

The 2019
CRM Buyer's
Guide
Customers decide your fate. The right CRM solution
can help you deliver great and lasting relationships.
Here’s what to look for.

1
Table of Contents

03 CHAPTER 1 Note to Reader

04 CHAPTER 2 CRM: The Competitive Differentiator

07 CHAPTER 3 Why Your Business Needs Great CRM

11 CHAPTER 4 Demystifying CRM Technology

15 CHAPTER 5 CRM Evaluation Checklist

19 CHAPTER 6 A Blueprint for CRM Success

24 CHAPTER 7 Success Metrics: A Checklist

26 CHAPTER 8 Getting Started

31 CHAPTER 9 CRM’s Ideal State

34 CHAPTER 10 The Future of CRM

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CHAPTER 1

Note to
If you’re satisfied with the status quo, read no further. This guide is not for you.

However, if you have an appetite for shaking things up and trying new approaches to old challenges, you’ll want to

Reader
keep reading. Why? Because this guide will inspire you to take a fresh look at ways to supercharge your sales and
marketing teams — and your business — by transforming your Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

It’s no secret that digital transformation is disrupting the way businesses interact with their customers. The upside
is that these disruptions provide new opportunities to rethink time-worn processes.

What’s the secret? No secret, really, just connecting the dots — and the data. By linking disparate sources of data
across the business, you can get a clear and comprehensive view of customer activities. The insights you gain from
this view will help everyone from salespeople to call-center reps deliver consistently great experiences with every
customer interaction.

The foundational tool for superior customer experience is your CRM system.

The challenge, historically, is that the people who stand to benefit most from CRM either can’t or won’t use it,
because traditional CRM systems can be overly complex and very user unfriendly.

But modern CRM has come a long way — and it’s time to take a fresh look at what it can do for your business. The
best CRM solutions are easy to use, yet comprehensive in scope — turning every employee into a customer expert
by putting the right information at their fingertips, often before they even ask for it.

For this guide, we have spoken with top industry experts and forward-thinking business leaders to capture their
insights about the challenges of traditional CRM deployments and the keys to a successful implementation. We’ve
included the questions to ask when evaluating solutions and some tips for getting started on the path to modern,
game-changing CRM.

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CHAPTER 2 
CRM:
The Competitive
Differentiator
4
CHAPTER 2

Sameness is the enemy of success. Setting your business apart from your competition begins
with better customer experiences.

McKinsey research found that leaders in customer experience can grow revenues by 5% to 10% within two or three
years. In a recent Gartner survey, 89% of leaders at consumer-facing companies said customer experience is their
primary differentiator. There’s a dark side as well: another survey found that 25% of customers will defect after just
one bad experience.

How can you win when your customers expect top-tier service and seamless transactions, and alternatives to your
offer are just a click away? Success comes from providing a customer experience that is consistently better than
your competitors’ at every touchpoint. You do that through a deep understanding of customers’ needs as they
research, evaluate, shop for, buy, and use your product or service.

Forward-thinking business leaders — we call them Game Changers — are making this customer journey the focal
point of operations. They are shifting organizational culture to adopt a customer-centric focus meant to break
down silos across functional groups and encourage new thinking around customer needs.

CRM has emerged as the enabling platform for this customer-first transformation. Its role as a great differentiator
is quite a leap from its more modest beginnings.

“CRM, when it first started, was more about keeping your contacts in a central location,” says Brent Leary,
Cofounder and Partner of CRM Essentials, a CRM consultancy. “Today, CRM is the foundational component
of a customer engagement strategy.”

A modern CRM solution will help you capture relevant insights about your customers and, as importantly, share
those insights with the employees who can act on them to deliver positive experiences. Today’s CRM systems also
can drive significant improvements in productivity and open up new opportunities for business growth. Some game
changers, such as Jim Glickman, chief marketing officer at Hilco Valuation Services, have turned CRM into a platform
that supports their entire business.

CRM: THE COMPETITIVE DIFFERENTIATOR

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CHAPTER 2

“ CRM, when it first started, was

more about keeping your contacts
in a central location. Today, CRM
is the foundational component of a
customer engagement strategy.
— Brent Leary, CRM Essentials
”
“Unlike other companies that use CRM to track companies and contacts, we use it as our sole operating platform,”
says Glickman. “Salespeople use it as a CRM tool. Business operations staff use it to book deals. Appraisers use
it to assign tasks and track time and expenses. We do all of our business reporting from the system.” Glickman’s
team even gave the platform a name that speaks to its breadth: ESSTER (Engagement, Setup, Scheduling, Tracking,
Evaluation, and Reporting).

If you’ve had enough of settling for ordinary, a fresh approach to CRM can unleash the type of game-changing
customer engagement that drives loyalty and fuels business growth.

CRM: THE COMPETITIVE DIFFERENTIATOR

6
CHAPTER 3

Why Your
Business Needs
Great CRM
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CHAPTER 3

Technology has become the great equalizer, because it has put tremendous control in the
hands of consumers and business buyers alike. Thanks to digital disruptors such as Amazon and Netflix, buyers
expect you to know them, regardless of whether you’re selling books, enterprise software, or farm equipment.
Seamless transactions across devices and 24/7 access are the new norms across industries, and recommendation
engines are leading even B2B buyers toward next purchases.

It’s no longer enough to provide the best product or service, because many prospects won’t ever become
customers if they’re turned off by the experience of getting to know you. You need to deliver a great first impres-
sion and repeat that performance with consistency and excellence at every stage.

“It’s less important that you have a 360-degree view of the customer and more important that the customer has a
360-degree view of you,” says Rebecca Wettemann, VP of Research at Nucleus Research. “Whether they touch sales,
marketing, or service, customers need to get the same answer, the same tone, the same interaction.”

CRM was supposed to deliver those types of sparkling results, but the first few generations of CRM technology fell
short. Blame it on siloed data, convoluted processes, ineffective tools, or a status-quo culture. Some studies peg
CRM failure rates at 60% or higher, and anecdotally, we know that many users simply don’t like their CRM systems,
because the technology is too difficult to use or doesn’t help them do their jobs better.

When a business tries to go to battle with an underperforming CRM system, the results can be devastating. “More
often than not, employees in one department don’t even know the employees in other departments, let alone use
data that spans the organization,” wrote customer experience futurist Blake Morgan in Harvard Business Review. “This
often results in wildly inconsistent customer experiences that make companies look disconnected and unfocused.”

McKinsey reports that less than 40% of companies say they are even moderately effective at using digital sales tools
and capabilities. That speaks not just to the technology, but to the culture as well, as it may signal a lack of commit-
ment to provide the training and support needed to master these tools.

WHY YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS GREAT CRM

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CHAPTER 3

From ‘Good’ to Great CRM

Increased competition and more discerning customers put more pressure on businesses to get more out of their CRM
system — and quickly. CRM technology has evolved to the point where it’s delivering clear value to the top line, in the
form of increased revenue, and the bottom line, stemming from increased productivity and more efficient workflows.

“
That translates to better return on investment (ROI). Nucleus Research found that companies investing in CRM
It’s less important increased average returns by 1.5 times between 2011 and 2014, from $5.60 to $8.71 in returns per dollar spent, and
that trend has continued. In a 2017 survey by CITE Research, sales professionals said CRM was the most used and the
that you have a most valuable tool in their technology arsenal.

360-degree view of Wettemann says she’s seen a distinct change over the past couple of years in CRM’s effectiveness at driving greater

the customer and productivity across sales, marketing, and service functions. “We see that playing out in two ways,” she says. “It’s adding
to the top line, by making sales more productive, and it’s cutting the bottom line, by automating more tasks and

more important that enabling companies to do more with fewer resources.”

the customer has

a 360-degree view Top-Line Benefits

of you.
”
Many businesses are finding it easier to draw a straight line between CRM use and revenue growth. More effective lead
scoring tools and lead nurturing tools improve the quality of prospects that marketing passes to sales. Automated work-
— Rebecca Wettemann, Nucleus Research flows and built-in analytics provide precise insight and action prompts, helping to boost conversion rates by providing
the right touch at the right time.

CRM can also improve repeat business by providing sales, marketing, and customer service teams with a more compre-
hensive customer view that helps them create and execute an end-to-end engagement strategy. Hilco Valuation’s CRM
system, for example, has helped the company grow its renewal business by 15% to 20% per year without bringing on
additional resources, according to Glickman.

WHY YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS GREAT CRM

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CHAPTER 3

“CRM is now at the forefront of making you more effective in building relationships,” says Leary. “The ability to use infor-
mation and insights should help you to get the attention and keep the attention of people you are trying to do business
with, based on having a better understanding of what they are interested in and what their challenges are, and having
those insights in real time.”

Bottom-Line Benefits

“
Advances in workflow automation and the ability to integrate multiple data sources have had a significant impact on
CRM’s ability to improve collaboration and productivity – instead of inhibiting it, as past iterations were known for.
CRM is now at the
“A system that automates data collection and analysis allows you to spend less time doing things like data input,
forefront of making data upkeep, and searching for information,” says Leary.

you more effective Efficiencies can be found across the business:

in building n Contact center agents can resolve issues with higher satisfaction in less time, with the help of advanced

”
workflow capabilities that provide intelligence and context for each customer interaction.

relationships. n For marketers, automated campaign management and lead scoring can reduce manual processes while
improving performance.
— Brent Leary, CRM Essentials
n IT and administrators benefit from simpler, effective workflow automation. With more advanced visual design
tools, developers build more inclusive workflows that require less maintenance. Automation of key associated
tasks can ensure that proper pre- and-post sale activities, such as onboarding, are completed quickly to optimize
the customer experience.

n Finance teams can use CRM to track and manage payment processes, for example, by tracking against date
fields and flagging an account when a payment is missed.

For all of these reasons, it should be clear why your business needs great CRM.

WHY YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS GREAT CRM

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CHAPTER 4

Demystifying
CRM
Technology
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CHAPTER 4

Once thought of as a functional repository for customer data, CRM has become capable
enough to take on a much broader role in business operations. “I don’t even think of it as CRM,” says Glickman,
who championed the CRM implementation at Hilco Valuation that went live in 2012. “We look at this more as kind
of a comprehensive business platform.”

The Hilco deployment bears little resemblance to most legacy CRM systems. But many other businesses have come to
rely on the technology as “a proactive piece of the customer engagement strategy,” says Leary. “It’s still good to have a
central location for customer data, but now it’s more about having a system that automates data collection, automates
analysis, and automates finding insights.”

An end-to-end CRM system is more platform than solution. It is extensible and supports a variety of different tools and
technologies as part of a broader customer engagement ecosystem. Because the breadth of options and extensions
can be overwhelming when shopping for a CRM solution, consider your needs relative to four critical areas.

1. Intuitive User Experience

The biggest challenge with many CRM deployments is user adoption. If it’s not easy to use, if it doesn’t help employees
do their jobs better, and if it makes tasks more complex instead of easier to complete, then people won’t use it.

Modern CRM, therefore, puts a premium on a streamlined, consumer-grade interface. “It’s important to simplify the
focus, to put just the information in front of the user that they need to make the most effective decision or to make
the next best action,” says Wettemann.

To do that, you need a CRM solution that lets you define how different users interact with the system. Creating different
user types and roles should be simple, allowing users to see only the information that’s relevant to them for the activity
they’re engaged in. Insights should be delivered visually wherever possible to help users conceptualize information
and act decisively. And the intuitive interface must extend across desktop and mobile devices, so that field agents and
mobile workers get the same experience regardless of device or location.

DEMYSTIFYING CRM TECHNOLOGY

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CHAPTER 4

“The user interface has become mission-critical, even though you might not think of it as an ordinary part of CRM
selection,” says Paul Greenberg, Managing Principal of The 56 Group and author of CRM at the Speed of Light.

The user experience should improve further as vendors add artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities into their products.
“You want a system that is so intuitive that end users don’t require training to use it,” says Wettemann. “We’re certainly
seeing a move in that direction.”

“ I don’t even think

of it as CRM. We look
2. Workflow Automation
A modern CRM platform must excel at workflow management, automating processes wherever possible. Businesses

at this more as kind can use advanced automation to enforce best practices, improve productivity, and reduce costs. Intelligent workflow
can deliver excellent value across the organization in areas such as:
of a comprehensive

”
n Intelligent call routing: Sales and service run more effectively when the CRM system leverages a business
rules engine and advanced workflow to enable seamless handoffs and smart escalations — for example, routing
business platform. calls to in-house product experts outside the support center.

— Jim Glickman, Hilco Valuation Services n Predictable cash flow: Managers can model sales revenue and build forecasting dashboards that enable
executives to track progress against projections. The system can also create payment tracking mechanisms as
part of customer lifecycle management and send alerts regarding payments at risk.

n SLA compliance: A process-oriented CRM can help guide the entire service resolution lifecycle and apply
automated SLA management. For example, high-priority customer issues can be intelligently routed, and the
system can send alerts whenever threshold values for action are exceeded.

DEMYSTIFYING CRM TECHNOLOGY

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CHAPTER 4

3. Process Alignment
Businesses use CRM as a platform to align business processes across the entire organization, including:

n Contract management: Speed up time-to-close with modules that access customer data for contract creation.
The system can manage contracts through both the sales cycle and the customer lifecycle.

n Order management: Automate workflow in the post-sale process and ensure customers get what they’ve
purchased. In this way, the CRM promotes reliable transitions among sales, fulfillment, billing, and payment.
n Service delivery: A CRM-enabled customer support hub can automate the process around post-sale delivery,
installation, and other services.

n Claims processing: Manage the tracking of customer claims, returns, and refunds, integrated with financial systems.

n Purchase request management: Enable intelligent purchase order creation, ensure timely alerts, and enforce
parameters around purchasing activities.

4. Platform
Today’s CRM solutions are typically cloud-based, but some vendors offer hybrid hosting options and freedom of
choice on cloud storage. Code bases vary by vendor. Some solutions are built with proprietary code, while others
use open standards.

Code choices can dramatically affect flexibility and total cost of ownership. If the full source code is available and
common languages are used consistently throughout, you can customize without specialized coding expertise.

With no barriers to development, business can leverage the power of the CRM in all situations. Not only can you
optimize your standard interfaces affordably, you can create “disposable apps” that can be fired up for one-off
events such as trade shows or new product launches.

DEMYSTIFYING CRM TECHNOLOGY

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CHAPTER 5

CRM Evaluation
Checklist: Focusing
on the Features
that Matter
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CHAPTER 5

A great CRM system serves as the key that unlocks superior customer experience by tying your
business together. When you look closely at various solutions, you’ll find important differences in features and
functionality. This checklist will help you ask the right questions to narrow down your choice.

Core CRM features:

 SALES AUTOMATION:
n What built-in capabilities does this solution provide for sales acceleration?
n Does the solution auto-populate records and forms?
n Can it ensure that contact data is accurate?
n How does the solution drive sales productivity? Can it automate the delivery of information about
companies and influencers in its dashboards?

 LEAD MANAGEMENT:
n Does the solution come with functionality to automate prospect outreach and lead qualification?
n What capabilities does it include for lead nurturing?

 CASE MANAGEMENT AND SELF-SERVICE:

n Does the solution deliver a comprehensive customer record to call center agents that includes data
from the sales department?
n Does the solution automate call and email routing to support prioritization and reduce wait times?

Other features and functionality:

 WORKFLOW AUTOMATION:
n Does the solution automate workflows?
n Does the automation support the entire customer journey, from acquisition to advocacy?
n Does the solution offer automated call logging?
n What skills do we need to customize workflows?

 INTEGRATION (APPLICATIONS AND DATA SOURCES):

n How does this solution integrate with applications and data sources?
n What integration capabilities are built-in?

CRM EVALUATION CHECKLIST

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CHAPTER 5

 USABILITY/UX:
n Is the default user interface consumer-grade?
n What work is involved in customizing an interface?
n How consistent are the desktop and mobile interfaces?
n Does the solution include offline mobile capabilities?

 RELATIONSHIP INTELLIGENCE:
n Will the solution help us to accelerate call preparation time by providing associates with all the customer
contact and social network information they need with just a name and an email?
n Will the solution enable us to spend less time on research and maintenance so that we can spend more
time getting to know our customers?

Platform requirements:
 CUSTOMIZATION AND EXTENSION PLATFORM:
n How is the platform optimized for extensibility and customization?

 CODE BASE/SOURCE CODE ACCESS:

n Does the solution provide access to the full source code?
n Is the code base consistent across all modules?
n Is the solution written in a proprietary language?
n What expertise and tools will we need to customize the solution?

 APPLICATION HOSTING:
n What are the options for hosting the application?
n Can we choose where our data is stored?
n Is there any charge for using local storage or a public cloud?
n Is there a charge if we choose to relocate our data?

 SINGLE- OR MULTI-TENANT SOFTWARE:

n Do we have control of our own application version?
n Do we schedule our own updates, or does the vendor set the migration schedule?

CRM EVALUATION CHECKLIST

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CHAPTER 5

Security and compliance:

n Can this solution meet our data security and privacy requirements?

n Does this solution enable us to meet our regulatory and compliance requirements?

n Does this solution provide the governance tools we need?

Pricing/Total cost of ownership (TCO):

n What are the pricing models and levels?

n Are there any upcharges, additional product charges, server license charges, or maintenance charges?

n What other charges and fees might we incur over the lifetime of this solution?

n Are there charges for usage above preset limits and for storage of files?

n Are there charges for integrating applications and data sources?

n Are there limits on API calls?

Vendor requirements:
n What type of customer support is included with the solution? Do they offer extended, phone-based
technical support packages?
n Do they provide a knowledge base, case portal, or other online resources?

n How broad/deep is their ecosystem? Are they part of a wider network of deployment partners?

n Do they offer packaged connectors to critical features?

CRM EVALUATION CHECKLIST

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CHAPTER 6

A Blueprint for
CRM Success

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CHAPTER 6

CRM success starts well before the technology purchase. It’s important to begin with a blue-
print encompassing business alignment, team building, and change management. These foundational elements will
help to ensure maximum adoption and business benefit from your CRM solution.

“When it comes to choosing a CRM system, you have to get your objectives in place,” says Greenberg. “What do we
want to do? What is the strategy? How do we want to go about executing? If you don’t have those questions answered
up front, the buying decision is going to be based off of old information or maybe no concrete information at all.”

Leary agrees that companies sometimes venture into CRM projects without enough reflection. “Price and implemen-
tation are important,” he says, “but it starts by asking, ‘Why are we doing this in the first place? And what processes do
we need in place in order to make sure that the outcome we’re going to get is the one we want?’”

Start at the Top

Leadership input is vital in a CRM deployment or expansion. Charlie Brown, CEO and founder of Context Partners,
explains in Harvard Business Review:

“Because it involves software, many companies make it the CTO’s responsibility. But relationship management
also depends on policy, incentive structures and people. In the brand-driven environment of modern commerce,
no strategy impacts your business more than how relationships are managed, inside and outside the organization,
and that’s an executive role if ever there was one.”

It’s important, therefore, to avoid the legacy CRM trap of fixating on management and process efficiency, and focus
instead on the customer lifetime value that could accrue from deeper bonds and increased relevance — and revenue.

Selling the investment to leadership involves defining what success is in terms they can understand. The best
business cases, says Wettemann, focus on two or three clearly articulated business benefits, such as shortening
the quote-to-cash cycle for sales teams or reducing call resolution times in customer service.

A BLUEPRINT FOR CRM SUCCESS

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CHAPTER 6

Navigating the Naysayers

How to overcome common objections to a CRM purchase.

OBJECTION RESPONSE

Can we afford this solution? We can start small with a per-user subscription model and scale as needed. We’ll look for a solution with no hidden fees
for maintenance, reporting, or customization. Additionally, in terms of productivity gains and increased sales velocity,
not deploying the system now could cost us money in the short and long term.

Our employees hate CRM — it’s too complex. We can build role-specific interfaces that make it easy for users to interact with the system from desktop or mobile
devices. They will see an intuitive tool that gives them access to the information they need when it matters most. And
the insights we can draw from that data can give them an edge over the competition.

We don’t have the skills to do the customization Customization is essential to creating a total customer view to empower our engagement strategy. Web services and
we need for this to work. standardized APIs make it easier to create custom integrations that are uniquely suited to our business needs. Plus,
it’s better to start small, configuring the system for quick wins, than to be oversold up-front on a bunch of features that
we don’t need.

We should buy from the CRM market leader — Any vendor, large or small, can terminate development or support of a product at any time. We want to choose a
that’s the safest choice. vendor that offers solid protection in case of disaster or prolonged downtime, with the ability to run our CRM software
with multiple cloud options — not just access it from a single cloud environment. And think about this: is doing the
same thing as everyone else a good way to differentiate ourselves?

Our current solution is fine. Our current system does not scale and does not allow us to address the changing needs and behaviors of our customers.
We need a modern CRM solution to compete and grow. Advanced workflow capabilities are critical to simplifying complex
processes. We need to develop mobile strategies and experiences on the fly, something we lack today.

We will lose control of our data with a cloud- The market is moving toward a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) consumption model. We will have the option to select
based CRM solution. a public cloud or a private cloud deployment. We will also ensure that the software complies with all relevant data
security and privacy regulations.

A BLUEPRINT FOR CRM SUCCESS

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CHAPTER 6

Engage Everyone Else, Too

CRM planning processes must focus on getting everyone on board. If your organization has a status-quo culture, you
could face stiff resistance.

“
“If you’re at one of these companies where buy-in is difficult, the first thing you have to do is find your champions and
recruit them,” says Greenberg. “Just like in politics, you find your evangelists and your champions, and you recruit them.”

Just like in politics, Champions connect with key stakeholders across the organization and bring the right people in at the right times

you find your throughout planning, evaluation and implementation.

evangelists and your As you expand outreach, identify every department and role that will interact with the system and develop a process
for communicating and soliciting feedback. Help stakeholders see what is in it for them. Work to maximize involvement

champions, and and ownership across departments and user types.

”
you recruit them. “There is the old adage: Vote early and often, and it holds true when campaigning for changes in work behavior,” says
Wettemann. “Getting business users aligned in the beginning of the process — even in the selection of the vendor — is
— Paul Greenberg, The 56 Group important. Help them understand what’s in it for them from the beginning.”

If you’re saddled with an underperforming CRM — or outdated, labor-intensive processes — achieving buy-in should go
more smoothly.

“It was not hard to get people to switch, because everybody was craving something [new],” says Glickman. “We were
growing at a pace where if we went along that trajectory for even just a couple more years, we wouldn’t be able to
manage our business. So we had a number of people who were pounding the table for it.”

A BLUEPRINT FOR CRM SUCCESS

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CHAPTER 6

Building the CRM ‘A’ Team

A successful CRM deployment involves getting buy-in from key stakeholders across the business.
These are the things they care about most:

Sales n Pipeline visibility and management n Territory management

management n Customer acquisition n Sales performance management
n Sales forecasting

Marketing n Inbound/outbound marketing n Campaign management

management n Lead management n Social listening and tracking
n Marketing automation

Head of call n Incident resolution n Customer retention

center operations n Workflow automation (resolution, referrals, escalation) n Performance evaluation
n Upsell/cross-sell capabilities

Finance manager/ n Total cost of ownership (TCO) n Cash flow management

director n Pricing model (Capex vs. Opex) n Integration with billing systems
n Revenue projections

Head of IT n Integration with existing platforms/applications n Customization capabilities

n Delivery model (cloud vs. on-prem) n Data management/privacy/compliance capabilities
n TCO n Vendor support

C-Suite (CEO, n Revenue forecasting/reporting n TCO

CFO, CMO, COO) n Customer engagement n Governance

Power Users n Impact on productivity n Easy access to information

(sales/marketing n Efficient data input n Mobile capabilities
associates,
call center reps)

A BLUEPRINT FOR CRM SUCCESS

23
 

CHAPTER 7 


Success Metrics:
A Checklist

24
CHAPTER 7

It’s essential to define your success metrics for CRM as part of

the buying process, because these metrics will help you determine the functionality
you will need in order to deliver positive top- or bottom-line results. You want to
measure CRM performance with precision for optimal outcomes.

Here’s a sampling to get started:

Business Outcomes: Operational Performance:

n Pipeline visibility: Track whether the CRM system is giving sales teams a n Usage rate: A CRM system is only as good as its users. Set adoption and usage
comprehensive view of customer or prospect activity to identify new opportunities. goals for each department.

n Conversion rates: Track current conversion rates across all defined sales stages n Employee satisfaction: Target and track areas where employees are expected to
to establish baselines on which to benchmark success. Include sales, upsells, and experience improvements in their work, such as collaboration and depth of insight.
cross-sells in tracking.
n Lead quality: Set standards for lead qualification and opt-outs, and measure
n New business growth: Track new customer accounts or net new sales by customer. the quality of leads that pass to sales via automation.

n Retention and profit per customer: The duration and value of customer n Automated outreach: When you use CRM to prompt customers based on
relationships. data signals, measure the performance of those campaigns.

n Sales performance: Get as granular as possible with your team’s performance, n Interaction intervals: Is the CRM helping you keep customer relationships fresh?
such as average sales cycle, conversion rate by sales rep, or activities across each
n Speed of response: Are customer service representatives responding faster
stage of engagement.
with better information?
n SLA compliance: Manage performance and compliance with service level
n Fulfillment: Measure whether the CRM is helping you complete post-sales
agreements with your customers.
operations faster.
n Customer satisfaction: Set targets for customer satisfaction and measure
n Payments: Use the CRM to follow the customer journey to the end, and apply
against those.
time-to-payment metrics.
n Customer advocacy/influence: Track customer sentiment via direct feedback,
n TCO: Set a budget for CRM implementation, maintenance, and growth, and
social media, or metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS).
measure against it. Target cost savings related to the CRM deployment and
n Attrition: Set targets relating to different causes of attrition to determine measure for improvements.
whether the CRM is delivering expected improvements.

SUCCESS METRICS: A CHECKLIST

25
CHAPTER 8

Getting
Started

26
 “
CHAPTER 8

You don’t choose [the technology]

and then decide what to do with it. You
figure out what you need to do first,
then you put in the CRM to enable you
to accomplish what you plan on doing.
— Paul Greenberg, The 56 Group
”
You’re getting closer to a purchase decision, but you’re not quite ready to buy yet.

“The last thing you do is choose your technology,” says Greenberg. “You don’t choose it and then decide what to
do with it. You figure out what you need to do first, then you put in the CRM to enable you to accomplish what
you plan on doing.”

1. Plan Your Design/Build/Modify Architecture

In evaluating solutions, teams should inquire about code bases, extension frameworks, and ease of customization.
These factors will affect development opportunities and costs.

Greenberg notes that no CRM solution can do everything out of the box. “The question is: How much can it do?”
he asks. When the HVAC manufacturer York was evaluating CRM solutions, it identified 250 business processes
that the business used consistently. “One of their tests was how much of what they needed could each solution
do — out of the box, without customization? It’s a fairly simple test,” Greenberg says.

CRM customization focuses largely on building workflows, integrating applications and data sources, and refining
user interfaces. Project teams should map the organization’s business processes against the CRM solutions
during evaluation to determine the scope of customization needs.

GETTING STARTED
27
CHAPTER 8

Hilco Valuation’s CRM system is highly customized, because of its broad use across business operations. “We spent
a lot of time upfront before we developed even one line of code understanding what our business process is and
what it could be,” says Glickman. “We wanted the technology to mirror our processes and not have the process
mirror the technology.”

“
2. Map Your Business Processes
We wanted the To be effective, your CRM system must map closely to mission-critical business processes.

technology to mirror “Where CRM has failed is where the business doesn’t make it a critical part of the process,” says Glickman.
“If you put CRM off to the side, where it’s not really required, that’s a recipe for failure.”
our processes and
In addition to identifying essential processes that the CRM system will manage, use the CRM deployment as an
not have the opportunity to fix processes that don’t work well. A CRM solution can help optimize customer-facing processes
end-to-end, but it can’t fix broken ones on its own.
process mirror

”
“You shouldn’t just be paving over the old cow path,” says Wettemann. “If you’re implementing a new CRM solution,
the technology. you should be looking to see how you can automate and streamline to make processes better, rather than just
coding what you have already done.”
— Jim Glickman, Hilco Valuation Services

3. Map the Customer Journey

Game changers view their business through the customer’s eyes. Planning should include an agreed-upon definition
of the optimal customer experience. A comprehensive customer journey map — developed from the customer’s
perspective — will help you to identify gaps and opportunities to re-work existing processes and add new workflows.

By mapping the customer journey in detail, the project team gains a rich understanding of customer needs, prefer-
ences, and behaviors at every stage. Next, align those preferences and activities with your customer-facing processes,
which will help you to identify areas in need of improvement and ensure consistent handoffs of the customer record
along the journey.

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CHAPTER 8

4. Prioritize Opportunities

“
Work with department heads to develop revenue and productivity opportunities at every stage. Once opportunities
are flagged, study them for the ROI potential, compare them, and prioritize CRM expansion accordingly. For example,
If you’re imple- if accounting can receive payments faster by gaining access to sales data, you can designate deployment there as a
high priority.
menting a new CRM
Look for potential efficiencies beyond the core sales/service/marketing functions. Plan to leverage CRM automation to
solution, you should ensure timely revenue flow and replace inefficient processes throughout the customer lifecycle.

be looking to see how

you can automate and 5. Align Sales and Marketing
streamline to make Sales acceleration is one of the leading benefits of CRM. In a recent B2B Technology Marketing Community survey,
61% of marketing executives said lead quality was their No. 1 barrier to success.
processes better, It’s important, therefore, to align sales and marketing around lead qualification definitions. With these definitions in

rather than just place, the CRM system can help you to reduce pipeline waste by automating certain lead scoring and tracking activities.

coding what you have

”
6. Define the User Experience
already done.
Work with department heads and front-line workers to discover the insights, prompts and functionality that they need
— Rebecca Wettemann, Nucleus Research based on their role. A CRM system can integrate endless functionality and data across sales and service functions, so
the project team must guard against overloading users.

Users should have an intuitive interface that delivers only the data that is most relevant to their roles and the specific
customer moment. Performance should be consistent between desktop and mobile experiences.

To ensure productive CRM usage, build coaching into the dashboards. “We are seeing solutions that are more usable
and allow for less training for users to be productive with the application,” says Wettemann.

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CHAPTER 8

7. Determine Which Applications and Data

Sources to Integrate
Determine what applications and data sources are needed to empower users and maximize workflow efficiency.
Nucleus has found that edge applications (such as configure price and quote (CPQ) tools, field service, or contract
management), integrated into a CRM can deliver more than four times the ROI of core CRM core applications like
sales automation, marketing automation, and service automation, according to Wettemann.

Users also need to trust the data. Consider developing a master data strategy in parallel with the CRM project to
maximize data quality.

Data governance also is a key consideration of any data integration strategy. Prepare a requirements list so you can
uncover any potential issues around how you manage customer information related to security, privacy, or compliance.

GETTING STARTED
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CHAPTER 9

CRM’s
Ideal State

31
CHAPTER 9

FROM Sales/Marketing TO

n Company-defined processes n Customer-defined processes

Key Steps
Toward CRM n Static workflows n Dynamic, automated workflows

Maturity n Segmented customer information, resulting n Integrated data sources enabling end-to-end
in disparate, sometimes conflicting data customer view and better pipeline visibility

n Standalone tools for tracking n Predictive analytics for more accurate forecasting
prospects, pipeline activity

n Historical reporting n Predictive reporting

n Inaccurate forecasts n Full customer lifecycle management

n Labor-intensive data input

FROM Business Strategy TO

n Disjointed view of customers n Executive dashboard that shows real-time

performance and trends

n Gut-feel decision-making n Data-driven decision making

n Reactive to market shifts n Proactive approach to new markets,

new customer segments, R&D

n Compliance risks created by poor data n Reduction in new hires due to automation
management practices n Reduced risk

CRM’S IDEAL STATE

32
CHAPTER 9

FROM Service/Support TO

n Labor-intensive call center n Omni-channel, automated service offerings

(phone, web, social)

n Limited hours of operation n 24/7 access

n Scripted, task-focused agents n Empowered, experience-focused agents

n KPIs based on call time resolution n AI-assisted call routing

n AI-assisted support (e.g., chatbots)
n Escalation to internal experts
n KPIs based on customer satisfaction

n Reactive service n Proactive/predictive service

FROM Business Operations TO

n Manual data input and transfer n High-level cost streamlining

n Inefficient record-keeping n Predictive sourcing

n Increased efficiency in credit-control
and other processes

n Ineffective training methods due n Reduced training costs

to overly complex technology

CRM’S IDEAL STATE

33
CHAPTER 10

The Future
of CRM

34
CHAPTER 10

Your business doesn’t stand still, and neither should your CRM system. A CRM solution
should put you on a path of continuous improvement, with the most exciting advances in key areas such as mobile
and artificial intelligence. The future of CRM is about fine-tuning the ability to deliver the right information to the right
user at the right time — even if they don’t ask for it.

“There’s so much information out there that using technology to bring that needle in a haystack to the CRM user is
going to become increasingly important for an increasingly competitive world,” says Wettemann.

Better Mobile Capabilities

Optimizing CRM for mobile devices is a critical focus, as sales teams and entire workforces spend more and more
of their working hours on their smartphones or tablets. The emphasis going forward is to deliver better insight and
functionality to the small screen.

“Several years ago, we looked at mobile apps for salespeople and found that mobile CRM gave them roughly a
12% increase in productivity,” says Wettemann. “That number is only growing as the applications get better and
mobile use becomes more ubiquitous.”

Improving mobile CRM functionality is a priority at Hilco Valuation Services. “We would like to take a lot of the work
that happens in this office and move it into the field,” says Glickman. Traditionally, appraisers in the field hand-wrote
or dictated notes, then brought them back to the office where they were entered into the CRM system. “We’re
moving the responsibility for the point of capture from here to the field,” Glickman explains.

Relationship Intelligence
Even more promising for the future of CRM is artificial intelligence, or AI. A recent Gartner report calls AI a “force
multiplier for workers who ease the relationships between customers and organizations.” Gartner found that many
organizations plan to link AI to customer engagement applications, call center service and support, and digital
marketing practices.

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CHAPTER 10

As CRM systems become more adept at consuming large amounts of data, and leverage machine learning algorithms
to generate insights more quickly, they will allow every user to better know every customer, and to anticipate and
predict customers’ needs more effectively.

“
Collecting a variety of unstructured data, including social media posts, emails, and call center recordings, and
People are interacting combining this behavioral data with transactional data, CRM systems will be able to deliver deeper insights on

with [virtual customer preferences, which deepens the customer relationship. Social data in particular can help an organization
learn from and engage with customers at a more holistic level.
assistants] in ways In effect, machine learning will turn CRM into an indispensable “robot assistant” that not only makes the user more

you could not have efficient and effective at getting the job done but tells them things they don’t already know about their customers.

imagined even a “We’ll see more embedded AI as personal digital assistants for every user,” says Wettemann. Early returns are
promising: in some of its early research around social selling, Nucleus has seen productivity increases in the double
few years ago. It’s digits for salespeople, “simply because of the ability to pull all that information together, put it in the right place,
and show them not just what to do, but how to do it,” Wettemann explains.
going to have a huge
impact on customer
Finding the Meaning
engagement and the Natural language processing (NLP) is another form of AI that meshes nicely with CRM. By parsing emails and
foundation that other messages, a CRM can assess urgency and prioritize cases. NLP can also improve the effectiveness of

”
automated responses and even replace customer surveys as the primary tool for gauging customer satisfaction.
CRM sits on.
The combination of NLP and chatbots promises a further boost in customer engagement through digital channels.
— Brent Leary, CRM Essentials In a recent survey by SugarCRM and Flamingo, three-quarters of the respondents said they’re comfortable using
chatbots and think they would improve the online experience.

Because as much as 98% of all customer interactions are simple queries of some kind, bots can be immensely valuable
for scaling and streamlining engagement, says Greenberg. “You don’t want to be delighted by the answer; you just want
the answer,” he says. “That’s the value of AI: the ability to learn without the human on the ordinary stuff.”

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CHAPTER 10

Leary sees tremendous potential for the intersection of voice technology and CRM, with voice- activated assistants

Glossary of CRM such as Siri and Alexa paving the way. “People are interacting with these devices in ways you could not have imag-

Terms ined even a few years ago, and every interaction becomes a data point,” he says. “It’s going to have a huge impact on
customer engagement and the foundation that CRM sits on.”

Leary sees additional customer engagement opportunities with other Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as
As you start on your path to modern, connected appliances that automatically sense the potential failure of a part and place an order for a replacement
game-changing CRM, it’s important to without human intervention.
familiarize yourself with commonly used
CRM terms and industry definitions. For “You’re seeing all kinds of use cases with these devices that we’ve [become] more dependent on, including cars,” he
says. “That’s why CRM is at the heart of a customer engagement strategy, because it becomes the central place where
the complete list, visit our CRM Glossary.
all your customer data resides, regardless of the source.”

@SugarCRM Are you ready to challenge the status quo with modern CRM?
Start at www.sugarcrm.com
@SugarCRM

SugarCRM

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37