The monthly CRM fireside…

In the first of what I’m intending to be monthly series of interviews primarily focusing on some of the challenges of implementing high pay-back CRM systems I sat down with Anita Clifford of ETC Global Solutions, one of the key implementers of Microsoft Dynamics CRM in the UK.

Can you introduce yourself and ETC?

I’m a director at ETC Global Solutions and head up the CRM team. ETC is a Microsoft Gold partner and has been involved in deploying ERP and CRM solutions since 1989. Our relationship with Microsoft, which is a major focus for the company, came about as a result of being Great Plains partners in the 1990’s. We specialise in Microsoft business solutions which, for us, revolves around Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Great Plains and Navision. As part of that focus we also specialise in complementary Microsoft technologies such as BizTalk for integration and SharePoint for document collaboration and Portal solutions.

How does ETC look to set itself apart in a crowded market?

ETC has been around for a long time and I think that’s one of the key differentiators of our company, we are very stable. Many members of our team have worked together since the early 90’s, and some customers from as far back as the 1970’s. We have a reputation for customer service because we look to build long term relationships with our customers. For us it’s not a quick sell, in and out, deploy and run. We work hard on those relationships and as a result have some that go back many, many years.

I know you were one of the early pioneers with Microsoft CRM – I would imagine that’s been an interesting journey at times

It’s been a very interesting journey, and certainly there have been some challenges along the way. We were invited by Microsoft to get involved with Microsoft CRM because, as Great Plains partners, we had been heavily involved in their relationship with Siebel. We were very successful at deploying Siebel under the banner of Great Plains Siebel Front Office. Prior to that we had also implemented Goldmine. Our background in implementing CRM solutions was quite rare in the Great Plains channel at that time.

Microsoft CRM was released in the US in 2003, and January 2004 in the UK. My team actually did their training on it back in late 2002 due to being selected as an early adopter partner here in the UK. We were involved in meeting Microsoft personnel who had come across from Redmond to the UK to identify functionality that Microsoft CRM needed to address the European market, such as multi-currency and multilingual requirements. I have to be honest and say the first release didn’t necessarily reflect all our European requirements but that’s been something that Microsoft have been keen to redress in later versions.

It’s interesting you mention Siebel there. The CRM market is kind of interesting at the moment. You have some of the pioneers in Siebel, Pivotal and Onyx being acquired. Microsoft CRM has clearly established itself with Version 3. Salesforce.com has made a big splash in the hosted market. It seems as if there’s a new hosted player everyday, and there’s some interesting developments in the open source space. How do you see the market playing out over the next five years?

Looking in my crystal ball, there’s any number of ways it could go. I think generally the adoption of the hosted model will continue to grow. So far, the UK has been quite slow to adopt it, but attitudes are changing, and that’s not limited to CRM. I think you’ll see the hosted model generally much more prevalent over the coming years.

I also think, though I’m not privy to any inside information from Microsoft, that Microsoft CRM’s close links to Microsoft Office will increase to the point where perhaps it might actually ship as part of Office. I think Microsoft have found a unique way of marketing the product with elements of it embedded deeply within Microsoft Outlook. This is very compelling to a purchaser when they consider the cost of deploying, and promoting the uptake of a new system, which is key to its success. If you are asking your user base to work with something which, to them, appears to be part of an application that they already use every day, such as Outlook, the likelihood of them using it is much higher. My view is Microsoft will continue to enhance the link between CRM, and probably some of their other ERP systems, with Microsoft Office in particular.

There’s still a lot of statistics about CRM technology failing to deliver the anticipated benefits – where do you feel companies go wrong?

I don’t think it’s entirely the fault of the companies. I think historically there has been an element of overselling in respect of the capabilities of CRM. I also think that a lot of vendors don’t set expectations clearly. I think quite often organisations don’t put enough thought into what they are actually trying to achieve, their key business drivers. That can apply to any system implementation, but in the CRM world it tends to apply a little more.

I think another issue though is that for larger projects with long implementation timeframes, by the time the system has been delivered, the business may have already changed. Perhaps the biggest issue is that organisations often don’t invest to the degree they should in user training which is critical to the successful uptake of any product.

You mention user uptake, this has been a big issue for a lot of organisations, what additional advice would you give in this respect?

I think it’s to ensure the involvement of the user base. I think participation of a cross section of the user base in the whole project is important, particularly in terms of requirements gathering where we look to understanding the processes people follow. Quite often the senior management think that certain business processes are in place, but in reality, things are quite different at the user level. They aren’t actually doing things in quite the way that management think they are. When you deliver a system the users will quickly identify things that won’t work for them in performing their daily tasks. At ETC we tend to recommend lots of show and tell sessions for our larger or more complex projects, so that before you go too far down the route of customisation and development, you are giving the customer an insight into how the system might look, and you can identify very early on whether that will work for them in terms of their day to day business process.

How has your own approach to implementing systems changed over the years?

I think it has changed in certain areas. I think for the larger implementation projects we still adopt the same basic implementation methodology. As a Microsoft Dynamics CRM partner we worked out very early on that we have to be a lot more flexible in our approach to deployments, and we recognised the fact that some customers do want to be more self sufficient. And actually, in a way, our skill set had to change to accommodate that approach. We have focused on knowledge transfer, and that’s become a key part of what we have to offer, teaching and helping customers to become more self sufficient with their own systems.

What advice would you give to a company who was considering implementing a CRM system today?

To make sure they understand why there are doing it, and to take the time to fully define their key objectives or business drivers for the project.

How about those companies that are sat on systems th
at aren’t producing the results – what advice would you provide on re-launching?

You need to look at what’s wrong with the system you have and learn from your mistakes. It comes down to the fact that you have to make one major decision – do you change the system you have to accommodate what you now realise you need, or do you go out and look for possible alternatives.

Some organisations are clearly more successful at running productive CRM systems than others – what do you see as the character traits of these that do get it right?

I think for the most part, the people who have made a very good go of it are those organisations that plan projects carefully and break them down into bite size pieces. I’m anti the big bang approach in large CRM projects because, in my opinion, by the time you get to the point where you deploy the solution, requirements have often changed and moved on, and elements of the system you have delivered may no longer be as relevant.

In your experience where are your customers seeing the biggest pay-back areas for CRM?

It varies, but I think consolidation is an important factor. Many organisations are using a complex mix of data sources from Excel spreadsheets to legacy systems and databases. Information is therefore spread across a wide number of areas, in different formats. The most obvious benefit, and the thing that most organisations are trying to achieve when they deploy a CRM solution, is to get some form of centralisation and consolidation of that information.

You’ve done a lot of work with public sector organisations, what are the key issues CRM tends to address for them?

For the most part public sector organisations are driven by customer service, so they tend to respond to issues and requests rather than proactively market. The key with public sector organisations, taking for example a local authority, is the centralisation of information, as we’ve just touched on, it is absolutely essential.

A major issue for a local authority can be something as simple as managing a change of address in a situation where they have many specialist computer systems for example: council tax, revenues and benefits, even car parking. A person or resident may exist on each of those systems. So if I call the council with a change of address, somehow they have to deal with that across all these systems, ideally in one go. Whilst, for very good reasons, they’ve got your information spread across different systems, it becomes a real challenge to avoid people getting passed from department to department to make a minor change. It’s a simple example, but one that gives a good measure of the challenge public sector organisations are often facing.

There’s a native American proverb – Never criticize a man until you’ve walked a mile in his moccasins – what aspects of the life of a CRM value added reseller do you wish customers understood better?

It’s important they realise that whilst we may be may be very experienced consultants, we still rely on the information they give us. Every business is different, so while we have to ask the right questions, we are clearly dependent on the answers given. It’s a partnership, and the more accurate information they give us, the better we will be able to use that information to deliver a successful solution that meets their expectation.