As I noted in my last post, CRM user adoption is a challenge for many companies. There are, of course, a multitude of reasons large and small why users can’t or won’t change their ways and adapt to a new CRM system. But, in general, there are some common root causes why users oftentimes reject CRM. Several industry analysts have written on the subject. An oft-cited 2002 report from AMR Research identifies these common issues:
End users have no compelling reason to use the system
End users fear CRM and the transparency it provides management
End users lack buy in and reject business process change
Key stakeholders lose interest in or support for a CRM project
So how do we as a software/solution delivery company address these issues? For starters, we work closely with our customers to acknowledge and assess these challenges up front. Encouraging and improving user adoption, we feel, is a shared responsibility. We have a role to play along with our customers.
We suggest that companies set explicit CRM use goals at the outset of each project. From there, we support these goals by:
Aligning CRM project expectations appropriately from day one
Supporting and empowering key stakeholders
Delivering an easy-to-use software product that helps the company meet clearly defined objectives
Training and supporting end users to minimize resistance and create buy-in
On the project side, we work aggressively to get our customers up and running as quickly as possible because we know project delays can erode confidence and support. We also scope and implement your solution in alignment with your corporate goals to help you achieve quick wins. These simple steps build momentum for CRM initiatives and thus encourage system use.
To build internal support, we try to integrate a variety of end users into the CRM project team. Bringing business owners into the project at an early stage helps turn them into enthusiastic CRM champions.
Giving our clients an easy to use and fully-optimized end product, of course, is key. SAP CRM is just that and has a variety of personalization features that give end users more control over their user experience. The dashboards and reporting available in the system are also features that encourage adoption.
As far as training and support are concerned, both are an ongoing need to ensure CRM success. At RunE2E, we implement a “train the trainer” approach that leaves an onsite resource available at your company to help end users at all times.
Of course, I’m just scratching the surface with these quick notes. I’ll explore the topic in greater depth at CRM 2010 in Orlando. Hope to see you there.
Every company that is newly invested in CRM usually has at least one CRM champion: someone who understands the value of the software and actively promotes its use.
But it’s also true that many others within the enterprise may not share the champion’s enthusiasm. The end users—sales people, marketers, the folks in the call center—are not always part of the purchase decision and they may be reluctant about (or openly skeptical of) the company’s CRM initiative. Winning over these users is a challenge for many organizations.
Promoting user adoption across the enterprise is at top of mind for me these days for a couple of reasons. One is simply that I’m developing a presentation on the topic for an upcoming conference, CRM 2010. But aside from that bit of shameless self promotion, I’m also thinking about user adoption in the real-world context of several new customers that we’re working with.
It is true, especially in these days of cloud computing, that CRM software requires less setup time and can be put to work by the customer more quickly than ever. But what can fall by the wayside in that rush to run the software is the requisite training, support and reinforcement of best practices for users—all of which are key elements that drive user adoption for the long-term.
Here at RunE2E, we pride ourselves on a rapid delivery process. But I also think it’s important for our company to infuse that process with tools and support to help our customers promote ongoing and widespread user adoption. In essence, we should strive to create teams of CRM champions throughout the enterprise. Because that’s how our success will ultimately be measured, and how our customers will derive the greatest value from their investment.
Those are my thoughts for now. In a future post, I’ll share some simple tips from my presentation that companies can use to encourage CRM adoption.
Thats right, we’re coming to a city near you. Or within a few hundred miles at least. RunE2E is joining SAP for a series of one-day events to be held across the country in September and October to highlight how SAP and partners like us help deliver results for business.
Our focus is clearly CRM, so we’ll join our SAP counterparts at the SAP CRM booth where we’ll be conducting live demos and showcasing our mobile solution. But other partners and SAP experts, as well as customers, will be there, too.
Think about your current challenges. Are you trying to: streamline execution, improve customer service, reduce risk, improve compliance, increase loyalty? Software solutions for all of these common issues will be on display–and more.
Some of these events are fast approaching so take note of the cities and dates below. Click on each for more information. Hope to see you on tour!
Since day one, we’ve had a pretty clear vision of what our company should be. Our SAP partnership and our exclusive focus on CRM help define that vision and everyone at RunE2E works hard to accomplish it everyday.
We recently put our vision statement on paper as an internal exercise, and after doing so, it seemed logical that we share it with our customers and prospective customers. So without further embellishment, here it is:
RunE2E helps companies effectively find, efficiently acquire and consistently retain customers through the development and management of simple, logical and affordable business solutions powered by SAP software.
First and foremost, we want to help our clients create stronger businesses. We help them do that with a powerful CRM solution that enhances their relationship with their customers.
Simple and affordable? RunCRM is really easy to use, it’s affordably priced for the mid-market, and it’s pre-built to address probably 80% or more of an organization’s requirements out of the box. This aggressively drives down total cost of ownership. And oh, by the way: our solution can be deployed as hosted, remote hosted or as a service to our Customer, meaning they don’t have to worry about the dreaded deployment choice and can simply focus on their business.
The last part of the vision is important, too. This is SAP software. They are, afterall, the global leader in business software solutions. For our customers, it means that our organization is complimented and supported by SAP, which serves 50,000 customers and employs 15,000 professionals worldwide.
That’s the vision. I welcome your feedback and thoughts.
July 13th, 2009 By Nitin Solanki, Director of Program Management
The release of SAP CRM 2007 represented a giant leap forward for the product with a new UI and robust features that placed it among the industry leaders. The latest evolution of the product is a 7.0 release that includes a variety of UI and architecture enhancements, which have been incorporated into our own SAP-certified solution, RunCRM.
Among the more practical enhancements are changes to the search function to allow for cross-object searching and performance improvements to enable faster searches.
New features have been added in all of the major functional areas–sales, service and marketing. As one example, new opportunity management tools allow sales managers to more easily simulate opportunity changes and ‘what-if’ scenarios for closing pipeline gaps.
For more visual, graphically-rich reporting, RunCRM now integrates with Business Objects Xcelsius. Xcelsius lets customers transform complex data into comprehensive, interactive charts and dashboards that can be embedded in RunCRM and shared with others, as shown below in the demo chart below from SAP. Click on different regions to see different views of the data in motion:
Join us on Wednesday, June 24 (1p ET) to review the sales and mobile sales features of RunCRM. This 45-minute overview will showcase key sales features of the RunCRM product suite and review best practices for using CRM to drive sales effectiveness, including lead scoring, opportunity management and field-based access to vital customer data.
To preregister for this RunE2E event, sign up here.
There is no slowing down in a company with “Run” in its name. Our team has been on the road for much of May demoing, solidifying strategic relationships and exhibiting at SAPPHIRE, where we unveiled our mobile sales application, fittingly dubbed RunMobile.
RunMobile for RunCRM on iPhone
The product got a great reception, principally because of its ease of use. A key learning applied in the development of the product was to keep it simple. Our goal is to give the mobile workforce access to critical data and functionality to keep them productive, but not to overwhelm them with too many features or menus.
The core feature set is similar for iPhone and Blackberry (Bold, Storm and Curve). The ability to access customer accounts and contact information on the road is a huge win for field sales people, as is the ability to set followup actions and work from a calendar and daily activity log that are ’always connected’ to the primary CRM application (no unwieldy synching required) .
We’re demoing the product for interested parties and will schedule a webcast later this Summer to review our latest release. Sign up here to pre-register for the event.
In this economy, everyone–at least, everyone in the software business–is trying to answer that fundamental question.
If your company is like ours, the answer probably depends on who you talk to and when you talk to them. One day, a salesperson will come off a blazing hot call with a prospect who is investing heavily. The next day, that same salesperson will hit a roadblock with a company that is pulling in the reins on IT spending.
I just came back from a conference where the publishers of TechTarget showed data indicative of a conflicted marketplace. In their survey of IT decision makers, 29% were increasing their IT spend in 2009, while 38% were cutting budget with the rest holding pat.
When companies do buy, according to this survey, it’s for two reasons, either because they have to (yes, compliance) or because they want to become more efficient and smarter. To that end, Business Intelligence (BI) was highlighted as the number one business application investment for CIOs this year.
That makes total sense to us. In many ways, BI is a fundament of CRM. We think an end business goal for any CRM customer should be to harness their data in a way that helps them become smarter about their customers, which, in turn, helps them optimize their marketing spend and increase revenue.
With RunCRM, businesses can do all of that and more. As an SAP channel partner, we connect it all together through BusinessObjects and analytics that make data actionable and meaningful.
So maybe we shouldn’t ask ‘are buyers buying?,’ and instead ask, ‘are we selling something that buyers need?’ And we think we are.
Increased customer loyalty has always been a core benefit of CRM, albeit one that can get lost in the sales pitch. As vendors, we often focus our prospects on the real prospect of new customer growth through increased sales effectiveness and marketing optimization. Alas in the current economy, new customers in many industries are proving harder to find. As a result, good ol’ fashioned service is gaining renewed currency (yes, pun intended) as a revenue booster.
Is Service the new Sales?
RunE2E CEO John Brasch and others make the case for service in an article this month on the InsideCRM website. According to JB, the core functionality of a robust CRM (like RunCRM, for example) can turn service agents into sales agents, netting valuable cross-sell, upsell and renewal revenue.
Beyond selling, of course, service agents play the vital role of simply making customers happy. It’s a role made easier by CRM, but is it a sound investment? In fact, the evidence suggests it may be a business-critical investment. Bain and Company, the consultancy that trumpets the NetPromoter customer satisfaction survey, believes a 5 percent increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 75 percent.
Just take a look at the companies that are weathering the current economic storm. Many are traditional service leaders that understand that loyal customers will sustain them in good times and in bad.
The future of CRM is mobile. And the future is here, according to SAP’s Bill McDermott, as seen in this timely interview on CNBC. Mobile apps are definitely part of the RunCRM roadmap and are a key long-term differentiator in our view. How do you use mobile today in your business?
