Reporting and the two great fibs of the CRM industry...

The reporting aspects of CRM technology produce two of the great fibs of the CRM industry:

Fib number one – ‘The CRM system comes with 200 standard reports which will meet most of your needs’ (cue the salesperson to point to a long and seemingly exhaustive list of reports on the screen). In reality each organisation’s processes and informational needs are unique and are rarely met by the out of the box standard reports. This is exacerbated by the fact that many CRM software developers seem to have been rather more rather more focused on developing the long list of standard reports, rather than ones that might be useful or insightful.

Fib number two – ‘You just need to use our report wizard/third party reporting package and you can extract any information you like’ (cue the more skilled salesperson to demonstrate putting together a simple report). I guess this is less of an outright lie than misinformation. In reality you probably can build most reports that you want as long as you are sufficiently trained and have the time to do so. The reality however for the reports people actually end up wanting, even seemingly simple ones, are generally difficult and time consuming to produce.

You might figure that the vendors would be interested in developing reports as an additional revenue stream. However this seems to be far from the case for a number of reasons:

Firstly, because vendors seem to struggle in applying their technology in ways that adds value and see reports therefore as a nice to have add-on rather than a fundamental part of a value generating system.

Secondly, writing reports can prove a fairly toxic activity from a vendor viewpoint. It’s very easy for the vendor to lose money a) because most customers want a fixed price up front, b) because seemingly easy reports can be very complex, c) because customers tend to want their reports displayed ‘just so’, d) because it’s a bit of an exacting science - the report either displays the desired information or it doesn’t, and e) because it can expose flaws in the set up of the CRM system itself which the vendor may then find themselves on the hook to resolve.

Thirdly, creating custom reports for customers is invariably an expensive activity, and as many clients are working to tight budgets, this tends to be the part of the project it’s easy for the vendor to cut in order to win the deal.

In conclusion if you are running an existing CRM system which doesn’t produce meaningful reporting, then chances are you have a system that’s not set up to add organisational value, and you might want to consider re-implementing in a way that does. If you are looking to purchase a new system, then don’t be persuaded that report generation is some inconsequential activity that can be tacked on at some later point; it’s the lifeblood of an effective system.

CRM and great aunt Edith...

Sitting in on a series of CRM short-list presentations this week, I became acutely aware of just how much we seem to rely on acronyms and jargon. I had to stop a couple of sessions because it was obvious that the audience wasn’t following what was being said. Even when you ask presenters to stop using jargon it’s amazing how quickly they can lapse back into it. I’d love to say I’m clean on this point, but while it’s something of worked hard on over the years, it something I still catch myself doing.

If you can’t convey points in a way that your great aunt Edith would understand (if you don’t have a great aunt Edith feel free to substitute a similar non IT savvy friend or relative) then stop and re-word it in a way she can. Ultimately the buyers and users of CRM technology are rather more like great aunt Edith than most people in the CRM industry seem to realise. If we are to be effective in getting CRM technology used to add business value, ditching the comfort blanket of CRM industry speak is a key first step.

Fully managed CRM...

I’ve been reading CRM RFP responses for much of the week and I’ve seen a number of references to ‘fully managed systems’. This caught my attention at first because it seemed to support the suggestion in my last post that outsourced of administration of CRM systems may prove a new growth area. Further reading however indicated that ‘fully managed’ was nothing more exotic than the ability to host the technology externally.

It strikes me that the whole area of administering systems is a somewhat confusing and misleading one. While one of the attractions of hosted CRM is that someone else is tasked with maintaining the availability of systems, and there is no doubt this is beneficial if you are an organization without a depth of IT resource, it should be noted however that if a system is deployed effectively, the bulk of system management and administration still resides with the user regardless of whether the system is hosted or on premise. The following is a fairly random and small sample of administration tasks which may have to be performed regardless of whom is managing the physical server:

Adding new users
Retiring old ones
Changing security rights and user profiles
Importing and exporting data
Querying the database
Creating reports
Adding new mail-merge templates
Adding tables/fields
Managing pick-lists
Identifying and managing incomplete data
Identifying and managing duplicate records
Addressing user queries and questions
Performing training for new users
Collating issues and potential bugs
Liaising with vendor help desk
Realigning territories
Realigning activities
Setting up and managing remote user capabilities
Checking that defined usage procedures are being followed
Adapting processes
Liasing with vendors over the day to day running and development of the system
Etc. etc. etc.

As the length of this sample list indicates, ongoing CRM administration duties can prove considerably more demanding than might initially meet the eye. Therefore if you see the words ‘fully managed system’, it’s worth questioning what this means in practical terms.

If I’m to be proved right, that there will be an emerging market where all administration tasks are outsourced, then the precursor to this will have to be organizations realizing better value from their investment in CRM technology. If you are only getting two and sixpence back then it’s hard to see organizations inclined towards spending money on external administration, whereas if you have a system that’s hugely value generative, investing to protect the goose that lays the golden eggs makes rather better sense.