Corporate Training Magazine

Customized Solutions
Vol 2 Issue 4- Jul/Aug 2006

When it comes to CRM, the solution should fit the company--not the other way around.

"Traditionally one of the largest hurdles in implementing any CRM is adoption. If the system isn't easy to use and doesn't flow the way users expects it to, they'll avoid using the system, causing the project to have limited success," explained Lexicore president Lowen Pawliw.

Marketing and sales tasks can be very specific to corporations and industries. Sometimes a generic solution falls short of meeting these expectations. "Off-the-shelf CRM solutions are designed to be as generic as possible to meet a broad range of company's basic needs. The problem with many of these off-the-shelf solutions is that they do not enable you to leverage your company's competitive advantages and trade specialties," he furthered.

An ideal solution is one that is easily customizable to match your business processes so that it works the way you do. By customizing the CRM solution to incorporate your organization's competitive advantages, it can help you stand out from the crowd and promote a professional look and feel to your company. It can also increase adoption and prevent you from having to change the way your company works to implement a CRM.

Pawliw reported, "More companies are now looking towards a fully customizable solution to take their customer service to a new level. When a client calls in, their full correspondence history, order history, and other custom information specific to your industry is displayed on screen--even if that customer service representative has never spoken with that client before.

"Unlimited customizable reports further enable your sales team to analyze any aspect of your marketing. From demographics to sales and timelines, the ability to do this quickly and have it integrate with existing reporting applications is paramount," he added.

Many CRM packages also offer the ability to extensively configure and customize the application in a fully upgradable and supportable way. This enables the rapid development of vertical applications, solution extensions and packaged integrations to third-party applications and databases. Other customizations include linking the CRM directly into your website, ERP and accounting systems.

Take for example a real estate developer using a customizable CRM: Interested parties can sign up for information using a form on the real estate developer's website. Once they submit their contact information, a product brochure is automatically emailed back to them and they are entered into the CRM. A sales person is assigned to follow up with the client and a reminder pops up in their Outlook® calendar reminding them to do so.

Leads can then be sorted and organized by custom fields created by the real estate developer, such as number of bedrooms requested and credit rating. The developer can then use these custom fields to create a marketing campaign targeted specifically to each target customer segment.

Once a client purchases a property, they are then directed to an online design center website where they can select color schemes and upgrade options for their property. These selections are stored in the CRM and propagated to the accounting system.

If the client calls the developer for a maintenance request, that client's full profile -- including the property, upgrade selections and contact information -- is automatically pulled up, reinforcing the customer's overall impression of the company's capabilities and professionalism.