What to look for in a CRM solution? The importance of efficient customer relationship management practices cannot be overstressed. But, what exactly are the capabilities that make a CRM solution effective? Here is a checklist. Arun Maheshwari CRM involves improved and increased communication between a company and its customers, as well as within the company itself. It therefore calls for not only sharing enterprise information between functions such as sales and marketing, accounting, customer service/support, and manufacturing or fulfillment more effectively, but also enhancement of every point of contact with the customer. Functional automation plays a significant role in such CRM efforts. Effective CRM, however, is not just automating some obvious customer facing function. A true customer-centric relationship can only be accomplished by considering the unique perspectives of the customer from every enterprise function and integrating the perspective into a holistic relationship management process. An ideal CRM solution should therefore be capable of a holistic enabling of these relationship management processes across the extended enterprises. In the past, automation was broken down into two components: Sales Force Automation (SFA) and the automation of customer support services such as call centers, help desks and field support. Today, it includes cross-functional and cross-enterprise processes like e-commerce and marketing. CRM solutions are also expected to create a rich customer knowledge base and store current and historical customer/prospect information such as purchasing history, requirements and satisfaction. They facilitate communication of vital customer or prospect information from the field to corporate headquarters, where it can be shared with other relationship managers, sales management, marketing, production, fulfillment, accounting, customer service and support. Because CRM systems utilize a single customer record, there is no duplication of data or data entry effort. This eliminates the confusion that results from different departments viewing separate customer records that do not contain the entire customer profile. A check-list of the core architectural capabilities and functionality to look for while selecting the right CRM product/suite, is given below: Architectural capabilities Seamless integration Ensure the product selected integrates with contact center information sources, the Internet strategy, a customer-centric data warehouse, knowledge management software, and other relevant business and IT systems. It is especially important to integrate the contact center systems with backend databases so that an agent can quickly pull up the appropriate information about a caller on his or her monitor. If the call center is the initial touch-point for customers, make certain that the CRM solution provides easy capturing and presentation of the needed information to satisfy the customers’ expectation of the first interaction. Enterprise application integration and interoperability with disparate systems A CRM enabled enterprise is one, which has it internal processes tied to each other based on the needs and priorities of core customer relationship objectives. It therefore warrants the product/suite to embrace an open architecture which enables interoperability with legacy systems, ERP/supply-chain, the extranet, public/third party applications. Real-time data replication and synchronization Synchronization with multiple mobile/field devices, enterprise synchronization with multiple databases/application servers, distributed computing support and Web enablement are some of the must-have features to look for in a robust CRM application. Comprehensive business modeling support A CRM application should provide easy-to-use and flexible templates and tools (preferably based on global best practices) to enable customization/parameterization by functional users to support specific business practices in the organization. Ideally, the templates should cater to the most prevalent business practices specific to industry, size, structure and geography. Scalability The architecture of the product should provide for seamless growth across diverse technologies, networks and databases. User interface The application should cut down the time-to-deploy by having consistent and user-friendly interfaces with intuitive help and other functional support. Functionality Sales functionality Contact management profiles and history, account management including activities, order entry and proposal generation. Sales management functionality Pipeline analyses (forecasting, sales cycle analysis, territory alignment and assignment), roll-up and drill-down reporting. Telemarketing/telesales functionality Call list assembly, auto dialing, scripting and order taking. Time management functionality Single user and group calendar/scheduling, sequence of events and e-mail. Customer service and support functionality Incident assignment/escalation/tracking/reporting, issue resolution, order management/promising and warranty/contract management. Marketing functionality Campaign management, opportunity management, Web-based encyclopedia, relationship value configurator, market segmentation and lead generations/enhancement/tracking. Executive information functionality Multi-dimensional, extensive and easy-to-use reporting and query. E-commerce functionality Procurement management through EDI/Web including business-to-business as well as businessttoconsumer applications. Field service support functionality Work orders dispatching, real time information transfer to field personnel via mobile technologies.