An alumnus of IIM, Lucknow, Anand’s domain expertise lies in Banking - Retail Assets (loans, cards), Liabilities, Technology-Driven Banking (Net Banking, Mobile Banking, IMPS) Insurance - Life ( New Product Development, Distribution) and many other domains.

Customer Relationship Management or CRM is one of the three letter acronyms(TLAs) that generate much interest and much heartburn in Marketing, Technology and Service teams, not sparing even the corner office. Especially with the much touted statistic that 90% of all CRM applications fail!

Let us step back and understand what a CRM really is NOT.

It is NOT a lead management tool and surely it is NOT a sales manager review tool.

Remember when on a shop floor a well-meaning manager walked around with a stop watch to do a time and motion study? Well, the equally well-meaning workers slowed the pace of work. They did not see any value in being tracked as such or tasks being optimized to suit the needs of the management over their own needs.

And that is the sentiment on which CRM applications fail.

Ask yourself or the managers who have to work with the CRM, “What is the CRM for?” and if the answer is, “It is to track performance?” You know your implementation is doomed to fail.

Staying with failure, let us list why CRM applications fail. In no particular order:

• Bewildering list of features – there are just too many things a CRM is touted to deliver. From assigning leads, driving campaigns, to analytics. The list can be endless. Enough for a paralysis to set in. And with each potential implementation partner positioning it as a magic bullet or worse a Santa Claus, figuring what is needed and how to use is a challenge.

• Use of buzz words like AI – AI works where there is clarity on what is needed basis some underlying data that is authentic.

• A platform to penalize – Since the focus is to simply track performance, it joins the ranks of other platforms which churn out MIS on how things are moving. And leadership teams have managers to pull out even more data cuts which mean nothing.

• Does not account for the motivations of the front line sales

teams – Sales teams are simple people. They do not have the luxury of being ambiguous. Life is a clear set of numbers which needs to be delivered - as simply as possible. And anything which needs him or her to do “extra work” (filling up forms or updating records etc.) is unwelcome. If pushed too hard, will be addressed by random data points designed to look good in MIS reports. And this starts the downward spiral to failure and hence questions on ROI.

Hence, there is a challenge of how to measure ROI – since the CRM is touted as a platform to increase conversions, interest flags when the conversions do not grow dramatically.

Business leaders forget that efficiency in movement of data is one of the many factors which drive conversion. Other key factors being:
• Story telling – creating a compelling case for consumers to buy
• Product availability – in a service set up that means the ability of the sales team to help the prospect buy
• Product configuration – features pricing etc as per consumer choice and affordability

These aspects of marketing must work well to push the sale. So this begs the question, what IS a CRM and hence what can make it work? Basis my experience and what I have seen succeed, a CRM is a relationship management tool.

"There is a challenge of how to measure ROI - since the CRM is touted as a platform to increase conversions, interest flags when the conversions do not grow dramatically"

• It is a conduit designed to 'nudge' a consumer to behave in a mutually beneficial way
• It carries his transactional data and allows it to be enriched from different sources–primary information captured in frontend interactions (e.g.voice converted to text etc.), social media behavior, service interaction.
• It is designed to allocate a consumer to the manager who is most suitably equipped to deliver these mutually beneficial goals. It is a conduit to assign or reassign consumers’basis segmentation logic.

Basically it is a conduit
The compute, analytics engine can be else where. This gives the user the ability to segment and nudge behavior accordingly.

This is the philosophyaround which www.Effysales.com is helping Fino Payments Bank develop its own CRM.

With this context, let’s look at who all are needed to have a successful CRM implementation:

• Marketing and Analytics:Tosegment consumers whose behavior needs nudging, to identify the campaigns which will work and course correct as needed. Very critical to note that this can be managed by intelligent use of AI.

• All consumer facing assets and teams: Websites and service teams etc., they aggregate data
• CEO – Or the leadership team: CRM is a lot about culture that is driven or demonstrated from the top. It needs discipline to succeed. You need to work the conduit and connect with consumers assigned, plough back information, be willing to accept that something can go wrong.
• Technology team: From being the gatekeeper to CRM implementation, the team has to work with business as enablers. Identify ways in which the CRM can absorb maximum data with the least amount of effort of input.

In short, a CRM must align to how the company wants to monetize data by nudging the consumer to behave in a mutually beneficial manner.

To conclude, the effectiveness of CRM is aptly summed up by a Bill Gates statement, “the absolute fundamental aim is to make money out of satisfying customers.How you gather, manage and use information will determine whether you win or lose.”