EditA list of some popular "off-the-shelf" Customer Relationship Management systems:
Microsoft Outlook (CRM sort of) - click here
Superoffice (been around a while) click here
SalesLogix - Bought out by Sage click here
ACT - Also bought by Sage - try explaining that one! click here
PeopleSoft - Bought out by Oracle click here
salesforce.com - Take the "online" approach - or one of them click here
EditCRM, "Customer Relationship Management",
is a new buzz-word for an old idea / product. As your business competes for its niche amongst your competitors, and seeks out new strategies, new markets, and new focuses, you need a database system that can manage the "existence" of all your client relationships: a system that can keep track of all those relationships.
EditQuestions that CRMs are designed to provide quick answers to.
The following is by no means a complete list, and I would love to hear from you about what your own favourite question of a CRM system is.
Here are a few typical ones:
When was the last time I contact this potential client, and what did we discuss?
Has anyone else from the company been in touch with them about anything recently?
If so, what was the outcome?
I'm about to meet with an important customer of my company, are there any outstanding issues I should be aware of?
What is the turnover of the account from the customer I am about to call of meet with?
What sales appointments do I have this week?
When do I have time to schedule a new sales appointment in the next couple of weeks?
What slots are available for customers coming to us?
Which conference rooms are available for the meeting on Thursday? (more about this later)
Could I make some scheduling adjustments that would improve the cost-effectiveness of the routing of my client site-visits?
What forms are marketting are currently yielding the best sales throughput?
What forms are marketting are currently using the most person-hours and other resources?
What is the intended outcome of the meeting I am having this afternoon with a particular customer?
I'm on my way to an important customer, and got caught in horrendous traffic - what is their phone number?
EditBusiness problems and business infrastructure solutions
To Bespoke or not to Bespoke ... (that is the difficult business decision)
Business administrators choosing a CRM, FSM or Financial, Stock or Document management system, have typically and traditionally had a rather stark choice.
Business administrators commonly face a stark choice between using "off-the-shelf" data management systems which inevitably have some degree of mismatch with the specific business processes of your business, and bespoke tailor-made systems, the obtaining of which is fraught with hazards for the unwary, as every experienced business administrator knows only too well.
On the one hand ...
you could opt for an "off-the-shelf" system which would hopefully come fairly cheap and cheerful, although when reading the small print of the licensing agreements, it may actually not turn out so cheap. The off-the-shelf system would at least be a known quantity. There would be no work involved in specifying what you wanted it to do. You would simply look around for a system that met as many of your needs as you could find, and then you would buy it, and install it. There might be some period of adjustment while your staff get used to the quirks of this new piece of software, but relatively speaking the system is available immediately. The primary draw-back you might think of this approach is that the off-the-shelf system is "stuck in its ways". Its ready to roll-out, exactly as it says, straight off-the-shelf, but it maybe doesn't allow you to operate in the just exactly the way that your business processes are organised. As a result of this inflexibility, a series of "work-arounds" have to be conceived, that allow you to fit your business processes to the mold of the off-the-shelf product, or meld the off-the-shelf product to your business processes.
The fit of the off-the-shelf software system is not tailored, in just the same way that a suit from Burtons is not tailored. You may be able to get it a variety of sizes that come close to the shape of your business, but your business is unique, and the off-the-shelf software was not tailored to match it.
On the other hand ...
We have the bespoke database solution. And until as a business administrator you have had experience of a couple of "bespoke database projects" under your belt, you might wonder why anyone ever takes the "off-the-shelf" route at all. Surely a tailored product, made-to-measure, that matches the business processes of your business did ought to be worth a little bit extra money. Certainly that ought to be true, unless we are talking great big extra "load's-a-money"... and very often we are not.
Why then is the mere mention or even thought of a bespoke database project, tailored to your company's business processes, enough to strike dread, terror and fear, into the hearts of so many business administrators?
There are a few different ways to explain this to anyone who has not experienced it first hand. Consider that any such project may be liable to any or sometimes even all of the following difficulties.
When the project was initially conceived, the client buying the software was not certain exactly what they needed so they left various details up to software development company to make decisions on. When they come to test the project they discover that these details are in fact make-or-brake to the useability of the software, so they ask the development company to change these details. The development company then tells them that these details have been embedded so deeply into the design the product that to alter them would require a major re-write, perhaps even a complete re-write of the entire system. Neither the purchasing client, not the software provider want to be the one who is paying for this re-write.
When the specification for the software was made the circumstances were such that the product was beneficial. But by the time the product is delivered perhaps 6 months or more later, the business processes have changed or the business case for the product no longer exists. The software developer is now asking us to pay for a piece of software which we have no use for.
Tailoring of predesigned modules ... the best of both worlds
In my 20 years of experience designing, developing and deploying database systems, I have developed and incorporated a number of strategies and methodologies which make the process of implementing a tailor-made database system a much more attractive and viable proposition. I commonly use a number of "part-baked" modules, together with frameworks that support them and allow them to mesh seamlessly together. These "part-baked" modules are open to extensive refinement, and if necessary, modification to make them fully appropriate to the precise details of a specific business-case.
This approach allows me to provide astonishing turn-around times, and incredible prices, in the delivery of tailor-made database systems - the "best of both" choice.