Customer World

Is the future of customer management in hosted solutions?

Destination CRM has an interesting article this trend. The article highlights the following facts:

Recent research from Gartner analyst Michael Maoz predicts that by the year 2012, 30 percent of investments in CRM will be via software-as-a-service (SaaS).

Gartner research indicates that the increased deployment of SaaS initiatives might have underwhelming implications for consulting and professional services. Maoz explains that many companies view software-as-a-service applications as plug-and-play. The implementations lack process involvement and merely connect applications in the cloud, rather than looking at the bigger picture of business process management. "CRM is not just the technology," Maoz expels. "It's more an issue of ‘How do I interact with my customer?' Using some of these SaaS applications without changing the business process could be just enabling [organizations] to do bad things even worse." In other words, without a bottom-up approach, deploying new applications in the cloud is automating a tired or flawed process. "Using software-as-a-service is not going to help CRM," Maoz states. "We shouldn't be enamored by cloud computing instead of in lieu of process improvement."

My View: I can't agree more with Gartner on this trend. Increasingly, clients will prefer this as a hosted and managed service. In fact, the second part of the article seemed more important to me. It's not only important to have SaaS as a model in customer management but the ability to understand the process and business impact & action is a key need where I see is a huge gap that exists currently in such models.

I believe there must be 4 stages before implementing SaaS in a customer management environment:

Stage 1: Define your CaaS : Customer management as a strategy - How are customers or prospects being defined by current and prospective value, opportunity and segments?

Stage 2: Define your IPPM: Set-up a clear interaction planning and process mapping & migration  of your customers and prospects.

Stage 3 : Implement SaaS:  Once you have done the above 2 stages, then plan your SaaS roll out.

Stage 4: Plan the analytics,campaigns & metrics: SaaS is just the start but post customer management in SaaS is critical. The analytics around customers, campaigns around potentially valuable segments and tracking key metrics is often overlooked.

Getting IT to become customer-centric - Here's a 11 point plan to get started

Vince Kellen, a senior consultant with Cutter Consortium, a leading IT Advisory firm's 11 point plan to focus IT on customers resonated with me. I have been over the last couple of months writing about the need for IT to become customer-centric. In fact Forrester has been evangelizing the need for IT-marketing partnership. Here's his plan and they seem extremely perfect to me:

According to Kellen, once CIOs get their "trains running on time," they should build a multifaceted plan to reorient their IT shops around the real customer, the one that gives the firm money. The multifaceted plan can involve the following:

1.Establish a culture of customer service within IT.

2.Within IT, build intellectual capital of deeper customer issues, not just intellectual capital into technology architectures.

3.Bring this intellectual capital as a value-add service to the other parts of the firm, including marketing, sales, logistics, and service.

4.Start fostering innovation. Contribute to, if not lead, R&D in customer-centric IT.

5.Prioritize improvements in parts of the IT infrastructure that can address the technology or business process shortcomings, especially customer data quality and data integration.

6.Revamp IT processes that support the real customers and improve IT support service levels.

7.Help the firm identify gaps in the customer's experience and how IT can assist in closing those gaps.

8.Build an IT organization that is quick, flexible, adaptable, and reconfigurable so it can move fast on topical customer-facing initiatives.

9.Invest in the personnel and organizational development needed to make this happen.

10.Put into place strong usability and customer experience analysis methodologies that can uncover real issues with the customer experience and can develop real solutions.

11.Work with the other executives and ensure the IT plan is not only aligned with the business and customer strategies, but that the IT plan is actually challenging these plans and improving them.

 I have seen the benefits multiply with clients whom we work with in the last few years. It's time to get started now.

Applying Kaizen thinking to customer analytics

Most often when I interact with clients, I am always amazed that they have data and information about customers, products,  promotions, distribution, sales etc. in islands. At the other end, I meet clients who say they have done all the mining on this data and haven't got the impact at the right time for them to pursue it with the same vigor.

They do all the analytics in the world with the data that they have but most of the real power of these insights is felt only when employees are empowered with this information to take decisions on a day-to-day basis. No amount of advanced data mining can help if this is not available across the company.

Here's my belief on making data-driven analytics & marketing count. Here is a 10 step plan:

1. Start Small - Don't do a big bang approach
2. Show quick wins - can you show impact in 4-6 weeks?
3. Keep improving the analytical process continuously
4. Involve business heads at every stage - Get them to buy-in
5. Show proof-of-value with the right interventions & initiatives
6. Don't control information flow of analytical projects - make it available to as many employees as possible
7. Make it simple to understand and act - across the enterprise
8. Grow the complexity of analysis over time but maintain the simplicity of output and action all the time
9. Remember technology and statistics are just enablers
10. Measure and refine continously

Here's an interesting article, Alberto Roldan of HP which provides a great analogy to making this happen:

Toyota has shown a different approach to innovation, kaizen or continuous improvement approach rather than a technology leap approach. Instead of great technological breakthroughs, this approach goes for involving the entire workforce in a continuous improvement process. Hence, most of the improvements are small and process oriented (like making shelves more easily to reach) but the involvement of the entire workforce rather than a selected few keeps a vibrant and innovative enterprise. The best measurement of how this work is that the Toyota workforce gives managements one hundred times more suggestions for improvement than other auto manufacturers.

Businesses that want to improve their analytics capabilities should follow the kaizen approach and make business analytics available throughout the entire organization. It seems that in some companies analytics is only within the purview of the few like statisticians, physicians, molecular engineers, and actuaries. The concept behind this thinking is that analytics technology is expensive and difficult to interpret. This premise is no longer applicable since in the last three years mathematical science and computer technology have advanced to such a degree that this technology is now inexpensive and available to interpretation to anyone within an organization.

This technology is the work of dedicated professionals and scientist that over many years have worked to make this possible. The issue now has become whether companies want to institute a continuous improvement process that includes enterprise analytics or whether they want to leave business analytics in the hands of the few.

The conversation prism

Overall last couple of years, I have been writing about the seamless boundaries or should I say vanishing boundaries between various media. If you are in marketing, communication, media and the like there seems to be thin lines dividing marketing, technology and media/publishing. This has led to the need of host of new areas like Marketing Metrics - marketing accountability, marketing ROI, Conversation Media - Blogs, Social networks etc. Marketing technologies - Cool marketing apps, CRM, campaign management tools, analytical applicatons etc. There is an increasing need to connect them together and see them feed-off one another. Here's a nice post by Brian Solis on the same:

As a communications or service professional, you'll find yourself at the center of the prism - whether you're observing, listening or participating. 

As conversations are increasingly distributed, everything begins with listening and observing. Doing so, will help you identify exactly where relevant discussions are taking place, as well as their scale and frequency. This dialog can be charted into a targeted social map that's unique to your brand.

Personal Informatics - Are businesses leveraging this enough?

On the other day in a meeting, one of my clients was asking me what do I think is the future of emailing or direct mail or telemarketing or SMSes for prospecting or building relationships with customers? He was telling me how a lot of data may be available in the form of lists or transactional data within companies but companies today cannot contact many of these customers because customers are fed-up with the constant badgering by companies for more business using all these channels or they use the word   "relationship managers" ( who have access to data) in the garb of getting more business from them.

I couldn't agree with him more but here were my answers for these questions:

• Dynamic Data: Businesses today are dealing with customer data the same way they would have treated it a decade or two ago - Treating data as a static information versus seeing data as a dynamic element.  Therefore, they continue to use data for a  "business benefit".The customers of today are asking  businesses to reverse this approach - "Continuously allow me to connect to the 'data trail'  I leave behind". And businesses are struggling to cope-up with this change. Hence, they are still using 20th century marketing methods for 21st century customers which gives them diminishing returns.

• Adding data to products: Companies still treat products and data as siloes. Today, every product needs to have a data-component  as one of its ingredients.Just as a  body lotion has aloe-vera, banking products has internet/phone banking as new features, many products need to find ways to embed data into the product development framework.Then, up-selling & cross-selling happens automatically thro' customer participation and data triggers.

• Pre-sales service: Businesses have still not accepted that they are dealing with increasingly well-informed customers unlike the past. They still believe customers need to be "sold" but customers are constantly telling companies - " Help me buy!". They are becoming a part of different communities(offline & online) and also information-sharing among prospective customers today is far more easier then ever before. Hence, "being present"  well ahead of the sale is an important factor in pre-sales situations for companies. Helping in the pre-sales process is today a data-centric activity and this has not been recognized by businesses. Hence, the traditional methods of prospecting will only get more difficult in the future.

Welcome to the world of personal informatics

Using personal data will be the new competitive advantage, businesses have to prepare themselves for. It will create a new generation of products &  prospect or customer experiences that will capture data about us in ways we could never have imagined. Matt Jones & Tom Coates have a great presentation on this topic. Personal informatics will be an area that will see great growth in the future.

Take a look:

Polite, Pertinent, and... Pretty: Designing for the New-wave of Personal Informatics

view presentation (tags: dopplr fireeagle ui web2.0)

Making Marketing investments accountable - Getting started

Marketing investments increasingly are being looked at by CEOs with great attention and with a renewed focus on what ROI is it getting the organization in return. The ANA( American National Advertisers) had a Marketing Accountability Conference and the presentation by Brooks provides interesting perspective on how to operationalize the thinking within an organization.

P Brooks, Doug 071508

view presentation (tags: marketing accountability roi investment)

How could we leverage those patterns from a marketing and experience perspective?

Here's an interesting perspective on relationship visualization by threeminds.

The key point that's being made is that now-a-days data, files, transactions, access and usage by customers is a lot more real time.  How can one get to know the behaviour and relationships between various dimensions to take action faster then ever before.

Use of all this information & data has to to get a lot more simpler, easier and flexible. That's where execution will move & get focussed in the next couple of years.

code_swarm - Eclipse (short ver.) from Michael Ogawa on Vimeo.

How are you taking care of your data in your organization?

There's an interesting report by Experian on how organizations are ignoring basis steps in taking care of their data. The report entitled, ‘Contact Data: Neglected asset seeks responsible owner’, surveyed 2,078 organisations worldwide, and revealed that the overall approach to data quality and integrity around the world is at best half-hearted and, at worst, cavalier.

Take a look at the topline of the report:

• Nearly a quarter of organisations (23 per cent) use data for strategic planning and decision making every day, responsibility for the upkeep of this data is passed from pillar to post.

• 59 per cent of respondents said that responsibility sits with middle management, from a CRM Manager through to an IT or Sales Manager.

• Only 50 per cent of organisations went on to say that data quality is championed by someone at board level.

• Organisations admitted that only half (52 per cent) of their employees have bought into the importance of data quality, revealing a lethargic approach to an issue that affects business success on a day-to-day level.

• Only 46 per cent of the same sample said they have a documented data quality strategy in place.

• 34 per cent said they do not validate any of the information they collect on their customers and prospects, whether that be name and address, contact number, e-mail address or bank account information.

My take: Looks like in many organizations, while customer data is touted as the most important asset, the efforts taken to  upkeep the quality leaves much to be desired. It needs commitment at the C-level, else it is not seen as priority by many operating managers. This must become a part of the KRA or KPI of every operating business head and CXOs must ensure compliance if they want their organizations to succeed in the future by leveraging this information.

Transforming marketing data to enable decision management

Here's an interesting presentation by Jamet on using marketing data for decision management. Take a look:

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Consistent customer experience is about organizing information

Marty  Mosely, in her expert opinion in Peppers & Rogers  writes about the importance of organizing customer information.

Master Data Management (MDM) software or systems enable organizations to strategically leverage and share those critical data assets. Deployed properly, MDM can provide organizations with complete, accurate, and real-time views of data spread across multiple systems or databases, even outside the firewall. This allows businesses to unlock the value of their data assets for competitive advantages or operational improvements.

Exactly how are businesses using MDM? Here are some quick, real-world examples of how organizations in the hospitality, retail, and technology industries are using MDM solutions to manage their most important data while adding to the company bottom line.

Increasing customer recognition and loyalty

Although an international hotel chain was using multiple systems to track guests, the company was only able to follow those enrolled in its loyalty program—about 10 percent of its customer base. This meant the company was potentially under-servicing 70 percent of frequent guests who did not have a loyalty program number. With mountains of complicated data from multiple systems, representing 5,000 global properties across eight brands, getting a handle on the data was a daunting task.

The company chose an MDM system that aggregated complex customer data without disrupting source systems, and seamlessly integrated with its loyalty program system. Once the MDM system was deployed, it was no longer a problem to identify frequent guests, even if they registered under different identities (variations on names and addresses without a consistent identifier), did not use their loyalty program number, or stayed at a number of the company's brands for a variety of reasons. By accurately matching guest information according to demographic and historical information, the company is now able to recognize guests across all brands in its portfolio in real time at the point of service.

Improving customer experience and top-line growth

Plagued by redundant records and an inability to properly recognize customers at any touchpoint, a massive retailer with a huge online presence and hundreds of brick and mortar stores knew it was essential to get a grip on customer data to help the company interact with customers in a more meaningful way. With its new MDM system in place, the retailer has created an accurate, real-time view of its approximately 40 million customer records from three disparate data sources. It can now recognize individual and household relationships, and has identified more than 11 million redundant records.

The retailer can now provide a complete view of transaction and customer history at the point of interaction, fulfill online orders at physical stores, better reconcile customer preferences, eliminate duplicate and inconsistent marketing campaigns, and remove the need to repeatedly ask customer loyalty program members for their personal information.

Understanding customer relationships and improving revenue and service

One of the world's largest technology companies was losing significant revenue due to incomplete software licensing information and territory assignment issues. The company needed to access composite views of all individual and organization data about customers, partners, and suppliers along with advanced B2B hierarchy management. The company used an MDM system to create a single view of customer and hierarchical data to help the organization address its licensing problems and operational inefficiencies, define the true and total value of every customer, identify the most valuable customers within an organization, and even know when a customer purchased through multiple channels.

The results were enormous. By properly managing organizational-level data, the company has found $139 million in new licensing revenue and recouped $47 million in operational cost savings. The MDM solution also helped improve field productivity since sales reps now can access synchronized data from across the entire organization (CRM, software licensing, and financial accounting applications) and gain a better picture of existing relationships and potential for cross- and upsell opportunities.

At the end of the day, what you sell or service doesn't matter. It is imperative to better understand your customers while improving the bottom line. With an MDM solution in place, it turns out that these two goals do not have to be mutually exclusive. Knowing your customers is the key.

My take: I  certainly think organizing customer information is the first step towards building consistent customer experience. This is the basic platform around which the rest of the customer marketing initiatives like segmentation, understanding customer value & profitability, analytics need to be built. Hence, getting this right is an important first step.