8 January 2009

Detailed customer intelligence can provide insight for more intelligent decision-making

Duncan Jefferies looks at how employing the latest technologies can improve sales and service capabilities and in turn help manufacturers adapt to changing market requirements and maximise their revenue.

Many manufacturers aim to boost their bottom line by refining production processes, but improving their sales and service capabilities can be just as effective for increasing profitability. Detailed customer intelligence can provide insight for more intelligent decision-making, and allow manufacturers to adapt to changing market requirements with greater ease. In times of economic uncertainty, improving customer service can also help manufacturers underpin revenue by strengthening their existing customer relationships.

“The challenge facing most manufacturers is that their customer-facing processes of sales, marketing and service are fragmented across a multitude of technologies supporting the various channels to their customers,” says Colin Masson, Microsoft worldwide director of CRM, ERP and Supply Chain Solution Management.

There is a wide range of tools available to help manufacturers meet this challenge, including phone systems and software tools such as automated call detection, computer-telephony integration and interactive voice response; as well as line of business applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and supply chain management.

Technologies like PerformancePoint can provide waterfall analysis of accounts, identifying new opportunities to charge for services such as proactive support (renewal and extending warranties for example), dedicated service people, or customised reporting.

Many manufacturers have a heavy investment in legacy technologies and bespoke solutions. “Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers integration into Siebel, Oracle products and SAP,” says Neha Pankhania, senior CRM business development executive at Avanade UK. “They don’t dismiss the fact that people will want a mix of different solutions and best-of-breed software.”

True end-to-end CRM efficiency comes from integration with back-office applications. “Then you’re getting that full end-to-end visibility from lead, right the way through to customer order, delivery, and so forth,” says Pankhania.

But Peter Chase, executive vice president of Scribe, warns there is a limit to integration. “You don’t want to turn your CRM system into an accounting system,” he says. “Your sales people will never use it. Many of our customers identify key pieces of information or key business processes that enable them to be more efficient, and then eliminate the effort in the processes which enable access. It’s about unlocking corporate information so that it can be turned into a strategic sales weapon.”

We are using SharePoint as a portal for partners and accounts, who place orders which are then transferred to SAP

Boris Lisac, Fujitsu Siemens Computers Product lifecycle management (PLM) tools can be integrated with CRM and ERP tools to deliver sales and service. Products are typically serialised, and that data can be accessed for customer returns or support, as well as for tracking warranty claims. The detailed 3D modelling that PLM 2.0 allows for can also be used to create 3D service documents for more efficient servicing and support.

“You can now manipulate 3D geometry very quickly on low value laptops. So if you’re a sales and service person out in the field, you can access a CD with 3D information on all the parts that make up an item,” says Geoff Haines, managing director of Dassault Systèmes reseller, Desktop Engineering.

A central customer service portal can integrate customer information without the need to log into multiple systems. Service agents are often the integration point for all company data such as sales, pricing, orders, invoicing, and credit. ‘Swivel chair integration’, whereby agents must use several different un-integrated systems to resolve a customer issue, can lead to them making several requests for information from the customer, causing irritation and damaging prospects for repeat sales.

“The numbers tell the real story,” says Masson. “They vary depending on the source, but conservatively it is estimated that only 45 per cent of a sales person’s time is spent selling, the rest is on looking for information needed to sell, and on performing the administrative tasks required to provide visibility of their activities and plans across the broader organisation.”

Providing 360-degree support for all customer interactions requires a flexible platform that integrates multiple customer interaction channels, from e-mail, Web sites and real-time telephony systems. It must be able to blend the transactional data in orders and service requests with the unstructured data in product data sheets, campaigns and databases. Microsoft Dynamics CRM holds all sales, marketing and service information, integrating it from other systems and placing it before the service agent as part of a unified interface, giving a complete view of the customer.

“They need to be able to see where they can cross-sell and up-sell,” says Pankhania. “Being able to track where you have left samples, for example, is also very important.”

Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC) has improved its customer-facing processes with a SharePoint installation incorporating a new e-portal, advanced search functionality, content management and team collaboration tools.

“We are using SharePoint as a portal for partners and accounts, who place orders which are then transferred to SAP,” says Boris Lisac, leader of Web applications at FSC. “The sales person can create a product catalogue in Siebel with customer-specific pricing. This product catalogue is published to the account portal, and the customer can then effectively go shopping. The customer can also use the portal to check the status of their current order or to see the last order made.”

Previously FSC had two different document management systems – both of these have now been migrated into the SharePoint solution.

The company uses SharePoint to stay connected with partners and accounts as well as internal personnel. “Our extranet, which was Unix-based, has been completely replaced by our SharePoint solution,” says Lisac. “It is easy to create a SharePoint site and collaborate with a partner or account.”

FSC also uses SharePoint for workflows, where a request needs approval for example. Lisac estimates that SharePoint has saved the company a lot of money. “The alternative would have been to program these processes ourselves,” he adds.

Pricing and revenue management is the process of optimising and communicating pricing and discounting policies across the organisation. Often, sales agents and pricing analysts do not realise the impact their decisions have on profit and revenue as the data is locked away. Inefficient processes like this thwart a pricing analyst’s ability to create the right pricing strategy for a customer, and a sales agent’s ability to seal a contract at the optimum price. Through integrating ERP tools with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server workflow and Microsoft BizTalk Server, information can be moved across systems, fixing any inefficiencies in the pricing strategy.

“You can build a quote from real-time ERP pricing data,” says Chase. “As soon as you’ve converted that into an order in your CRM application, a message is sent to the ERP application, and the order is validated and processed. Real-time information about the status of that order then gets fed back to the CRM application.”

The failure of earlier attempts to provide a single integrated platform for sales, marketing and service under the banner of CRM has been widely reported by industry analysts. AMR Research has been particularly vocal about the high failure rates and low return on investment of CRM projects. In 2007 it cited user adoption as one of the major challenges, with 33 per cent to 47 per cent of customer management applications facing serious adoption issues.

Since the launch of Dynamics CRM 4.0 in December 2007, Microsoft has received broad recognition from customers and analysts that the solution’s usability is overcoming this issue. With a native Outlook client and seamless Office integration, Dynamics CRM leverages familiar Microsoft technologies and platforms across the desktop, mobile and Web.

“The good thing about the Microsoft CRM offering is that it looks and feels very similar to other Microsoft products,” says Pankhania. “People like using it because they can recognise and navigate through the application with zero training, and with core training they’re up and running in a matter of hours, rather than days or weeks.”

By moving customer traffic to self-service channels, manufacturers can reduce training costs and the burden on the call centre, transforming it from a cost centre to a profit centre, and allowing the customer more choice in how they choose to interact with the company. Commerce Server, TellMe and Automated Service Agents can all enable manufacturers to achieve this aim.

Video conferencing and new types of collaboration tools can also help reduce customer service costs. Live Meeting and Office Communications Server, for example, can reduce the need for travel while still allowing sales and marketing personnel to stay in touch with customer service representatives. Customer problems can be resolved in a timely manner by detecting the availability of key staff and initiating seamless interaction via mobile phone, e-mail, or instant messaging, even if they are out in the field.

By empowering their sales and service personnel with the latest sales and service tools, manufacturers can undoubtedly improve their relationships with their customers, as well as their revenue and profit margins. After all it is people, not businesses, who are ultimately responsible for customer satisfaction.

This article first appeared in issue 15 of Prime magazine.

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