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Establishing a clear CRM road map
While most organisations now accept CRM as a strategic imperative rather then merely an operational nicety, many are failing to realise the expected benefits. In response, Valoris has developed a series of tools under the CRM Road Map label to help firms implement CRM more effectively.
Lack of success in implementing CRM initiatives appears to stem from:
- Lack of clear vision as to what is trying to be achieved
- Senior management paying lip service to CRM rather than making a genuine commitment in terms of time, money and effort
- A belief that CRM is about technology and does not require organisation-wide involvement
- A lack of co-ordination between business units resulting in disparate CRM initiatives
- Imposing organisational disruption without appropriate change management support
The key to successful implementation is a clear vision of what the organisation is aiming to become and a clearly defined path to get there.
The CRM Road Map helps companies to:
- Create a clear, organisation-wide vision, giving overall direction, and prioritisation of initiatives
- Gain a clear understanding of activities currently being undertaken towards building a CRM strategy
- Understand the impact of CRM across the business and the constraints that exist in implementation
- Provide a structured path to follow in order to realise the organisation’s customer management vision
There are four main elements to the CRM Road Map Programme:
- A CRM current status assessment
- Creating the CRM vision
- CRM change management
- A CRM development plan
A CRM current status assessment
The Valoris PathfinderTM tool provides a quantitative assessment of all aspects of a firm’s CRM activities – from reporting KPIs through to the supporting technological infrastructure. PathfinderTM comprises a series of questions designed to assess the current level of an organisation’s CRM development against CRM best practice.
At a high level, best practice results in an organisation where:
- Customised products and services are offered to customers in the way that they prefer, at the time they need them, before they ask
- Communications are tailored to fit each customer in terms of tone, timing and content
- All relevant information about a customer and their relationship with an organisation is available across all touch points
- Resource is expended in proportion to the customer’s current and potential contribution to the business
- All activities and investments focus on managing customers to deliver value to them – and the business
The PathfinderTM questions assess the firm’s existing CRM position and plans in the areas of Customer Orientation, Customer Understanding, Customer Propositions and Interaction and IT Infrastructure.
Each aspect is scored and benchmarked relative to CRM best practice world-wide, providing a sound base from which to assess future progress and to evaluate the firm’s performance.
Creating the CRM vision
The identification of CRM objectives and vision is vital to ascertaining where an organisation is trying to get to and to understand its real commitment to CRM.
Firms are often unclear as to what they are trying to achieve through CRM and over what time frame. Valoris have developed a series of expert workshops to help the executive articulate their CRM vision and to know when it is realised.
CRM change management
The implementation of a CRM strategy can involve considerable change for the organisation – structural, cultural, process of people change. One aspect of the Valoris CRM Road Map tool assesses an organisation’s openness to change to help guide change management. It provides recommendations on how to achieve greater CRM orientation and enhanced business success.
CRM development plan
The CRM Road Map also includes establishing a development plan, which prioritises the key actions and recommendations necessary to achieve the CRM vision, and allocates responsibilities and timelines for implementation.
Conclusions
CRM is key to any organisation in maintaining competitive advantage within today’s highly sophisticated marketplace. Many organisations understand the need to develop a CRM strategy, but few have managed implementation successfully. The Valoris CRM Road Map enables organisations, at whatever stage of their CRM development, to take a structured approach to making CRM work.
The result is a clear CRM vision, strategy and prioritised development plan tailored to each organisation.
Clients with whom Valoris has worked on the CRM Road Map include Norwich Union, Axa and MBNA.
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