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Nigel Park, the Managing Director and founder of TPS, came from a Banking and Finance background having worked for organisations such as Societe Generale in France and JP Morgan in the USA, before joining McDonnell Douglas as a consultant. He has been involved with the Commence applications since 1988, firstly as a users and then as a consultant.Mr Park is also one of the only nationally accredited CRM and BPM accredited consultants for the UK government’s Business Link organisation. This organisation was established to help companies grow and improve through the use of government grants and part funded projects.
www.tpsconsulting.co.uk
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CRM in the UK is still widely misunderstood, and the reason for this is mainly due to software sales people and inaccurate marketing. In the larger corporate market there are true CRM applications that are sold and implemented. Failures, and there are quite a few, are largely due to bad project management or a lack of buy in understanding from the client as to the true effects of what they have purchased. Unfortunately, in the SME market there are hundreds of applications that purport to be CRM applications. However many are just contact managers, or sales managers. These have been successfully sold in the thousands only for the client to find out weeks or months later that only part of there requirement is being fulfilled. What has then happened is that SME’s are then reluctant to throw out their bad application and invest in a true CRM solution, in case they are mis-sold again. An understandable reaction. Only in the past couple of years has this trend started to change. Products such as ACT have finally admitted that their base product, previously sold as CRM is NOT a CRM application and are now promoting ACT Professional, which still has great limitations. In addition, companies are starting to wake up to CRM due to Microsoft CRM. Again a product that does not truly deliver all the promises ( yet ), but at least due to their marketing efforts, consumers are more willing to listen to what true CRM is all about. The following article was written by Nigel Park and published by the Institute of Directors in the UK. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) What is it ? Do we need it ? Part 1 By Nigel A. Park Customer Relationship Management or CRM as it is known is one of the latest buzz words in business and technology circles, but many people do not fully understand what it is, and those that believe they do have many different opinions. To help explain, one needs to understand what any business does. All businesses, whether service, distribution, manufacturing or retail, have a common goal; to make money from customers. A customer may be a single large corporation or it may be the general public. To assist in this common goal all businesses need to know; Who their customers are? What are their particular requirements? What aspects of your business make these customers come back or indeed never come back? In the case of retailers dealing with the general public, this information can be difficult to obtain, but there are ways, and indeed for those whose customers are other businesses, it is essential to have this information. This, in its basic form, is Customer Relationship Management. However in the current meaning of CRM, the net needs to be spread further. Not only does CRM cover the knowledge of existing customers but also potential customers and old customers plus how all the departments within the company interact with these customers. The main functions within a company, whether separate departments, individuals or managed by a single person are;
Therefore for a true CRM function to work, information from all these areas needs to be gathered, maintained and shared across the company. This information can take many forms. It may be in correspondence, telephone calls, visit reports, e:mails, even industry information from outside sources. For example: The Sales department may be about to visit an existing customer to sell a new range of products. However the Accounts department are aware that the customer has not paid their last bill and the Support department still have a number of outstanding issues for this customer, which is why they haven’t paid their last bill. In addition, one of the Directors recently read an article in a newspaper about the potential take over of the customer.
Unless the Sales department have all this information, their chances of a successful sale are greatly reduced.
The CRM solution soon becomes a knowledge base. It is only through the gathering and sharing of this information that a company can make the right decisions about maintaining and furthering their client base. CRM is therefore a key requirement in any organisation. For larger firms, the implementation of a complete CRM solution is one of when, rather than if, as a good solution should be capable of recouping its costs within a six to twelve month period. For smaller firms the cost of implementation is the largest obstacle. There are a number of cost effective solutions that can be expanded upon as and when the need arises. For both company types however, the wrong decision, no matter how well intentioned can only cost money rather than save it. In a recent article published by Andersen Consulting they are quoted as “Approached indiscriminately, however, CRM could echo the advertising axiom: that 50% is wasted but no-one knows which 50%.” CRM Solutions As mentioned earlier in this document we are accredited develops and consultants of several CRM applications and have worked with many others. From our experience, the customer should only buy a CRM solution that meets their company needs, no matter how fantastic the application appears or how glossy the brochures are. For people with a very limited budget, e.g. sub £ 200 per user, then the only application to be considered is one of the ACT derivatives or possibly basic Goldmine. The functionality is limited but so is the budget, so they should not expect true CRM form a product that costs less than MS Word ! For those that require a true CRM application that will combine information from different departments and most importantly can be moulded to meet their exact requirements, the budget must extended to a minimum of £ 500 a seat. In this arena there are again many applications but the one we prefer is Commence RM. Commence is completely modifiable, has proven stability not just for network users but also remote users that need to synchronise their data via the internet or email. One major advantage with Commence that is often overlooked in the purchase process is the fact that Commence does not need special hardware resources like large servers and qualified IT staff to manage everything. This factor can often double the total purchase cost but is rarely considered at the beginning. For those with unlimited budgets then there are applications such as Seibel, Pivotal and Onyx. For further information visit our web site at: http://www.tpsconsulting.co.uk.
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