Putting Your Customers First

BM. How can companies achieve successful return on investment through CRM Projects?
Adam Hughes. The key objective for CEOs is to maximise the ROI for shareholders in the business and to achieve this objective, they must focus on maximising the profitability of their customers.

In any business, financial performance from CRM projects ultimately depends on whether the business 'captures customer value' (CCV) as efficiently as possible. For many companies CRM is a powerful tool for creating CCV.

PA's research across 500 organisations, and our own experience shows time and again that the most successful companies are those with the highest CCV. The analysis reaches the conclusion that CRM is not a panacea, but that in the right areas it has the potential to create large amounts of value. Whilst businesses have undertaken CRM related initiatives, they are still not fully utilising customer information to create business benefits.

Well implemented, CRM systems should lead to a virtuous circle of dialogue with the customer, in which a good set of offerings leads to a greater share of the market and more and better customer information. This allows additional tailoring and improvement of the offerings - leaving competitors further and further behind.

This is the route to maximising CCV, and thereby ROI of CRM projects.

BM. How can effective CRM solutions provide companies with a competitive advantage?
AH. The goal of CRM solutions is to identify, win, retain and expand customer relationships – in the most profitable way – across the complete spectrum of points of contact with the customer, from sales force to call centre to the Internet. New technological developments are making it possible to deliver CRM effectively across a company’s many channels to market.

However, although the CRM technology plays a vital role, it is only an enabler. The smartest sales system is only as effective as the quality of the salesperson and the set of processes that govern how they operate. Integration of all the company’s CRM elements, along with other aspects of the manufacturing and supply chain, is essential when seeking competitive advantage. Attitudes and procedures in dealing with customers must also be consistent, particularly across channels. If it was up to the CRM-system alone to deliver competitive advantage, it would fade away when all the competitors has implemented the systems.

BM. How do you think companies will change the way they use CRM in the future?
AH. The businesses who have experienced disappointing ROI on their implementations need to ensure that their systems are best fit to purpose and that the process are optimised. After all, CRM is still about product excellence, good communications, helpful staff, good service and all those things that depend on company culture and the ethos of leadership.

BM. How do you think CRM technology will evolve in the future?
AH. The Internet has forever changed the way customers want to be served. Customers want service across a variety of channels and the CRM technology that helps deliver this must be as easy to use as Google.

In a discredited CRM market beset with stories of costly failures, new approaches are rising. Framework technology applications (middleware integration products with tools to develop workflows and screens from business processes), combined with best of breed applications, are emerging as a new wave of innovative technology that, when combined with the business imperatives of CRM, offers the best hope yet for delivering CRM technology that adds value.

BM. What factors should companies look for when choosing a CRM package?
AH. The key to success is to break CRM projects into flexible, manageable chunks and develop a process-led approach. Use of flexible solutions, such as framework technologies, is an emerging and highly successful alternative to implementing complex CRM packages. PA Consulting Group is independent of the major CRM software vendors. As such, our client experience and research indicates that a process-led approach to capturing customer value, independent of software solutions and with uncompromising attention to delivering rapid results, provides the greatest benefit to companies and their customers.

Adam Hughes is a partner in PA’s Solutions and Infrastructure practice and heads up PA's IT gulf operation. He is one of PA's leading experts in IT development and is a recognised CRM specialist. He focuses on the delivery of enterprise CRM solutions across multiple sectors and technologies. His experience ranges from providing expert client side advice on the selection and implementation of CRM solutions and development projects both within the public and private sectors.