Putting CRM in context

More sophisticated collaboration tools offer virtual team collaboration, content management systems, and real-time communications. However, despite the strong embrace of collaboration technology, we continue to wrestle with fundamental questions like, “how do we share information?” and, “what is the best way to find and communicate with my team members?”

Having a truly collaborative CRM system requires three things:

1. A central location for all company information, with the ability to share that information with customers, partners and colleagues.

2. Multiple ways to communicate the information, without needing to click to a different screen or start up a new application.

3. Secure accessibility from anywhere; including our desktops, mobile phones and, of course, the World Wide Web.

A CRM system that fulfills these requirements will deliver significant business benefits. It will help sales teams attain higher sales percentages by giving them access to best practices, lessons learned and the tools to collaborate as effectively on the road or in the office.

It will help marketers target prospects more effectively and deliver higher quality leads to sales. It will improve customer service by providing contact center agents with detailed customer knowledge and real-time conferencing tools for instant troubleshooting support. And it will raise customer satisfaction as customer requests are answered faster, more accurately and smarter.

Can a CRM system achieve all these things today? With the right collaboration tools at the right integration points, the answer is a resounding YES.

Collaborate in context

The problem today is that most collaboration tools are standalone applications that are not in the “context” of customer-centric processes. Users wishing to collaborate on a project or urgent customer issue are often forced to “alt-tab” between applications and cut-and-paste data into an e-mail or document.

Consequently, the intended co-collaborators only receive snapshots of data from a particular point in time, without a way to access or augment the most up to date information. These snapshots could even be inadvertently copied, forwarded or otherwise intercepted through less secure transmission channels.

Contextual collaboration provides CRM teams with the ability to seamlessly track and share information in the context of a particular business process or application, whether it be sales, marketing or service. This minimizes the number of clicks and entry points, and enhances the ability to locate key people and information in real-time.

A sales scenario: the RFP response

Let’s take a closer look at a common sales scenario: An account manager learns from his customer that they will be soliciting responses to a Request For Proposal (RFP) in a few days. A couple days later, the RFP is sent to the account manager and appears in his e-mail inbox.

In most cases, managing a RFP response today is an inefficient process due to the use of disparate tools. Information is scattered across disconnected repositories, and the burden is on the end users to personally follow threads and manage the emails and attachments related to the RFP.

Using a structured collaborative environment, a team leader can provide group management of all the content and communication occurring around the process to ensure that all relevant information is taken into account when responding to the RFP.

In the world of context and structured collaboration, the account manager creates a structured environment for his team to share content and communicate effectively around the RFP response.

We’ll call this environment a team collaboration space, a virtual workspace that is fully integrated with the CRM system, its application data, and common collaboration tools such as a shared library, meeting scheduler, web conferencing, and discussion forums.

Within the team’s shared library, the account manager uploads the new RFP document and incorporates helpful documents including “best practices” from previous sales deals, a template for the RFP response, and a detailed customer profile.

Some of these documents may already be available via a reusable ”Sales RFP” template shared throughout the sales force. Others may be available directly from the CRM application, with links from the library to real-time data.

Throughout the RFP response process, members use the team collaboration space to discuss key issues, manage tasks, and schedule meetings around the RFP. A single copy of the RFP response document is shared via the library and managed via version-control and approval workflows.

As the final deadline approaches, the account manager makes sure all tasks are marked complete, sends the document out for a final review, and forwards the completed RFP response to the customer.

As the RFP lifecycle draws to an end, the team collaboration space continues to offer value to CRM teams by providing a history of thoughts, discussions, and documents integral to the creation of the RFP response.

By archiving a snapshot of the CRM data and the collaborative content around that data, teams can later return to the team collaboration space to retrace their steps, gather best practices for other teams, or work on improving the RFP collaboration process.

Other teams can also benefit from the archived team collaboration space. Marketing, for example, can research which sales pitches were beneficial and incorporate them into future campaigns. With all teams relying on the same centralized data to make their customer decisions, we can achieve a greater understanding of the customer and increase overall customer satisfaction.

Putting it all together

The RFP response scenario illustrates how a simple sales activity attains greater value by incorporating a structured, contextual environment around it.

The same formula - central information management, secure access control, and the means to collaborate anywhere, anytime - can be used with any CRM business process to build team effectiveness and customer satisfaction.