EVOLUTION OF BPR

Evolution of thought about CRM

Posted on the April 3rd, 2008 under CRM, Change Management by Gregory Yankelovich

I stumbled into the term in the middle of the 90’s when I found a set of CD’s, with Siebel software and manuals on my desk, along with brief instructions from my boss to implement it immediately. Since then I have been involved with dozens of “CRM” projects utilizing various technologies from Goldmine and Clarify, to Scopus and SugarCRM. A few of these experiences were very rewarding, but most…..

At some point I tried to explain the meaning of CRM to a non-corporate friend in terms she would understand, as a method and platform that can enable an “old time” relationship with customers in our “mass” markets. She lives in a small town in Pays de la Loire and shops in a small, local market where the proprietors know what and when she likes to buy better than she does. She understood the meaning of CRM, but the institutions that invested billions did not.

The institutions largely implemented CRM focusing on managing customers as opposed to building relationships with them, and often failed to transcend the blinders of departmentally-constructed processes/mentality, to become true “peers”. There are some very notable exceptions such as Amazon, 1-800-Contacts, LL Bean among others which have demonstrated an authenticity of interest in having a relationship with their customers, but I have never encountered one in the B2B space and would like to hear about it.

Paul Greenberg, the dean of CRM blogosphere, wrote an excellent post in his blog which you should read IMO, where I found this quote from Bill Band of Forrester Research:

“In this new world, traditional CrM solutions will continue to aggregate customer data, analyze that data, and automate workflow to optimize business processes. But CRM professionals must find innovative ways to engage with emerging “social consumers” enrich the customer experience through community based interactions and architect solutions that are flexible and foster strong intra-organization and customer collaboration.”

It seems that Web 2.0 tools and their proliferation offers an opportunity to re-focus CrM to CRm, to tip the scale for benefit of more authentic relationship not between Institutions, or an Organization and a customer, but between persons, whether they happen to be members of institutional groups or not. However there are two big issues we still need to negotiate to make meaningful progress:

1. change our behavior

2. change the processes, which support our “pre-historic” institutional behavior.

Forward looking organizations started to pay attention to the voices of their customers by “spydering” the blogs etc., but most don’t even treat customer issues brought to them directly with appropriate respect because they perceive these relationship as asynchronous, one to many. However, now there are a few web based platforms, like ResellerRatings.com or Getsatisfaction, promising to aggregate voices of many into a roar that can potentially dwarf squeaking of paid advertising messages broadcast without regard to reality of customer experience. They are still in infancy when it comes to their effectiveness, but the improvement of rating consistency and active connectivity with a product and/or vendor, will make it into a powerful weapon.

They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.

Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), Analects

Yet another "IT" project debacle

Posted on the April 1st, 2008 under Business Risk, Change Management, Organizational Transformation, Value of BPR by Gregory Yankelovich

In a Wall Street Journal post “SAP Sued Over Tech Jargon” Ben Worthen reported a court case filed by Waste Management Company against SAP.

The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand.

- Lewis Thomas

"Social" CRM?

Posted on the March 31st, 2008 under CRM, Change Management by Gregory Yankelovich

It is amazing what I am learning lately! Seem that I was so dip in strategy, planning and implementation “trenches” that I largely missed all these developments around Enterprise 2.0. Proverbial drinking from a fire hose! There is a lot of writing on this subject in a blogosphere, but most of it focused on tools rather than business processes which can or should be supported by these tools. Calls for yet another revolution are giving me indigestion. I know about demographics and aging population, but rumors about our deafness are greatly exaggerated (my apologies to estate of Mark Twain), there is hardly a need for such a shouting. However some good conceptual ideas for practical utilization of these tools to improve flow of information within an enterprise and between enterprise and its market participants start to bubble up.

Brent Leary reports in his blog on Microsoft Convergence conference:

.. without exception the main themes coming out of all three of these events is the growing importance of social CRM - how social media and web 2.0 tools are being incorporated into traditional crm strategies to reach their customers and prospects in a more meaningful way. In fact social CRM has very little to do with software, and everything to do with acknowledging that customers have the power to engage with whomever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want, however they want and how dramatically they wish to do so. So the masses can more easily amass without the boundaries of the past, and drive how they’ll consume information as well as how they will do business. Which means that old maxim of business not being personal is no longer the case, if it ever was. Business IS very personal, so CRM has to be way more than great software, productivity gains and integration. These things are important, but so is understanding why people blog, leave comments, digg or stumble, create videos, etc.

It seem that the tools start to tip the scales of asymmetric marketing warfare to the benefit of buying public, but personally I am yet to see any meaningful results as a consumer. I still have to call my “friendly” bank at least two times to remove some silly charges and my requests to stop mailing flyers and other garbage to me are being ignored at a great expense to the bank (Thank you Bank of America!) and to environment. I do acknowledge the power of outrage as illustrated by the slaughterhouse debacle, but such a fury cannot and should not be expected in every experience of customer mistreatment. Only future will tell how much fury current banking practices will manage to gather in their pathetic attempts to manage mortgage disaster as illustrated in this Citi gem.

“Social” CRM will become social when enterprise executives stop hiding behind the lines of powerless or uninterested “troops” and engage directly into dialog with their customers.