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CHAPTER 2
Components of CRM Success CRM
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CRM

Components of CRM Success

•People
•Process
•Technology
•Expectations
•Pitfalls
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CRM

Technology
• For many, CRM is a technology and nothing
more
▫ the technology is one piece of the puzzle
▫ it is the tool, the enabler
• But it must be developed in concert with your
organizational model and business processes to
be successful
• An overview of CRM applications and
technology
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CRM

CRM Application Infrastructure Overview

• At its heart, the CRM application is a database
with which users interact via an application
server, using a variety of different clients
• Figure 2-1 provides an overview of a typical CRM
application technology architecture
• The complexity of your CRM infrastructure will
mirror the scale of your organization
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CRM
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CRM Application Infrastructure Overview

• As part of the general trend in the technology
industry toward cloud computing, most of the
leading CRM application vendors now offer their
products as a “software-as-a-service” or “cloud”
application
• The choice of deployment model (traditional on-
premises vs. software-as-a-service) should be
driven by a number of factors
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CRM

Production, Development, and Testing

Environment
• Potentially as part of your initial CRM launch or
down the road as your requirements mature, you
may find the need to develop custom
components for your CRM application, perhaps
to add new features or to integrate with other
business systems in your organization
• Developing custom components inside your
production environment is fraught with risk
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CRM

Production, Development, and Testing

Environment
• Ideally, a third CRM environment, specifically
for testing, would be used
• This environment should match the production
environment as closely as possible, with respect
to hardware, software infrastructure versions,
and so on, to provide a high level of confidence
that custom components that perform well in
testing will also perform once migrated to your
production environment
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CRM

Source Control
• Most CRM deployments can benefit from
and ought to be using some form of
source-code control to manage
configurations and custom components
• The advantages of using source control are
great, and the overhead is not nearly as
significant as you might imagine
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CRM

Source Control
• For non-developers, source-code control systems
manage the source code for configurations and
custom components and provide the following
benefits:
▫ Help prevent or manage collisions where different
developers independently make changes to the same
files
▫ Allow access to a history of file changes and reversion
back to prior versions of files as needed
▫ Allow multiple versions of the software to be run to
allow for branched development and help isolate bugs
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CRM

Common CRM Application Functionality

• Customers
▫ Customer records are the heart of the CRM
application, around which most other information
revolves
• Key customer functionality to look for includes the
following:
▫ The ability to add fields to categorize customers in
multiple ways
▫ The ability to easily track interactions with customers
▫ The ability to track multiple types of organizations
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CRM

Common CRM Application Functionality

• Marketing
▫ Marketing features are intended to help execute and track
outbound marketing activity
• Key marketing functionality to look for:
▫ The ability to manage suspect/prospect information
independently from customers for qualification and marketing
purposes
▫ The ability to organize marketing activities into campaigns for
planning purposes
▫ The ability to execute direct e-mail campaigns in a robust way
▫ The ability to tie sales and customer acquisition activity back
to marketing efforts
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CRM

Common CRM Application Functionality

• Sales
▫ providing management with better visibility to sales
activity and the sales pipeline
• Key sales functionality to look for:
▫ The ability to manage sales opportunity information
▫ The ability to define and manage a structured sales
methodology
▫ The ability to create quotes for presentations to
customers and prospects
▫ The ability to create quotes for presentations to
customers and prospects
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CRM

Common CRM Application Functionality

• Service
▫ The customer service features of CRM applications are
intended to help organizations record customer issues
and effectively manage them through to resolution
• Key service functionality to look for:
▫ The ability to manage and categorize service issues
▫ The ability to define and support multiple issue
resolution processes
▫ The ability to support service queues
▫ The ability to deploy a self-service portal
▫ An integrated wiki or other knowledge base tool
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CRM

Common CRM Application Functionality

• Security
▫ A robust security model within your CRM
application will give you the flexibility to manage a
wide range of different security scenarios
• Key security model functionality to look for:
▫ The ability to secure information
▫ The ability to bundle permissions into “roles”
▫ The ability to handle security exceptions
▫ Security that is pervasive throughout the
application
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CRM

Common CRM Application Functionality

• Configuration and Customization
▫ to deliver an elegant user experience and to maximize
the value they can provide to your organization
• Key configuration and customization functionality to
look for:
▫ Ability to extend the application data model without
programming
▫ Ability to insert custom business logic via code into the
system to change the way it behaves
▫ Ability for other applications to interact with the CRM
application
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CRM

Common CRM Application Functionality

• Reporting
▫ A large measure of the value of the CRM
application is realized through the use of well-
designed reports that provide business insight and
enable informed decision making
• Key reporting functionality to look for:
▫ User-focused tools that enable construction of basic
reports and dashboards without programming
▫ Open access to the data using other reporting tools
via standard protocols
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CRM

Common CRM Application Functionality

• Workflow Automation
▫ a place to retrieve and store information at various
steps
• Key workflow functionality to look for:
▫ The ability to design multistep workflow processes
that can respond to application events
▫ The ability to branch and control the flow of the
workflow process
▫ The ability to extend workflow processes with
custom logic via code
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CRM

Social Media and CRM Applications

• Social media tools also provide some interesting
new capabilities for organizations
▫ Gathering feedback on products and policies is
easier and less expensive than with traditional
methods
• How can CRM tools help manage an
organization’s social media presence and
communications?
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CRM

Social Media and CRM Applications

• The capabilities offered typically include the
following:
▫ Monitoring social media tools
▫ Managing and tracking activity for influential
individuals
▫ Coordinating the organization’s proactive
communications
▫ Linking an individual’s CRM record with their
profiles in various social networking sites