EVOLUTION OF BPR

Re: A Company Like Me, Part 1

Posted on the May 12th, 2008 under CRM, Change Management, Enterprise 2.0, Organizational Transformation by Gregory Yankelovich

Paul Greenberg initiated a very interesting discussion. It is an excellent read in it’s entirety, but I will quote just a part of it here:

the contemporary empowered customer is enmeshed in some way with a network of peers, their expectations are dramatically changed. They are straightforward changes, though. They expect that they can interact with a company the same way that they interact with a friend or a peer who they can trust. That means that they expect a personal relationship to the company, not just to a person in the company, though that may be how the relationship manifests itself a larger number of times. That also means that they expect that the attributes, the characteristics of that deeply personal connection they have to a peer is part of the way that the company interacts with them. That means that trust and transparency have to permeate the company’s DNA. That means that the company has to have something distinct about them. That means that the customer is expecting the company to converse with them, not push corporate hype at them. It’s why you see contemporary marketing so geared toward buzz and word of mouth and engaging customers in conversation through use of social media like blogs, or engaging internal customers in a valued conversation through a wiki.

I also feel very passionately about the possibility of a “real” relationship between the institution and the individual, but I am less optimistic about achieving this state within the life expectancy of CRM 2.0.  There are three major obstacles in our way which imho would take much longer time to overcome:

1. Authenticity - many, if not most, institutions see the customer from the next quarter sales forecast point of view and no technology can change that. There is an opinion that the institution has no social conscience, only individuals that are part of the institution have it, so until there is a very clear, undisputable connection between authenticity and profitability it would be a long time before we see any meaningful change. I know there are exemptions and we all can name one or two institutions which have demonstratively got it, but we need much more - even now the truly successful implementations of CRM 1.0 are still only a relatively small minority relative to the number of attempts. Watch this video for experiencing an example of current institutional authenticity

 

2. Asymmetry - it is too common of an experience that an institution has a much louder voice than the individual. I can see great promise in current technology to change that, but the model has yet to emerge to the best of my knowledge.

3. Execution - it takes time to earn trust in a relationship, whether it is between people or institutions, time to observe a certain consistency in behavior and authenticity of intent, which I covered above. We all have experienced dealing with individuals who represented their institution in an exceptional way, but building processes and organizational changes to provide such experience consistently, across an institution, is still a huge challenge which is not a technology issue but a cultural one.

All these aside I do believe that change is the only constant and technology is a great tool to accelerate change.

Why are there so many CRM failures?

Posted on the May 8th, 2008 under Business Risk, CRM, Sales Force Automation by Gregory Yankelovich

One of my favorite quotes is “Happiness is expectation management”, and nobody knows better how to mismanage expectations like software marketing and sales people. However it is important to remember that it takes two to tango, and CRM purchasing decisions are often influenced, if not made, by sales and marketing executives. Add to this group some IT executives, who are famous for buying “silver bullets” every now and again, and you get very potent team of Kool-aid creators and consumers all in the same package.

It is interesting to hear the typical responses, when you ask a CRM executive sponsor about their expectations.

The top 3 answers usually are:

1. We need to improve our salespeople efficiency, so they have more time to make sales calls;

2. We need to get more leads to increase sales;

3. Our competitors “installed” CRM, so we cannot afford not to.

The only common theme in these three responses is that they predict a very high probability of failure.

Chris Bucholtz in his Inside CRM blog wrote recently:

I wonder at times whether CRM vendors have created their own fantasy lands, where customers’ CRM systems spit out leads and marketing people sit around pushing one big button that does everything for them. When you set expectations like that, there’s no way vendors can deliver.

I would like to site another quote. This one is from JP Rangaswami, the italics are mine:

Project failure and success seem to depend on saying, “Are you able to accurately articulate and honestly collect what the requirements are?” and “Are you able to express the right estimates?”…. Too many times, the collection process is weak, because the customer is not easily able to articulate [his needs] in language the people [on the project] understand. [S]oftware estimation is not a trivial exercise; it is still an art rather than a science.

[F]ailure is usually a characteristic of unwillingness to recognize change and to cover up….It’s like a salesman putting forth a forecast to management…without ever talking to the customer. Management [is] blissfully unaware of the fact that the information is false.

If you build it - will they come?

Posted on the May 3rd, 2008 under Business Risk, CRM, Change Management, Enterprise Software, Organizational Transformation, Value of BPR by Gregory Yankelovich

Ben Worthen of WSJ Business Technology Blog reported about adoption problem experienced by SureScripts.

Doctors are reluctant to change the way they’ve always done things, Rick Ratliff, SureScripts CEO, tells the Business Technology Blog. That’s why more than 26,000 pharmacies across the country — including major chains like CVS, Walgreens and Wal-Mart – are now marketing the e-prescription program directly to consumers. The hope is that enough patients will ask their doctors about the programs that doctors will be forced to use them.

This story illustrates a cost of ignoring cardinal law of holistic application design - WIITFM (What Is It For Me). Considering that the appeal of SureScripts for the pharmacies is no-brainer (shifting a burden of data entry to doctors), what would motivate the doctors to change the way they do things?

Many business applications project investments were written off because of this failure. CRM initiatives are probably the hardest hit segment. However the attempts to correct this by bullying people into adoption, as Mr. Ratcliff is quoted to suggest, will likely produce even more waste and anguish. Perhaps honest and creative review of the system would produce an improvement, which would motivate doctors to use the e-prescriptions because it save time for them - like allowing them to dictate a prescription.

“Win-Win” is a popular phrase for Sales motivational trainers, but it is probably even more important concept in “Design for Adoption”  business.