Category: Mobile

What is CRM and why do you need it?

CRM Logos
CRM solutions (clockwise from top left) Salesforce.com, Microsoft Outlook Business Contact Manager, ACT! and SugarCRM.

I have used CRM software tools for more than ten years. Some of these were single user apps, some were client/server-based and included workgroup collaboration. Others were integrated with corporate-wide ERP systems and linked all departments together. Among the well-known solutions I have used are ACT!, Salesforce.com, SugarCRM and Microsoft Outlook Business Contact Manager.

Each of these has its strengths and weaknesses. Many functions and features are common to them all such as contact management, sales pipeline management, sales forecasting, etc. Each also has unique and distinguishing capabilities. Among the most important technical features of a CRM for me have been:

  • browser access
  • mobile app access
  • staff and management user levels
  • customizable dashboards
  • email client/server synchronization
  • APIs for ERP integration
  • automated email and text notifications for both staff and customers
  • custom and automatic report generation

The purpose of this article is to review the evolution and importance of customer relationship management as a business discipline and then explain some key lessons I have learned in my experience with CRM tools over the past decade.

Although it did not always have an acronym or business theory behind it, CRM has been practiced since the dawn of commerce. In short, customer relationship management is the methods that a business uses when interacting with customers. Although CRM is often associated with marketing, new business development and sales functions, it actually encompasses the end-to-end experience that customers have with an organization.

Therefore, customer relationship management is an important part of every business; how you manage your client relationships—from initial contact to account acquisition and development through delivery of products and services … and beyond—is vital to your future. It stands to reason that companies that are very good at customer relationship management are often among the most successful businesses.

Around the time that computers were used in business—especially the PC in the 1980s and the World Wide Web in the 1990s—the phrase customer relationship management and its acronym CRM began to acquire a specific meaning. By the late 1990s, entire schools of business thought were developed around strategies for the collection and handling of information and data about customer relations. CRM-specific technology platforms that place the customer at the center of business activity grew up around these theories.

In the first decade of the new century, the warehousing of customer information as well as the availability of demographic data about the population as a whole made it possible for CRM tools to be used for integrated and targeted marketing campaigns for new customer acquisition. Later, the growth of Big Data and cloud computing services moved CRM data out of the IT closet and made it available with software as a service (SaaS) solutions that are very flexible and can be deployed at any time and anywhere.

Most recently, social media has added another layer of information to CRM whereby companies can monitor or “listen” to dialogue between their organization and customers in real time.

CRM software industry growth
Source: Gartner Research

Business software industry experts are reporting that investment in CRM tools has been exploding and shows little sign of slowdown. According to an enterprise software market forecast by Gartner Research in 2013, total spending on CRM systems would pass that of ERP spending in 2016 and reach a total of $36 billion by 2017.

Cloud adoption by business functions
Source: Really Simple Solutions

The Gartner Research study also showed that by 2014 cloud-based CRM systems would represent 87% of the market, up from 12% in 2008. Meanwhile, in their Cloud Attitudes Survey, Really Simple Systems showed that cloud-based adoption by CRM users is more than double that of all other business functions including accounting, payroll, HR and manufacturing.

Mobile CRM adoption
Source: Gartner Research

Along with the growth of Cloud-based CRM solutions—and also driving it—is mobile technology. According to Gartner Research, mobile CRM adoption experienced the following in 2014:

  • 500% growth rate in the number of apps rising from 200 to 1,200 on mobile app stores
  • 30% increase in the use of tablets by the sales people
  • 35% of businesses have been moving toward mobile CRM apps

While these trends show that expectations are very high that increased CRM resources and investment will produce improved business results, there are countervailing trends that the path forward is far from a straight line. A survey by DiscoverOrg showed that nearly one quarter of all businesses do not have any CRM system. Additionally, one industry study shows that many organizations face setbacks during implementation and some (25-60%) fail to meet ROI targets.

Finally, other research shows that companies that have invested in CRM tools do not take advantage of some 80% of their potential benefits, especially integration and extension throughout the entire organization. All of the above statistics correspond with my own experience. While decision makers and business leaders have expectations that a CRM solution will significantly impact their bottom line, the challenges of implementation can be daunting and bog down the effort quickly.

Therefore, it is critical to have a CRM implementation plan:

  • Develop an integrated CRM strategy that places the customer at the center of all company departments and functions.
  • Map your IT infrastructure and identify all centers of customer data.
  • Evaluate, select and test a technology solution that is appropriate for your organization.
  • Utilize IT resources to build an architecture that will bring all or most of your customer data together within one system.
  • Identify champions in each department and build support and buy-in for the CRM throughout the company.
  • Work on your data quality and make sure that the information that is going into the system at startup does not compromise the project.
  • Provide training and share success stories to encourage everyone to use the system throughout the day.

In our intensely competitive environment, it is clear that CRM tools can enable an organization to effectively respond to multiple, simultaneous and complex customer needs. Every department—marketing, sales, customer service, production, shipping and accounting—has a critical role to play in building the customer database and using the CRM.

The following conclusions are derived from my experience:

  1. Few companies have implemented CRM technologies and even when CRM tools are available, few people embrace and use them.
  2. Those with effective CRM implementations are significantly outperforming the competition on the service and communication side of their business.
  3. The best and most successful companies connect their CRM infrastructure with business strategy and make its use part of their corporate culture.

Is your head in The Cloud or in the sand?

The Cloud is everywhere all the time; it knows who you are, where you are and it is casting its shadow upon you right now. Driven by shifts in technology and culture, The Cloud is part of our personal and professional lives whether we like it or not. If you have a Facebook account, your Timeline is in The Cloud; if you have a Flickr account, your photos are in The Cloud; if you have a Netflix account, the movies you watch are stored in The Cloud; if you have a DropBox account, your documents are in The Cloud.

The Cloud or cloud computing has many forms. One can think of it as computing as a utility instead of with a piece of electronic hardware, a device or a program that you own. Cloud computing is associated with shared computer resources such as data storage systems or applications over the Internet.

Popular providers of cloud computing products and services: (clockwise from top left) Apple iCloud, Amazone Cloud Drive, Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft SkyDrive, Oracle Cloud Computing and IBM Cloud
Popular providers of cloud computing products and services: (clockwise from top left) Apple iCloud, Amazone Cloud Drive, Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft SkyDrive, Oracle Cloud Computing and IBM Cloud

In contrast to the personal computing model—where every system has unique copies of software and data and a large local storage volume—cloud computing distributes and replicates these assets on servers across the globe. Historically speaking, The Cloud is a return—in the age of the Internet, apps and social media—to the time-sharing terminal computing model of the 1950s. It maintains computer processes and data functions centrally and enables users to access them from anywhere and at any time.

The phrase “The Cloud” was originally used in the early 1990s as a metaphor to describe the Internet. Beginning in 2000, the technologies of cloud computing began to expand exponentially and since then have become ubiquitous. Solutions like Apple’s .Mac (2000), MobileMe (2008) and finally iCloud (2011) have enabled public familiarity with cloud computing models. Certainly the ability to access, edit and update your personal digital assets—documents, photos, music, video—from multiple devices is a key feature of The Cloud experience.

The development and proliferation of cloud file sharing (CFS) systems such as DropBox, Google Drive and Microsoft SkyDrive—offering multiple gigabytes of file storage for free—have also driven mass adoption. Some industry analysts report that there are more than 500 million CFS users today.

Beside benefits for the consumer, cloud-based solutions are being offered by enterprise computing providers such as IBM and Oracle with the promise of significant financial savings associated with shared and distributed resources. In fact, The Cloud has become such an important subject today that every supplier of computer systems—as well as online retailers like Amazon—is hoping to cash in on the opportunity by offering cloud solutions to businesses and consumers.

For those of us in the printing and graphic arts industries, a prototypical example of cloud computing is Adobe’s Creative Cloud. Adopters of Adobe CC are becoming accustomed to monthly software subscription fees as opposed to a one-time purchase of a serialized copy as well as shared data storage of their creative graphics content on Adobe’s servers.

Digital Convergence

The concepts of digital convergence were developed and expanded by Ihtiel de Sola Pool, Nicholas Negroponte and John Hagel III
The concepts of digital convergence were developed and expanded by Ithiel de Sola Pool, Nicholas Negroponte and John Hagel III

In a more general sense, The Cloud is part of the process of digital convergence, i.e. the coming together of all media and communications technologies into a unified whole. The concept of technology convergence was pioneered at MIT by the social scientist Ithiel de Sola Pool in 1983. In his breakthrough book Technologies of Freedom, De Sola Pool postulated that digital electronics would cause the modes of communication—telephone, newspapers, radio, and text—to combine into one “grand system.”

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab, substantially developed the theory of digital convergence in the 1980s and 1990s. Long before the emergence of the World Wide Web, Negroponte was foretelling that digital technologies were causing the “Broadcast and Motion Picture Industry,” the “Computer Industry” and the “Print and Publishing Industry” to overlap with each other and become one. As early as 1978, Negroponte was predicting that this process would reach maturity by the year 2000.

At the center of digital convergence—and the growth and expansion of The Cloud—is the acceleration of electronic technology innovation. John Hagel III of The Center for the Edge at Deloitte has identified the following technological and cultural components that are responsible for this accelerated development.

Infrastructure and Users

The cost/performance trends of core digital technologies are closely associated with Moore’s Law, i.e. that the stated number of transistors on an affordable CPU doubles every two years. By extension this law of exponential innovation can also be applied to other digital technologies such as storage devices and Internet bandwidth. In simple terms, what this means is that the quantity of information that can be processed, transmitted and stored per dollar spent is accelerating over time. The development of digital convergence and of cloud computing is entirely dependent upon these electronic technology shifts. The following graphs illustrate this:

The cost of computing power has decreased significantly, from $222 per million transistors in 1992 to $0.06 per million transistors in 2012. The decreasing cost-performance curve enables the computational power at the core of the digital infrastructure.
The cost of computing power has decreased significantly, from $222 per million transistors in 1992 to $0.06 per million transistors in 2012. The decreasing cost-performance curve enables the computational power at the core of the digital infrastructure.
Similarly, the cost of data storage has decreased considerably, from $569 per gigabyte of storage in 1992 to $0.03 per gigabyte in 2012. The decreasing cost-performance of digital storage enables the creation of more and richer digital information.
Similarly, the cost of data storage has decreased considerably, from $569 per gigabyte of storage in 1992 to $0.03 per gigabyte in 2012. The decreasing cost-performance of digital storage enables the creation of more and richer digital information.
The cost of Internet bandwidth has also steadily decreased, from $1,245 per 1000 megabits per second (Mbps) in 1999 to $23 per 1000 Mbps in 2012. The declining cost-performance of bandwidth enables faster collection and transfer of data, facilitating richer connections and interactions.
The cost of Internet bandwidth has also steadily decreased, from $1,245 per 1000 megabits per second (Mbps) in 1999 to $23 per 1000 Mbps in 2012. The declining cost-performance of bandwidth enables faster collection and transfer of data, facilitating richer connections and interactions.

Culture: Installed Base

Tracking closely with the acceleration of computer technology innovation—and also driving it—is the adoption of rate of these technologies by people. Without the social and practical implementation of innovation, digital convergence and The Cloud could not have moved from the laboratory and theoretical possibility into modern reality. Both the number of Internet users and wireless subscriptions are core to the transformations in human activity that are fueling the shift from the era of the personal computer to that of mobile, social media and cloud computing.

Additionally, the use of the Internet continues to increase. From 1990 to 2012, the percent of the US population accessing the Internet at least once a month grew from near 0 percent to 71 percent. Widespread use of the Internet enables more widespread sharing of information and resources.
Additionally, the use of the Internet continues to increase. From 1990 to 2012, the percent of the US population accessing the Internet at least once a month grew from near 0 percent to 71 percent. Widespread use of the Internet enables more widespread sharing of information and resources.
More and more people are connected via mobile devices. From 1985 to 2012, the number of active wireless subscriptions relative to the US population grew from 0 to 100 percent (reflecting the fact that the same household can have multiple wireless subscriptions). Wireless connectivity is further facilitated by smartphones. Smart devices made up 55 percent of total wireless subscriptions in 2012, compared to only 1 percent in 2001.
More and more people are connected via mobile devices. From 1985 to 2012, the number of active wireless subscriptions relative to the US population grew from 0 to 100 percent (reflecting the fact that the same household can have multiple wireless subscriptions). Wireless connectivity is further facilitated by smartphones. Smart devices made up 55 percent of total wireless subscriptions in 2012, compared to only 1 percent in 2001.

Innovation Comparison

The full implications of these changes are hard to comprehend. Some experts point out that previous generations of disruptive technology—electricity, telephone, internal combustion engine, etc.—have, after an initial period of accelerated innovation, been followed by periods of stability and calm. In our time, the cost/performance improvement of digital technologies—and the trajectory of Moore’s Law—shows no sign of slowing down in the foreseeable future.

While it is increasingly difficult to keep up with the demands of this change, we are compelled to do so. The fact is that we have been in The Cloud for some time now means that our conceptions and plans must be reflective of this reality. We cannot attempt to hide from The Cloud in our personal and professional affairs anymore than we could have hidden from the personal computer or the smartphone. The key is to embrace The Cloud and find within it new opportunities for harnessing its power to become more effective and successful in our daily lives and business offerings to customers.

2013: A big year for Big Data

The year 2013 will be important for a couple of reasons. Believe it or not, 2013 marks the twentieth anniversary of the World Wide Web. It is true that Tim Berners-Lee developed the essential technologies of the web at CERN laboratory in Switzerland in 1989-90. However, it was the first graphical browser called Mosaic—developed by a team at the National Center for Computer Applications at the University of Illinois-Urbana—in April 1993 that made the web enormously popular.

ncsa-mosaic

Marc Andreessen, developer of the first graphical web browser Mosaic in 1993.
Marc Andreessen, developer of Mosaic the first graphical web browser in 1993.

Without Mosaic, brainchild of UI-U NCSA team member Marc Andreessen, the explosive growth of the web in the 1990s could not have happened. Mosaic brought the web outside the walls of academia and transformed it into something that anyone could use. In June 1993 there were only 130 web sites; two years later there were 230,000 sites. In 2007 there were 121 million web sites; it is estimated that there are now 620 million web sites. Now that qualifies as exponential growth.

This brings me to the second reason why this year is important: worldwide digital information will likely surpass 4 zettabytes of data in 2013. This is up from 1.2 zettabytes in 2010. Most of us are familiar with terabytes; a zettabyte is 1 billion terabytes. In between these two are petabytes (1 thousand terabytes) and exabytes (1 million terabytes). 2013 is going to be a big year for Big Data.

Companies that grew up in the age of the World Wide Web are experts at Big Data. As of 2009, Google was processing 24 petabytes of data each day to provide contextual responses to web search requests. Wal-Mart records one million consumer transactions per hour and imports them into a database that contains 2.5 petabytes. Facebook stores, accesses and analyzes 30+ petabytes of user-generated data.

DataTerms

The expansion of worldwide Big Data and the metric terms to describe it (yottabytes or 1,000 zettabytes are coming next—beyond that is TBD) has become the subject of much discussion and debate. Big Data is most often discussed in terms of the four V’s: volume, velocity, variety and value.

Volume

The accumulation of Big Data volume is being driven by a number of important technologies. Smartphones and tablets and social media networks Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are important Big Data sources. There is another less visible, but nonetheless important, source of Big Data: it is called the “Internet of Things.” This is the collection of sensors, digital cameras and other data gathering systems (such as RFID tags) attached to a multitude of objects and devices all over the world. These systems are generating enormous amounts of data 24/7/365.

Velocity

The speed of Big Data generation is related to the expansion and increased performance of data networks both wired and wireless. It is also the result of improved capturing technologies. For example, one minute of high definition video generates between 100 and 200 MB of data. This is something that anyone with a smartphone can do and is doing all the time.

Variety

The Big Data conversation is more about the quality of the information than it is about the size and speed. Our world is full of information that lies outside structured datasets. Much of it cannot be captured, stored, managed or analyzed with traditional software tools. This poses many problems for IT professionals and business decision makers; what is the value of the information that is largely “exhaust data”?

Value

There are good internal as well as external business reasons for sharing Big Data. Internally, if exhaust data is missed in the analytical process, executives are making decisions based upon intuition rather than evidence. Big Data can also be used externally as a resource for customers that otherwise would be unable to gain real-time access to detailed information about the products and services they are buying. It is the richness and complexity of Big Data that makes it so valuable and useful for both the executive process and customer relationships.

Every organization today is gathering Big Data in the course of its daily activities. In most cases, the bulk of the information is collected in a central EMS or ERP system that connects the different units and functional departments of the organization. But more likely than not, these systems are insufficient and cannot support all data gathering activities within the organization. There are probably systems that have been created ad-hoc to serve various specialized needs and solve problems that the centralized system cannot address. The challenge of Big Data is to capture all ancillary data that is getting “dropped to the floor” and make it useful by integrating it with the primary sources.

Making Big Data available offers organizations the ability to establish a degree of transparency internally and externally that was previously impossible. Sharing enables organization members and customers to respond quickly to rapidly changing conditions and circumstances. Some might argue that sharing Big Data is bad policy because it allows too much of a view “behind the curtain.” But the challenge for managers is to securely collect, store, organize, analyze and share Big Data in a manner that makes it valuable to those who have access and can make use of it.

I remember—upon downloading the Mosaic browser in 1993 with my dial up connection on my desktop computer—how thrilling it was to browse the web freely for the first time. It seemed like Mosaic was the ultimate information-gathering tool. I also remember how excited I was to get my first 80 MB hard disk drive for data storage. The capacity seemed nearly limitless. As we look back and appreciate the achievements of twenty years ago, we now know that those were really the beginnings of something enormous that we could not have fully predicted at the time.

With the benefit of those experiences—and many more over the past two decades of the transition from analog to online and electronic media—it is important to comprehend as best one can the meaning of Big Data in 2013 and where it is going. Those organizations that recognize the implications and respond decisively to the challenges of the explosive growth of structured and unstructured data will be the ones to establish a competitive advantage in their markets.