CRM is a strategy. Technology is the enabler. No technology –no matter
How sophisticated –can be successful without a strategy to guide it. Business strategy and technology must work hand-in-hand to bring a customer-centric plan to fruition.
If you asked 10 business to describe their CRM strategies you would get 10 dramatically different answers. One company, for example, might want to take advantage of customer information sitting disparate databases scattered across the business might, while another want to develop a multi-channel approach to reach new customers. Gartner recently surveyed mid-sized businesses to learn about their CRM goals, and objectives. Not surprisingly, the majority of today’s MSB’s (companies between 100 and 350 users) adopt CRM to provide a 360-degree customer view and to automate and manage sales-related processes.
To achieve these varied objectives, CRM strategy cannot exist in isolation; it is co-dependent with other business strategies, and it “fits” between disparate systems, processes, and users.
A successful CRM strategy must be congruent with an organization’s greater business goals. Companies need to define what their business needs are first, which ensures their CRM investment aligns with the people and processes that support their objectives. Those outcomes can include increasing revenue, margins, productivity, workflow effectiveness, customer loyalty or decreasing costs.
“Among MSBs, CRM goals and objectives for deploying CRM
Software are fairly common:
•50 percent were using the CRM software to provide a 360
Degree view of the customer for customer-facing employees
•29 percent were using the application to provide visibility in to
Sales cycles and sales activities
•10 percent were using the software for customer service and
support
•6 percent were using it for integrated sales and service
activities
•5 percent were using the software to consolidate systems”
Gartner Inc., “The Three –Year Total Cost of Ownership for CRM Software
For MSBs ”,W .Close, B .Eisenfeld ,J .Davies ,A. Bona (April15/’04)”
CUSTOMER INSIGHT 1:
STRATEGY COMES FIRST.
The sales cycle no longer starts and ends with the sales call. It lasts throughout the entire customer lifecycle- starting with marketing and continuing across sales and service interactions which can span many years.
CRM can help support and improve customer-facing processes. But for CRM to go companywide, it must take a long-term, strategic view. For one customer, CRM is a driving force of their corporate vision and has enabled a multi-channel approach for customer interaction spanning departments and evolving over time.
Case Study:
“The level of customer detail that NetSuite tracks is phenomenal. It allows us to see our entire client history, which lets us provide more effective support.” Jay Cholewinski, Sales Director Web Recruit
- Company: Web Recruit
- Location: Exeter, Devon, UK
- Industry: Professional Services
- Software Switched from: Excel, Outlook
- Other Software Considered: Virtual Office
- Challenges: Replace inefficient CRM Tools With a more robust, better integrated solution that can boost sales and lead conversion by allowing more customer focus.
- Results with NetSuite:
-Sales up by 25 percent in just six months
-Lead conversion up by almost 20 percent
The Results:
By moving to a more efficient way to handle its leads, Web Recruit has been able to focus more on customer resulting in more closed deals. Since it started using NetSuite in September 2004, Web Recruit has seen is conversion rate jump almost 20 percent. “Netsuite lets up manage leads and prospects more effectively,” says Jay Cholewinski, Sales Director at Web Recruit. We can send out more marketing e-mails with less effort, and then follow-up with remainder email and letters. The result is a lot of new business.”
Indeed, since September, Web Recruits’ sales are up by 25 percent – an increase the company attributes to NetSuite. “The level of customer detail that NetSuite tracks is phenomenal,” say Cholewinski. “It allows us to see our entire client history, which lets us provide more effective support. About three-quarters of our increase in sales is repeat business, which shows how good NetSuite is at helping us provide first-rate service.” And while NetSuite has proven easy to customize, it’s also proven easy on its users. “NetSuite is very simple to use, but extremely effective,” Says Cholewinski
The Challenge:
Few companies understood the power of the Internet better than Web Recruit. Indeed, its entire business model – not to mention its name – was based on the Web, and the efficiencies that Web-based technologies made possible. Since its founding in September 2001, Web Recruit had been helping clients fill job vacancies by advertising listings on 50 major internet job boards, and then screening candidates and forwarding resumes. But it had yet to leverage the internet in growing its own business. “When ic cambe to a CRM solution, we were using nothing more than Outlook and Excel, which was very labor intensive and not very efficient,” says Cholewinski
By 2004, Cholewinski was looking for a more effective CRM solution. He looked at packages including Virtual Office, which he says, was “not easy to use or customize.”
After failing to be wowed by any standalone program, Cholewinski realized that the answer was as plain as the name on his door. “We wanted something Web-based, like us,” he says With a multiple offices, Web Recruit not only needed a more efficient CRM solution, it needed one that was easy to access, no matter where the user was. “WE wanted to be able to access data from anywhere, “Cholewinski says. “That led us to Netsuite, which did everything we needed and could be easily customized.”
Most importantly, NetSuite offered an easy, yet effective, way to monitor a growing business. “NetSuite’s abilities were endless, “says Cholewinski, “We could keep better records on our clients, getting an immediate overview of their history, along with their payments and interaction with us. With Netsuite, we’d be able to ramp up our marketing efforts. That was something that was previously too labor intensive for us to do effectively.
The Solution:
In September 2004, Web Recruit moved to NetSuite for its CRM needs, with customer focus in mind. Immediately, communications with customers and prospects improved. “We could control everything so much easier with NetSuite,” says Cholewinski. “Having that history of your customer or lead right in front of you enables you to sound very professional when talking to them.”
Not only were leads entered into NetSuite, but so were orders, so when clients called with questions or for help, Web Recruit staff had immediate access to all relevant information, enabling them to service clients faster and better. “We could see what they ordered, who placed it, who they’d spoken to, and so on, “says Cholewinski. “It let us understand our clients a lot better. Before, we’d rely on scraps of paper and notes in Outlook. Now we’d have a full record, available in one place, at anytime, from anywhere.”
NetSuite also boosted Web Recruit’s marketing capabilities. “We were a lot more successful because NetSuite let us upload our leads, send out emails, and manage it all in a that was far less labor intensive than our old system,” says Cholewinski. “Now we could quickly see where we needed to follow up. “By showing Cholewinski where to focus his resources, NetSuite has shown him how to increase sales, both with new customers, and old ones. “We’ve increased our business drastically, but because we service our existing business better, we’re getting more repeat customers, too,”
Web-Recruit’s customer focused business strategy was not something new that the CRM tool NetSuite created. It was a careful thought out business focus that was enhanced by Netsuite. By marrying the right focus with a purposed plan to utilize the Netsuite service Web-Recruit took full advantage of what NetSuite could bring to the table. Tools like NetSuite alone without initiative cause little impact, but when a Strategy and the right CRM comes together results abound.
This article brought to you by ICON Technology Solutions. Find us at www.icontsi.com. Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Kansas’ 1# Netsuite integrators of on-demand web-based CRM, ERP, and Accounting SaaS solutions.
