Eliminate the Headache

Consider Integration Before Buying a CRM System

Despite the sales hype of some customer relationship management (CRM) vendors, no CRM system will do what you want right out of the box. Many telecom service providers buy CRM software without anticipating the time and effort required to integrate that software with their existing systems to make it work.

What many service providers don't realize is that they can reduce the cost of implementing and operating a CRM system if they analyze it from the standpoint of integration requirements before they buy.

There are three fundamental reasons why a service provider must analyze a CRM product from the integration standpoint before it writes the check:

Cost: With the wrong CRM system, integration could be a time bomb waiting to explode. Depending on the architecture of the CRM software and of your other information processing systems, you could end up spending more to integrate the CRM package than you did to buy it.

Time: In today's ultra-competitive telecommunications market, you want to get your new customer service software up and running as soon as possible. Any delay caused by unforeseen integration problems can cost you business.

Efficiency: CRM has to supply information to and obtain it from your other functional departments, such as sales, purchasing, billing and field service. Any glitch in information flow means higher operating costs and a smaller number on the bottom line.

Before buying a CRM system, be sure you know what you want it to do. At a minimum, make sure it has business intelligence and analytical capabilities to capture and turn customer data into actionable information; can process data from a variety of customer interactions, such as face-to-face, e-mail, Internet, direct mail, and telemarketing; handles transactions via the company's website; provides a centralized repository of customer information; integrates into your workflow so that information is available at each step in the business cycle; and works with your OSS and other applications.

Telecom service providers at different stages of development have different needs for CRM. To determine the level of sophistication you need in each of these areas, you must understand what your business strategies and processes are. That largely depends on where you are in your business life cycle.

We can identify three basic stages in a service provider's life cycle: startup, growth and establishment.

A startup service provider needs a way for prospects to sign up for service, for the sales force to capture information about prospects and for electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP). A good order management or billing software package can perform these functions at least as efficiently as most CRM systems with minimum integration, while preserving precious startup capital.

In the Growth stage of development, when it has its basic operating functions in place and is aiming to build market share, a service provider starts to look for ways to get more sales for less money. This is the time to explore a more sophisticated CRM system incorporating sales force automation (SFA).

Your SFA software should provide contact management, note and information sharing, quick proposal and presentation generation, product configurators to quickly assemble and price product and service packages, calendars and to-do lists. SFA gives a telecom the ability to track prospects through the sales cycle and use data gathered through CRM to up-sell and cross-sell existing customers. It should also allow customers to examine and purchase products and services, manage their accounts and service portfolios, report service problems, and receive immediate interactive assistance, either through a web site or interactive voice response (IVR).

Established service providers look for ways to increase sales by building customer loyalty. They do this through proactive customer care strategies. For example, they alert customers to new products and services that can meet their needs while saving them money, such as a more economical calling plan. Or they contact customers during a service disruption to let them know what they're doing to fix the problem. These capabilities enable an established provider to differentiate itself from its competitors, especially the large, established incumbent local exchange carriers, in speed and quality of response.

Every department at a telecommunications service provider interacts in some way with customers. Fulfilling and provisioning an order can entail actions by sales, customer service, accounting, purchasing, field service, the warehouse and shipping, as well as strategic partners.

When you look at CRM packages, you should determine how the package will interact with these other company functions. Is there a central data repository, or do certain departments "own" certain kinds of data that the CRM software may need? Who is responsible for creating and maintaining this data? You should make sure that the CRM system is able to access and process this data quickly, cost-effectively and accurately. The less data transfer, conversion and correction, the more efficient your operations and the more satisfied your customers.

Your company may have valuable applications that it has installed or developed and wants to continue to use in conjunction with the new CRM system.

To make this possible, there must be interfaces to make the old work with the new. The CRM system must be able to interact with those legacy applications, which may run on different operating systems and hardware platforms in different locations.

There are two ways to accomplish this an information portal that provides integrated, browser-based access to information from disparate systems; or application program interfaces (APIs) that provide a structured means for people or applications to get at data or supply data to an application.

Make sure that your CRM system accommodates both methods.

There will always be gaps between the business processes embodied in a CRM system and the processes that an individual service provider uses. No telecom should change the business processes that give it a competitive advantage in expectation of improved workflow from a CRM system. For example, if the way a CRM system supports customers that want to handle their own service needs via the Internet, but it does not handle all of the company's rating algorithms, the company should not revamp its rate plans.

It should modify the CRM package.

On the other hand, a telecom provider should examine CRM systems with an open mind. Defining a corporate strategy and evaluating CRM software can sometimes lead to a re-engineering of a service provider's business process to take maximum advantage of the software's capabilities to improve efficiency.

Even if a telecom provider has found and implemented the ideal CRM system for its business processes, it will probably still encounter gaps, performance problems and bottlenecks arising from the specifics of its own environment. It should anticipate these problems and dedicate resources to solve them rather than waiting to be caught by surprise.

In today's highly competitive telecommunications services market, the effectiveness of a customer relationship management system can make or break a telecom, whether it is a startup, a mature company or somewhere in between. It's worth the time and effort to thoroughly evaluate a CRM system's performance in your business environment, determine the level of interfacing needed, identify the gaps between your company's requirements and the CRM system's capabilities and estimate the scope of customization.

George S. Bordo is vice president of Enterprise Business Solutions at Danet Inc. (www.danet.com). He can be contacted at bordo@danet.com or (724) 933 3000

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