CRM: The Third Implementation

Posted on 2011/01/26 by Donato

There is the common, but false belief that a successful CRM implementation is complete once users are up and running and the technology replaces the manual tasks of tracking prospect/customer information. That is certainly a milestone, but not the end of the CRM implementation journey. Invariably, real-world usage leads to requirements not foreseen in initial CRM planning.  Salesforce.com pioneered the AppExchange™ and solved the challenge of the second implementation.  Thousands of apps, ready with tested business logic, encompassing millions of lines of code can seamlessly plug into Salesforce to complete the second implementation. Before the AppExchange, companies would find themselves with a total re-engineering effort or CRM failure. Well done Salesforce!

What is the Third Implementation?

Today, the focus now turns to the third implementation; and it is all about data. Unless specifically addressed, every CRM has a problem with dirty data.  Regular de-duplication is NOT the solution. De-duplication treats a symptom of the dirty data disease; it does not cure the disease itself.  To cure the disease, you must stop dirty data from ever getting into the CRM. Dirty data can enter a CRM via a user, application or the system.  Each source of data needs to be addressed.

Enter the CRM Data-Plan

A CRM Data-Plan is a single-point-of-truth for treating data across an enterprise. It consists of a robust set of rules that details standards for treating data. Amazingly, less than 3% of CRM administrators have a CRM Data-Plan.

The challenge for CRM providers is that they cannot solve the issue with a one-size-fits-all solution. The business requirements of some companies call for verbose data, while others may prefer a high usage of abbreviations.

A good CRM Data-Plan ensures that company names, titles and all forms of CRM data are normalized to a single standard.  With a systematically applied Data-Plan, gone are the days of searching for a company in your CRM five different ways. Multiple sales reps no longer work on the same account listed under several different company name formats.  Marketing has the ability to segment markets and get a stronger perspective on customers and prospects.  CRM data augmentation is no longer a nightmare.  With a strong CRM Data-Plan, you no longer have to fear importing new data in your CRM and hearing the word “foobar” from your CRM administrator. The efficiencies gained are tremendous.

Enforcing the CRM Data-plan:  Introducing CRMShield™

Without a method, an unbreakable method to enforce your CRM Data-Plan, the plan is a paper tiger.  Broadlook’s CRMShield™ empowers CRM administrators to seamlessly create a CRM Data-Plan and enforce it for users, vendors and administrators.

Using a single global standard crafted by your CRM administrator, CRMShield™ protects and cleans your CRM in real time. Say goodbye to duplicate and dirty data. The CRM Data-Plan is saved in the cloud, at a single location, therefore the entire enterprise, small or large is protected.  Changes made to the CRM Data-Plan propagate to the enterprise so all data, even from different silos, conforms to a single standard.

Take the Dirty Data Quiz

The Dirty Data quiz serves as a report card. How does your company rate?  Do you have a CRM Data-Plan?  Is your CRM administrator helping or hurting? What are the steps you need to take to keep your CRM clean? Visit: www.broadlook.com/dirtydataquiz

Free Tool:  Create your own CRM Data-Plan

Every company should have a CRM Data-Plan. With this free website, you can get started on the road to a clean CRM system. Visit: crmshield.broadlook.com

Posted in CRM Data Plan, CRM Measurement, CRM Philosophy, CRM Quality | 1 Comment

The Dirty Data Quiz – How Healthy is your CRM?

Posted on 2010/08/03 by Donato

Where does your company is rank for the variables that impact duplicate data? Take a moment to take the quiz below.

How to score the quiz:  Each question has a maximum.  Give yourself a score on the continuum from zero to max points.  Good luck & be honest!

The Dirty Data Quiz: Is Your CRM at Risk?

CRM Data Plan. 15 points. Does your company have a CRM Data Plan? A CRM Data Plan is a standard format for treating CRM data. If you don’t, this is where you start the entire process. To comply with best practices, your CRM Data Plan should be centrally stored, accessible by anyone who enters data into your CRM. In essence, the Data-Plan acts as a single-point-of-truth for your company and how it treats data.
Your points: ______

Staff Training. 5 points. Has your staff has been trained on your Data-Plan and it is easily accessible? While this is a great step, it is not as important as making the CRM enforce your data plan automatically. If your CRM does offer a feature like this, the training is most important for your IT department who can circumvent the constraints put on the average user. Your points: ______

CRM Cleaned. 5 points. Has your CRM gone through a full normalization and deduplication process? Once you have your Data-Plan developed, you need to ensure that the data you have meets the plan. Why only 5 points? A one-time cleaning does not solve the long term problem. Don’t pat yourself on the back for this, if this is all you do, you will have one month per year of clean data. Your points: ______

CRM Enforcement. 15 points. Is your data plan enforced by your CRM? This is tremendously important. If your provider does not have this feature, it means you must either build or find an add-on to your CRM. An even better option is to provide all users of your CRM Broadlook’s Contact Capture to automatically and error free enter contacts into your CRM. Contact Capture is FREE (not trying to sell anything here). Your points: ______

Product/Integration Enforcement. 10 points. Do other products that bring information into your CRM adhere to your Data-Plan? Beware of products that dump data to a Excel or CSV file. Sometimes it is unavoidable, however, direct exporting systems that comply with your Data-Plan and do deduplication in real-time are always a superior choice. Your points: ______

Vendor Enforcement. 10 Points. Do vendors that provide you with list data deliver it in compliance with your Data-Plan? Some vendors may push back at first; however, it has been my experience that the entire process will go smoother if the vendor complies to the Data-Plan. Hold your ground and remember that list providers want your business. Show them the format that you want your data …and don’t compromise. Your points: ______

Import Enforcement, by culture. 5 points. Does the IT staff buy-in to following the Data-Plan? The best way to make this happen is include the IT department in the development of the Data-Plan. Your points: ______

Import Enforcement, by technology. 15 points. Is your IT staff prevented from circumventing a Data-Plan by rights management? Everyone must obey the Data-Plan. If your IT staff can circumvent best practices established by management, problems will arise. It the IT staff disagrees with a Data-Plan, best practice dictates that the Data-Plan reviewed, discussed and potentially revised. Again, this maintains the single point of truth and enforceability to make your Data Plan work. Your points: ______

URL Enforcement. 20 points. Do you have a URL (website) field for each company in your CRM.? The URL of a company is more important than a DUNS number, location or anything else. It is the single best piece of company-centric information that can be used to update the CRM over time. The URL can be used to update and add contacts to your CRM with tools like Broadlook’s Profiler. Your points: ______

How did you do? I want to hear from you! Send how you did to Donato Diorio (me AT dioriodiorio dot com).

SCORE GRADE
<20 F
40 D
60 C
80 B
100 A
Your score: __________

Understanding how your data and processes rank is paramount. Dirty CRM data is a huge problem with sales force efficiency. You may think that cleaning your CRM on a regular cycle is a good thing. Don’t pat yourself on the back just yet; cleaning CRM data on a cycle is treating a symptom. Just like good physical health, the best solution to eradicate dirty CRM data is prevention. Prevent dirty data from getting into your CRM and your CRM be clean and healthy. You may even enjoy using it again.

Posted in Case Studies, CRM Analytics, CRM Data Plan, CRM Deduplication, CRM Measurement, CRM Quality | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Cleaning your CRM: The human side of the Equation

Posted on 2010/07/29 by Donato

Controlling human behavior is a huge step towards getting a handle on CRM Deduplication. Unfortunately, on the journey towards a clean CRM, we encounter humans.  They mis-key information, don’t follow a CRM Data Plan, and generally take any shortcut possible that will reduce amount of work they have to do, when getting data into the CRM.

Get used to it.  There will always be some level of human input with the CRM.   If you embrace it, you stop trying to control it.  You can’t win.  Instead, put together strategies that will minimize the damage. Even if you have controls to enforce data entry formats, there is always the admin user that can bypass your controls. Don’t ignore the human side of the equation.

Here are some ideas to help your team:

1.  Educate your staff on why a CRM Data Plan is important.  If they don’t know it is important, don’t expect them to obey best practices.

2.  Post your CRM Data Plan.    Every sales person, receptionist, administrative person, even the CEO should have it at their desk.  If your organization is paperless, put it in a corporate wiki.  If your CRM has an area for documents, put it there.

3. Get buy in from your technical team for your CRM Data Plan. If the guys who have administrative access to your CRM don’t see things your way…all hell can break loose.  Avoid this incongruity by bringing in your tech team from the inception of CRM Data Plan.

4.  When possible, use data entry automation.  There is a free technology called Contact Capture that captures contact information from any electronic form and exports to most major CRM systems including salesforce.com, MS dynamics CRM, ACT!, Goldmine and many others.

5. Use the language of your Data Plan in sales and Pipeline meetings.  Example, your talking about XYZ Incorporated and you use your Data Plan uses the short form of “Inc”, then refer to the company as “XYZ Inc”.  This seems trivial, but reinforcement from all angles will reinforce data quality.

6. Tie good data management to fun incentive bonuses. Free lunch or night out for the king or queen of data.  If the record is not correct, conformed and complete (3 C’s of data entry) then no bonus.

7.  Publicly humiliate people that don’t conform the CRM Data Plan?  No, negative reinforcement is short-lived.  Think positive.  I’ve hung up $20 bills for sales reps to make it through a morning without saying “Um”,  “Ahh”, or “you know”.  It is a great training tools to bring attention to behavior they were not aware of.  Make good data entry practices part of your culture.

8.  Hire the right people.  Good reference question to ask when hiring.  “Was (Joe) the kind of person who had good data entry practices..did he document the sales process?”   CRM is so important to an efficient sales process, but little is asked about a person and how they utilized it in a previous job role.

Even if you have a technology solution like Broadlook’s CRM Shield to enforce your chosen data entry standard (CRM Data Plan), the human side of the equation plays a big part in overall CRM health.

Next Post:  The Dirty Data Quiz – How Healthy is your CRM?

Posted in CRM Data Plan, CRM Deduplication | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

What is a CRM Data Plan?

Posted on 2010/07/26 by Donato

Every company has a unique set of requirements for treating data.  A pure telesale operation that never uses postal mail may want to take an abbreviated approach to data entry.   Example: Container Co

However, a mail order house may want a take a formal approach to company names.
Example: The Container Company Incorporated

Basically, there is no single rule for company names. Every company is unique.  This is where a CRM Data Plan comes into play.

Even within a single data point like a company name, there can be many rules regarding how to format that data.  A CRM Data Plan covers a set of rules as it relates to contact information in a CRM.  Rules exist for company names, URL’s, names, titles, and much more are covered by a CRM Data Plan.  A CRM Data Plan is critical to success tacking CRM deduplication.

Here is an example of a few rules regarding company names.

Done right, a CRM Data Plan gives you a baseline on your journey toward a clean CRM

Next post: Cleaning your CRM: The human side of the Equation

Posted in CRM Data Plan, CRM Philosophy | Tagged , | 2 Comments

CRM’s are not built to keep your data clean

Posted on 2010/07/22 by Donato

Why can’t my CRM vendor keep my data clean?

Nearly every CRM company and internal corporate IT department has taken a stab at solving the problem of keeping your data clean. You may have heard of it referred to as CRM Deduping, CRM Dedupe, CRM Deduplication as well as Data normalization.

Unfortunately, no one has done it right! Not Oracle, not Salesforce.com, not Microsoft and not SAP. Why?

Think about it: Who decides the standard? Do you want saleforce.com or Microsoft dicatating the format for data storage that you use? Of coarse not, every business model has unique needs. While one business may prefer storing “The Container Company” another may prefer “Container Company, The”. It would be suicide for a vendor to enforce a single set of rules on all their clients. So the problem is not necessarily ignored, but it is accepted as status quo.

Why didn’t my CRM sales rep tell me this?

Since the issue is accepted as status quo for the industry, it is simply not addressed. Sales reps are not in the habit of pointing out a problem that they do not have a solution for. If the issue is addressed, typically it is periodical crm deduplication process.

CRM Dedupe only treats the symptom

If you think of CRM duplicates as the symptom of a disease, how do you cure the disease vs. treating the symptom? The answer is to never allow duplicates into your CRM system in the first place. The first start in that process is developing a CRM Data Plan.

CRM Deduplication services are a profit center

Your dirty data is another company’s profit center. Many of the major CRM providers have professional services that you can pay to periodically clean your CRM. While these services typically do a great job, they do not solve the issues with inefficiency and lost revenue *between* the data cleansing cycles. Basically, every time you fix your CRM, the cure is short-lived.

Why didn’t I see this coming?

Don’t be hard on yourself. Think about it. When you buy a CRM, it is usually empty. If you import dirty data from an old CRM, the new CRM will be dirty. The problem is not the result of you forgetting to turn on a feature in the new CRM. Massive duplicates and miskeyed data does not become a problem until after you start to use the CRM. When a CRM is implemented, it is typically at that time the buyer realizes there is a huge problem with the information.

Synopsis

Without a systematic way to start with and keep information clean, duplicates will be introduced into your CRM. Good for professional service firms; Bad for you and your CRM. The best solution is not treating a symptom, but curing the disease. The first step to curing the disease is creating a CRM Data Plan… which will be the next blog post.

Next post:What is a CRM Data Plan

Posted in CRM Add on Tools, CRM Data Plan, CRM Deduplication, CRM Philosophy, CRM Quality | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Successful CRM Hinges on Data Quality

Posted on 2010/07/18 by admin

Successful CRM Hinges On Data Quality – destinationCRM.com

According to a recent study by Gartner Group, worldwide spending on CRM licenses … The components of a CDQ program include data conversion and cleansing, …
www.destinationcrm.com/…/Successful-CRM-Hinges-On-Data-Quality-41571.aspx

Posted in Analyst Studies, CRM Quality | Leave a comment

An Intro to Cleaning your CRM

Posted on 2010/07/12 by Donato

Realization.  It does not happen in the first 6 months of having a new CRM.  Your CRM sales rep did not tell you about it.  It was not something that was on your mind.  Your CRM is dirty and it is costing you revenue.  CRM Deduplication is starting to become a probem.

If you approach your CRM vendor six months after you started, they will point you into two possible chasms.  (1) Professional services to clean your data (2) Data deduplication tools that will clean your data.  I am here to tell you that both are sink-holes for your cash.  Unless they provide you a solution that will stop the dirty data, you will be coming back to the pay the piper on a regular basis.  Think about it:  Data deduplication vendors want to fix your data, but they also know it will get dirty again.  Reoccurring revenue trumps solving problems?  They want you forever.

Is there a better way?

Next post: CRM’s are not built to keep your data clean

Posted in CRM Deduplication, CRM Philosophy, CRM Quality, CRM Sales Process | Tagged , , | Leave a comment