Audaxium Blog

With the recent (re) launch of SAP’s Business ByDesign in direct competition with NetSuite, I thought that it would be useful to present some pertinent questions that should be asked if you’re investigating a new CRM/ERP application, hosted or not.

In recent years, applications have come a long way but it’s not fair to assume that some of the big names, like SAP, always have the perfect solution for your business.  And by solution I mean both the application, and the ecosystem that surrounds the app.

So lets get to some of the questions I feel are important.

What’s been the track record over the past 5 years?

Software, and especially software as a service has developed tremendously over the past few years and it’s important to understand the trajectory of the company and the application.  A series of false starts is sure to be a warning sign.  Progress need not be tremendously rapid, but always forward, and always with the needs of customers at heart.

Perhaps things were a little rough?  What steps have been taken to improve things for the now many customers the vendor has up and running.

What does an implementation look like?  How flexible is it?

Every company is different and yet, the same in many respects.   Do you have choice in how to deploy the system and who is involved in the implementation?  Can the implementation be modified to fit your needs, timing, and budget?  Are there resources readily available who can make sophisticated changes during the initial implementation, while at the same time ensuring that your company is self sufficient at running the app?

How deep is the functionality?

It’s easy these days to develop software that fulfills the check boxes required by the marketing team.  The trouble with any application is the level of sophistication the functional areas have, and how easy it is to actually use them day to day.  Perhaps the system can send email, but can it do so automatically and intelligently?  Perhaps it can track opportunities, but can it track projects, quotes, sales and tasks related to those opportunities?

If the answer to “What’s next on the product road map” contains many very simple requirements, perhaps it’s time to be cautious.

How Scalable is it?

As a customer, getting caught in a bait and switch has got to be one of the worst experiences.  It pays to avoid starting out with apps that are designed to upgrade you, at significant cost soon after you sign up.

Sometimes limits on the use or scalability of an application make sense.  If your company has 10 employees, a cap of 1000 would seem reasonable.  But a cap of 10 or 20 likely indicates that it’s an arbitrary number, defined in the marketing department and not actually a software limitation. And if the new app you’ll need to move to requires a new implementation?  You know you’re in for it.

What is the Vendor’s commitment to Accessibility?

Any SaaS vendor worth their salt can give you reasonably detailed uptime metrics on their systems.  Compare these to your own uptime metrics that, hopefully, you’re keeping in your own IT departments.  While all systems go down from time to time, including big name apps like Gmail and WordPress, having a track record, and a stated commitment to protecting your data is important.

In Closing

Hopefully these questions give you a start on asking some very reasonable questions of a potential vendor.  They’re not questions with a pre-defined acceptable answer, such as, Are you a public company? or with no good answer at all, such as What if you go out of business?

With luck these questions will get you into a dialog with your potential vendor and you can both work together to determine if their application meets your needs.

If you’d like to have that conversation with us, particularly as it pertains to NetSuite, please contact us.

SAP ERP customer launches NetSuite SaaS CRM despite holding SAP CRM licenses

When I saw the the title of this article come across my screen I was intrigued and thought I’d share it here.  It is an excellent example of the value proposition of NetSuite, even if it’s not being deployed as an end to end implementation.

As you will see, when you read the article, NetSuite offered Fusion UV Systems the configurability they wanted at a fraction of the price required to deploy a similar solution from SAP.  In this case the cost was limited to just the costs of deployment, and not the licenses.

The implication of this is that it shows just how affordable NetSuite is to companies who want a very capable system, be it ERP or CRM, but don’t want to bankrupt themselves to do it.

For me the highlight quote from the article is:

For one, NetSuite is very user-friendly, Mitchell said, and it was very easy for sales representatives to get up to speed on the software.

It’s also easily customizable. It’s easy to create a new field and even change a business process without hiring a consultant to do the programming, she said. It takes a little less than an hour to do so.

“For me, the big point is I’m able to do my marketing campaigns. I’m able to make a lot of changes and reconfigure,” she said. “It’s very flexible that way.”

I like the article because it is balanced.  It does talk about some prior shortcomings with NetSuite.  Issues that I feel are primarily resolved.

There are many other stories out there like this, but this one is a great example of why NetSuite can make a lot of sense.

Everyone has experienced it.  You have a wonderful experience with an account manager while you’re investigating a solution.  And then, magically, once your purchase order hits their email inbox… silence.  It’s deafening.

It seems to me that many companies look at their sales team, and at the systems they provide that team, in isolation of what is best for the customer.  And this results in the grand old strategy of “islands of automation”, and a big disconnect between sales and the rest of the company, and a big disconnect between sales and the customer.

Many CRM Vendors seem to build their systems like this as well.  Just look at the standard steps in the “sales process.”  Most have something like this:

• Lead – Unqualified
• Lead – Qualified
• Prospect – Investigating
• Prospect – Needs Discovered
• Prospect – Demo
• Prospect – Closing
• Customer – Won

Now I don’t have any real difficulty with these stages of bringing a company into your customer list, but, it doesn’t reflect the fact that the work doesn’t stop when the customer makes their first purchase.

This won’t come as a surprise but the C in CRM stands for customer, and when you implement CRM you really should think about how you manage your customer base first, and then think about how you turn a company who could buy from you (Lead) into a company who has bought from you. (Customer)

So here’s some ways to ensure that doesn’t happen.

First. Make sure everyone in your company has access to all customer related information. There shouldn’t be a case where someone says “I don’t have that information here, that’s another department.”  At least for the vast majority of information.  There will always be secure or sensitive information that only certain people can see.  But don’t force your employees to waste a lot of time walking issues around your office.

Second. Make sure that your company tracks opportunities and not just Lead/Prospect/Customer statuses.  Alternatively you could track quote or estimate statuses instead of opportunities but the effect is the same.  If you’re a services firm you could track jobs or projects as separate from the customer.

Third. Don’t rely on systems integration to connect different parts of your business.  It’s a constant battle to keep that stuff buckled together.

Many vendors will talk about the fact that they are open, and can hook to other systems, or they have a million partners you can pick from.  Sometimes it works. In the last 4 days I’ve talked with 4 people who looked at a one particular CRM system and said something like “I’ve looked at that system but the integrations between the third party apps and it don’t seem very solid.” Again, I’m sure that there are many good integrated apps with that CRM tool but it will require patience to keep everything connected.

The conclusion of all this is that a CRM system must, naturally, be a system that integrates many parts of your business, from Sales, to Marketing, to Finance to Tech Support.  Large companies have had this available to them for year, at a high price.  But now almost every company can afford it.

Now, before you go off making an acronym and plastering it all over the place, consider this.  Do customers want to have their “lifecycle” “planned”?

I say no.  After all, you have many types of customers, and while some may want a lot of attention and service.  Many may just wish to purchase, or browse, and be left alone.

The important thing of this exercise is to consider just what different types of customers want, and expect, from your company.

I feel that this type of analysis should drive your selection of a CRM or business system. Not doing the work to figure out what customers actually want will drive you in the wrong direction in marketing, sales, and service delivery.  Essentially you need to map out just what is expected in the relationship between you and your customer, and then figure out how to manage that relationship.

Lets assume for a moment that we’ve taken care of customer segmentation.  We are focused on a particular group with common interests and desires. Now consider the following categories and the questions therein.

Information Gathering

What types of things are people looking for?  Map how this changes over time, before they are a customer, after, and way after etc.

Wait, Stop. It’s not what you want them to know.  Erase the whiteboard and write on it what they actually want.  If you don’t know.  Go figure it out.

Do they want features, use cases, testimonials? What about pricing?  Options available? Comparisons with competitive products. If it’s comparisons you’d better know where those conversations are happening online.

Maybe they are looking for downloads? Updates?  Oh, and if you just decided to put up a FAQ.  Make it good.  99% of the FAQ’s out there are really quite useless.

Knowing what information your consumer needs over time, combined with how they consume that information should direct a lot of your CRM/Businses system strategy.  You simply need to be organized enough to put the right information in their hands at the right time.

Purchase Options

Your CRM strategy should be determined, in part, by what your customer could possibly buy from you.  Depending on complexity, product and pricing management could be key. If you sell 400 different items that are often bundled together in different ways, are fairly pricey, or can be confusing then you may want to ensure that you have a great quoting system in place as opposed to a generic webstore.

A nice question to ask yourself is; “How hard is it to buy from us?”  Pro Tip: It shouldn’t be hard.

Service Options

What kind of service do people expect before and after the sale?  Have you asked them?

What kind of service are people willing to pay for?

Do you need some ability to manage the delivery of those services?

Social Interaction

If you customer is my wife then she doesn’t want to talk to you.  Just send the product.  But if your customer is me then you’ll want to call me up and chat pre and post sale.  Regularly.  But you don’t want to sell to me because I’m cheap.

Do your customers expect meetings and visits?  Calls?  Regular email?

Do they want a dedicated sales rep?  

Do they expect you to have an online presence beyond your website?  Live chat?  Service via Twitter?

The level of engagement your customers want should drive you to a CRM tool that can manage and automate, if required, the appropriate level of interaction.

Problem Resolution

In my personal opinion, handling customer issues is where you build customer advocacy.  If your CRM system handles support in isolation from the rest of the customer information you’ll see a disconnect between sales and tech support.

But, how much support does your customer need?

Is it involved and detailed? Or simple questions?

Does your customer expect you to track issues?

Do they expect to be able to manage their cases and submit new ones online, via email, phone, in store?

Education

Here’s where we ask, what do you want customers to learn?

Just what is that information?

Where is the value in that information for the consumer?

How do they want to consume that information?  Have you asked? Do you have metrics?

Do your systems allow you to segment your customer base to provide the right information at the right time to the right person?

Just how often do customers want to be bombarded?

Should you be pursuing an opt in strategy? (There is only one answer to this question)

Subsequent Offerings

Does previous purchasing history predict future purchases?  Really?

How often to customers actually repeat purchase?  Do you really know?

Should your CRM system be able to give you this information?

Do you actively market to existing and prospective customers differently?

Customer Growth

Does your customer grow with you? 

How long, normally, does this relationship last? 

How far back in the relationship do you need to look to have a meaningful conversation should one be required?

Customer Complexity

Just how do you go about defining the customer?  Is it a company?  A person? Who do you actually sell to?

Your CRM system selection should ensure that you can, with reasonable accuracy, capture the reality of your customer.  Sometimes you don’t need much, and just need a name, email, and credit card, but you might need to track multiple divisions, different currencies, many contacts, and other relationships.

In Conclusion

As you answer these questions and think about your business, you should ask yourself, would it be useful to have a system that can track all this in one place?  The answer may in fact be no.  Seriously.  But in some cases it will be yes, in which case, you’re at the right blog.