Live from DCI: Launching CRM Isn’t That Bad: Sometimes It’s Worse
Under-trained system users, incompatible data merges and crashes at precisely the wrong time were among the tales of woe shared during a session at DCI’s Customer Relationship Management Conference & Exposition. At CRM War Stories: Successes and Failures, a panel discussion hosted Tuesday by Kamran Hasanain, president of Ksciences Corp., marketers offered their hard-earned pearls of wisdom regarding CRM system implementation.
Debra Speight, former chief intelligence officer at Woburn, MA-based Internet infrastructure firm Genuity, took the prize hands-down for the worst horror story. After stressing several times that employees are naturally resistant to change, she told of a system malfunction that gave them ample reason to be.
“Three days before the go/no-go date, the system died,” Speight said. “It was the sales force’s worst fear come to life.” She has since learned that business processes don’t change at the same rate software can be installed.
Russ DeLoach is senior vice president, employer services, managed sales accounts for check processor Automatic Data Processing (ADP), Roseland, NJ. Given a chance to do the implementation process again, he would not have rolled it out company-wide with a series of quick training sessions. Rather than read the manuals, employees were going onto the system, making mistakes and freezing it. He has since offered additional training sessions.
For Bob Levin, vice president, IT at New York insurer MetLife, the low point came when several databases across the enterprise were integrated. The firm had been organized around product groups as opposed to customers, and the data quality within the various legacy systems was inconsistent. “It’s data stewardship,” Levin said. “No one was managing the clients.”
But for all their tales of woe, the panelists offered opinions on smoothing transitions. At one point the discussion centered on using fully integrated CRM systems from a single vendor, as opposed to cherry picking from several specialized products.
At MetLife, the CRM system was implemented in a single broad action. Reflecting this, Levin strongly advocated using one vendor. “A tight fit [among components] helps,” Levin said. “I think you need to give that weight.”
Levin also commented that with a best of breed system, users of one component are less likely to know how to use other, unrelated functions. “The functionality for each component is high but you wind up with one million pockets of no experience” with the other systems.
Speight also advocated a fully integrated system from a single vendor, albeit one with streamlined functions. “For sanity’s sale I strip out as much as I can,” she said.
She also said that the question of using a fully integrated system versus a mix-and-match structure can be rendered moot by hardware selection criteria: As Speight noted, best of breed criteria can take into account a package’s integration capabilities as well.
At ADP, the need to preserve the older databases, combined with a previous sales force automation failure, required that DeLoach start small, with a single new system. He has since built on its successes in raising the efficiency of sales calls, increasing account review and managerial control, and lowering the costs of sales.
“We had the need for sales force automation. Now that we have integrated it, we can focus on the ‘right next’ decisions,” DeLoach said.
The DCI CRM Conference & Exposition, which is at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, runs through Aug. 30.
