to the configuration of the technology component of the solution. The project, and its IT components, should have an enterprise-wide scope in terms of people and areas involved and impacted. However there is a common misconception that a wide scope equates with a complex solution or long implementation.

Without apportioning blame, it is fundamentally true that every vested interest (software, advisory / consultancy, the gurus) can talk up these types of projects way beyond what is needed, practicable or even workable. The technologists have taken the view that the technology is there to automate the business in its entirety; i.e. if it happens or it exists, it should be in the system. Whatever the business does, the system can faithfully replicate, automate, record and manage; the more complex the better. Whatever information the business transacts, uses, touches or sees, it should be (it is argued) in the system, regardless of its value or practicality.

The solution becomes divorced from practicality and reality and things get built and implemented because we can rather than because we should or need.

This is not the way to go.

A CRM strategy can be implemented much more easily, at lower cost and in less time, by approaching it in an incremental and evolutionary way.

Key is to establish a core definition and scope first that addresses the fundamental needs of the customer and the business, and to enable this with a core well structured CRM system platform. The (technology/system) platform, when properly aligned, can deliver major benefits without being complex, nor being too difficult for the users to migrate to. In turn the core platform can be easily configured using any of the leading vendor solutions today (irrespective of whether these are hosted/SaaS or not).

This can result in a much quicker route from vision to solution, as well as the advantage of lowering costs, reducing complexity and making things easy for everybody to manage.

The target model (definition / scope) needs to be scored on its ability to simplify, rationalise, harmonise and streamline what the business does, and how it can be enabled by technology. If the number one focus is to keep things simple, and question anything complex or difficult, then the target / blueprint should result in lower costs, less time and effort, and speedier migrations.

CRM Project mistake number 4:

Lack of Skills & Experience

The lack of experience, skills or knowledge of the people involved can be the cause of much of the problem. The people specifying the requirements all too often are not experienced business people with vision, understanding and authority; that is people who really understand. But rather, they are inexperienced, junior analysts or junior operational people.

More experienced business people, when involved (as they should be), are being asked to specify and design the solution (integrated business and IT) without knowing what the technology offers, how and where it should be applied, what constitutes best practice and how to manage the project. That is, they are being asked the wrong questions, or expected to contribute the wrong input.

IT people are also put in a difficult situation

Where technology skills may be high, but business knowledge, solution skills and implementation experience is lacking. Business requirements are based on the makeup of the industry standard systems, their functions and features. The technology is important, as is knowledge of the technology within the key members of the project team.

The experienced CRM practitioner has probably started by understanding the industry solutions, but through experience, will also have an understanding of how best to apply these technologies.

The expert CRM practitioner can shape improvements in the business model and the technology solution, both at the same time, to arrive at a truly optimised and elegant strategy.

The project needs two core skills working together;

1. People who can define what is good for the business.
2. People who understand how to shape and implement elegant solutions.

Experience, in both groups of people, is essential. The successful strategy requires both skill sets (groups of people) to work together.

CRM Project Mistake Number 5:

Missing the wood because of the trees

The core business model across most industries and sectors is remarkably similar. We engage in business because organisations and/or people receive or deliver products and services; the desired outcome. We do things (processes) ultimately with a view to achieving these desired outcomes well. “Well” might mean quickly, cost effectively, properly, or to some measure of performance, compliance or satisfaction.

The ingredient is information.

From an administration point of view, we are either transacting information, or leveraging it. Information may be something factual e.g. a date of birth, or something derived, calculated or analytical (a person’s age).

The technology perspective is concerned with managing such information (a database) or delivering it (a view) according to what works for the specific stakeholder (including directly to the customer) or business scenario.

Taking the information perspective, there are a number of core entities that are always in place; Organisations, Person, Activity and Product/Service.

We need to understand and implement a structure that allows us to manage attributes or content associated with these entities, and their inter-relationships, links and associations. By getting the basic structure right we just need to recognise when additional entities are required and include them properly within the structure; extending to, asset, purchase, portfolio, finance record etc.

The critical CRM project mistake is that we treat every new functional or scenario extension separately.

Each extension or additional requirement requires, quid pro quo, more of everything (technology, database design & configuration). We treat things differently without seeing that the fundamental structures can be the same every time. Because we call it (extension) something different, or because it comes from a different stakeholder group or area, we are not able to reuse the same configuration that is already in place.

This is a key reason why Operational CRM projects and systems become overly complex, costly, unwieldy and unusable.

Take an organisation that deals in multiple types of property and assets. We can construct a system that represents houses, hotels, roads, rooms, taps, playgrounds, caravans as different entities. Or, we can see that all of these are just different types of the same conceptual thing (asset); one record versus many. Of course the solution needs to recognise that different asset (types) require different attributes to describe them. But say we could allow the business to associate any information about any asset in any way with one single structure, would that be a good thing? We need to know and record different things (attributes) dependent on the type of asset we are dealing with, such as, the height of a room, the area of a playground or the number of wheels on a caravan.

The answer is yes, of course.

We can, with the right design and core configuration, implement a single structure to describe any asset of any scale and complexity.

It is possible to have a very wide coverage of scope in terms of business function and information being enabled by a very compact and structured core system.

It is possible to rationalise and harmonise all information to a very small number of core records (entities / database records).

It is possible to have a cohesive and consistent user interface (screen) design to handle multiple business scenarios.

It is therefore possible to create a system that will enable all areas across the business using (repeatedly) the same simple functions and information structures.

Rationalisation and harmonisation is about introducing commonality across the business for the computer enabler / platform. It should not be confused with the fact that each part of the business may have unique rules, complexities, scale and volume. These can be catered for through the application of more granularity and definition of the same core common structures.

People run businesses, not the computer

The system is essentially about storing information as well as helping the people to retrieve, capture and leverage the same information easily and effectively.

Getting people (the business) to do the right thing at the right time does not mean the technology needs have complex rules and algorithms to prompt and enforce. It just means that people need to be able to have views of information that allow them to see wood from the trees. All of this leads to a much cleaner and simpler approach to designing and implementing the solution. It also leads to a solution that is easier to adapt to as well as more in tune with what people want; something to make their working lives more easy, more efficient and more effective.

Now you know five of the seven Common CRM Project Mistakes, so find out what the last two are now.

If you would like to download the whole white paper, follow this link to download the pdf:

⇒ 7 Common CRM Project mistakes and how to avoid them

In this first part in a three article series, we’ll explore two of the key reasons CRM project fail and discuss how we can avoid them.

Is Customer Relationship Management (CRM) one of those things that we dare not openly criticise for fear of awakening the scorn of our fellows, or worse, incurring the wrath of a vengeful Inquisition?

How dare we question CRM! Without the Customer, there is nothing; no reason to exist, no value, no reward, no meaning. Absolutely Nothing! Relationship? Everybody needs one (or more) surely? It’s so obvious, it’s incredible that one should have the temerity to criticise its value. The Good Relationship leads the customer to shower upon us the reward of eternal high return on investment.

As for Management, no doubt, we all need a bit of management to keep us on the straight and narrow!

CRM is, by most accounts, a very sensible thing to focus on and improve. Most people agree with CRM at some level. Bring value to our customers and they will repay us. And yet the CRM project (a relatively recent phenomenon since mid ‘90s) has, all too often, failed to deliver?

These articles are based on multiple CRM strategies and projects of all scales across all sectors, since the modern (CRM) term was coined (The term CRM here applies also to PRM, SRM, XRM; partner, supplier, everybody).

We have learnt from these experiences that the same problems crop up time and time again and are delivering highly successful CRM projects. Also the technology options available are very different than as recently as 5 years ago, as is our approach to change. This can add further confusion, as decisions and assumptions are being made without enough understanding of what is possible and what is good.

The purpose of these articles is to highlight some of the more common mistakes, help you to avoid them, as well as to highlight how even the good CRM project is different today than before, so without further ado, here’s CRM Project mistake number one:

Forgetting it’s the customer experience

If, as is undoubtedly true, we create value by increasing the value of the customer base. The question is how can we increase the value of the customer base? A good answer is, by making the business more valuable to the customer (Ref Martha Rogers, Peppers & Rogers). That is, focus back on the customer and the customer experience.

What is it that we do that causes the customer to see or feel value? All too often, the CRM project focuses itself on the internal issues such as process efficiency, effectiveness, technology alignment, reporting, etc.

These issues are very important and feature throughout these articles in the other points. But they only serve a wider purpose, which is to support the delivery (ultimately) of a customer experience that brings value.

Today, the market, businesses, consumers and technology are interacting in a much more dynamic way than ever before. The customer experience is defined by a) the products and services offered, b) the initial engagement (information exchange) with the customer, c) the customer buying experience, d) how services are delivered after purchase, and e) subsequent interaction and exchange that leads to longer, wider and deeper business.

The vision and strategy for CRM would do well to identify, articulate and define what constitutes good for the customer and hence, what is good for the business. What can the business do directly with the customer that the customer appreciates or values? How should the business be seen by the customer? What are others (competitors and/or market winners) doing with customers that we could emulate or improve on? What would define value and how can it be realised?

Put the CRM strategy firmly where it should be in the eyes of the business; adding value externally to the customer, driving a return of value back to the business. The other more internally / traditional perspectives of the CRM strategy (internal process, technology, information, measurement etc) can now be addressed with direct reference to that. So, efficiency, effectiveness, internal processes, information, performance and measurement (typical focus for CRM), should matter and align back to the customer experience.

CRM Project mistake number 2:

Wrong definition and wrong scope

CRM has become synonymous with technology. The IT software industry (early 90’s) saw an opportunity to create and sell systems that would provide enabling solutions for businesses to “do CRM well”.

The CRM strategy becomes the CRM system strategy; “buy and implement a system that will deliver CRM”.The CRM project becomes an IT project, managed and run by IT people. The entire focus is on system features and functions.The strategy is considered done once the system is deployed.

The effort and costs of the project, as a result, tend to centre around the system, leaving behind the major point, which is that the business is trying to transition to a different level of working; a new or changed operational model. This is wrong, and a big mistake.

The project loses sight, from early on, of what CRM really should be about; the business (people) generating value by doing the right things, and doing them well.

This is what the project should start and end with.

Firstly, establish what constitutes doing the right thing and how best to do it; the target model. Establish how the target model can best be enabled by technology; a blueprint integrating all perspectives including business and technology.

Secondly, once that future blueprint is established, the technology needs to be configured and implemented; the centre piece of the traditional technology-centric project.

Then, thirdly, the project needs to refocus back on the business; migrate and transition everybody to the new target operational model. That’s the difficult piece; getting people to change. It’s not necessarily characterised by a big external / capital spend (like the technology component), but it does take effort and time.

It’s about aligning the IT technology to the business and not the other way around.

Improved performance and increased value only comes when the business is doing things differently than before. That does not happen over-night, and especially not when the technology is misaligned. However if the definition and scope is well done, resulting in a good/elegant model, then the migration should be easier. Not just starting and ending with the business, but also getting the target model right in the first place.

Part two on Common CRM Project mistakes and how to avoid them

If you would like to download the complete white paper, please follow the link below:

⇒ 7 Common CRM Project mistakes and how to avoid them

Getting CRM Right

29th March in Slough, UK

18th April in Birmingham, UK

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Free 09:00 – 13: 00

Getting CRM Right – Registration

Aimed at anyone who has at any point considered changing their CRM solution but does not know where to start, our free Getting CRM Right masterclass will help provide a great deal of information and value.

Our CRM Masterclass is ideal if you’re facing any of the following CRM issues:

• The CRM solution has been a big let-down
• You have spent a great deal of time, money and resources purchasing and implementing the CRM system
• You believe CRM is too focussed on IT
• The CRM system needs a re-launch but you want to make sure it’s a success this time
• The CRM system is not bringing you the results you thought it would
• You are considering implementing a CRM system but want some impartial, best practice advice
• You believe the CRM strategy should focus more on the business and what the business values

The CapricornVentis Master-class brings special expertise to firms wanting to realise the value from a CRM system that isn’t quite living up to expectations.

Come along to these morning sessions in Slough and Birmingham and Dublin, where CapricornVentis will share their extensive knowledge on CRM Rescue for free.

Even a dysfunctional CRM system may be well positioned for future success.

The trick is to step back and think about your real goals. CapricornVentis can show you how.

CapricornVentis is an international provider of CRM and Business Intelligence solutions in the UK and Europe.

With over 14 years of operational experience and regional operations in the UK and Ireland, CapricornVentis has the ability and reach to implement business systems on an international scale.

Register for our CRM Masterclass on Getting CRM Right

 
If you have any questions for our CRM event or would like to book a specific assessment of your organisation’s CRM, please contact Stuart Smalley on 0845 313 8696 or email stuart.smalley@capventis.com