PEERTOPEER
CRM
Our CRM deployment enabled
us to unify all of our data,
and prevents information
from falling through the cracks.
It’s a Game-Changer
By Daniel Duffy • Photo by Michael Justice
W
E DECIDED TO INVEST IN A CUSTOMER RELATION-
SHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM) system here at Valley
Network Solutions because we were frustrated with not
having a centralized database. We had data in Exchange,
in our file system, in a quotes database, and in other resources, but everything was disparate and inconsistent. There was no cohesion.
We put manual processes in place for everyone to follow, but of course,
employees constantly needed to be trained and retrained in these
processes. And we still had inconsistent formatting of data—for example,
one person might enter a phone number without the area code, and another would include it. We also had an inefficient contract renewal process:
Sometimes we would try to sell a product from a vendor that we were not
selling on a regular basis, and we would find out our authorization had expired. Then we had to do the fire drill to get reauthorized, and that’s never
a good thing.
We needed an all-encompassing system or database, but one that we
could afford. Off-the-shelf solutions didn’t offer all the flexibility we required
to tailor the products for our business. And, we’re not software developers,
so we couldn’t roll one out ourselves, nor could we afford to hire someone
for the job. We’d previously spent nearly $10,000 on a product built for our
industry, but the experience wasn’t good. It probably did six out of the 10
things we needed, but not the way we needed it done.
FINALLY, SUCCESS
By 2005, I saw that Microsoft CRM 3.0 had matured from the company’s
initial offering, so I did some test deployments internally. I had someone on
staff who had pretty good JavaScript skills, which I wasn’t strong in, and we
started working on it together; we went live in early 2006.
That was a game-changer for us. It was like Microsoft giving us a box of
Legos. We couldn’t undo the bricks, but we could put them together however we liked. It gave us enough flexibility to put the pieces we needed into
a single system—and without having to be software developers. There is
scripting involved, but it’s different from what it takes to put together a front-end interface to the database from the ground up.
We were finally able to unify processes that the sales team worked on
with those the technical team was working on. Everyone in the company
could see what everyone else was doing. Until that point, a lot of information existed either in people’s minds or in data silos.
CHALLENGES REMAINED
One of the first things you have to do when you deploy CRM, however, is to
make it a top-down initiative. It’s got to become part of the culture. If your
users don’t adopt it and use it consistently, it will never work, no matter how
good the software is. For about six months it was an uphill battle to change
behaviors, to get people to embrace the system and understand the big picture and how it would benefit them. Today it’s part of our DNA.
The advantages are that it’s customized for our business. We’ve automated
key processes through workflow notifications and automation—issues like the
contracts expiring out from under us don’t happen anymore because the system reminds us months in advance. We can be more proactive with our vendors—in fact, we usually tell them we need to renew a contact. The same
holds true for our customers. We’re able to proactively engage them about a
maintenance renewal coming due or a warranty that is going to expire.
We now have normalization and consistency in our data with phone numbers and addresses. We have an interface through which everyone can collaborate—one of my staff called it “the Borg,” because we have everything
we need to know about a customer in one place. We still have bits of data in
Exchange and the file system, but now we have cross-references and links
to the data in the CRM system that make it easier and quicker to find. We
also have a centralized marketing database, knowledge base, competitor profile database, and centralized repository for all of the technical details on the
products and systems that our customers own. This enables us to provide
our customers with a degree of redundancy—in the event that they misplace
license or serial data, for example, we can provide that to them.
Additionally, the CRM system integrates with our VoIP system, includes
online mapping, and integrates with our managed services platform, our
MFPs, the file system, and Exchange. It also gives us a single heads-up display for all of our scheduling and availability.
Overall, CRM absolutely made a difference. Before, when we didn’t have time
and date stamping, there was a lot more finger-pointing. Now we know who did
what and when, and who didn’t. There’s a higher level of accountability and responsibility from people. From a management perspective, that’s huge.
