Time to upgrade your old version of Siebel?

Current Siebel users, especially if they’re on version 7.5 or 7.8, often ask us if they should upgrade to the latest version of Siebel.

To be sure, Siebel 8.1 (technically, now 8.1.2) offers numerous enhancements, including an easier-to-use task interface, templates, revamped search and at long last, real two-way synchronization between Siebel and Outlook. Organizations that need this functionality, or which are supporting quite complex business processes, may have a strong case for upgrading.

To learn more, I asked Stefan van den Broek, who’s part of Innoveer’s Siebel practice, to detail the advantages of upgrading. Here’s his list of the top 8 reasons to upgrade to Siebel 8.1:

1. Task Based UI: To help users accomplish tasks, previous versions of Siebel offered SmartScripts and iHelp, but neither were particularly intuitive or helpful. Task Based UI (user interface), however, provides a hands-on experience that guides users through each required screen. Furthermore, these screens are relatively easy to build, can offer pre-populated fields, and branch in different directions, depending on answers. As a result, this feature is particularly well-suited for complex or infrequently used sales or customer service business processes, to reduce training requirements and learning curves.
2. Templates: Pre-populate almost any entity — including accounts and activities — in Siebel and save it as a template, so users can easily launch them later. With customer service, for example, create service request entities for specific situations, to be used by a particular user or shared between all users, to save time and reduce error rates.
3. Lead entity (aka lead management): Previously, opportunities in Siebel were part of the main sales cycle — sales moved an opportunity from quote to order — and campaigns were only part of the marketing function. What was missing was a bridge between marketing and sales. The new lead entity fills that gap. Now, upload leads from external sources and let users create leads. Siebel also facilitates true lead management and qualification, meaning that a sales user can accept a lead, or reject it, which kicks it back to a lead pool managed by marketing. All in all, this is extremely useful.
4. CRM Desktop: Siebel gains a true interface to Microsoft Outlook, replacing previous, limited attempts to integrate Siebel directly with the Outlook client, or the overly complex and time-consuming Siebel Server Sync Exchange (SSSE). CRM Desktop provides true, two-way synchronization of entities that exist both in Outlook and Siebel — contacts, to-dos, and calendar items. But you can also view and create any Siebel entities in Outlook, and make them follow identical account and opportunity rules. For example, create a Siebel account in Outlook, or create and view Siebel opportunities in Outlook. Furthermore, the underlying configuration and setup is relatively easy. Finally, this meets the needs of our Siebel customers requesting “real” Outlook synchronization.
5. Search: Takes a big leap forward in Siebel 8.1, which gains brand-new search functionality, backed by a dedicated indexing database. As a result, searching is much faster. For the first time, search queries need not be case-sensitive, and you can search all Siebel entities at once, as well as external sources, such as a separate products database, or a SharePoint database. Finally, the search results get a Google-style makeover, including a hyperlink to the data, as well as a preview.
6. Territory management: Formerly known as Assignment Manager, territory management got a big upgrade with Siebel 8.0, and with 8.1 it’s been further tweaked with better functionality and capabilities for refining territories and assigning them to salespeople. For example, you can run territory management in a trial mode to show business users what the results of using different territory configurations would be.
7. Performance upgrades: On the technical side of Siebel 8.1, overall performance — including search — has improved substantially. Under the hood, this involved numerous technical changes that make the application run faster. At the same time, Oracle also made a number of enhancements to speed up productivity when using the Siebel Tools.
8. UI and functional enhancements: With Siebel 8.0, Oracle cleaned up the UI, making it look a bit nicer, and added new applications — dubbed Widgets — that run outside Siebel. One example is Mobile Sales Assistant, which makes specific Siebel functionality available via a desktop widget. With 8.0, Oracle also added a new business rules engine, which moves validation and business rules from the Siebel business layer to the administration layer. As a result, you can write business rules using more of a business language, which makes for easier and quicker configuration and rollout of business rules.

The Business Case for Upgrading to Siebel 8.1

When organizations ask Innoveer whether they should upgrade to the latest version of Siebel, we ask them: What business goals do you need to accomplish? What functionality are you missing today? What are your current CRM and Siebel pain points?

Based on their responses, we overlay what Siebel 8.1 would offer, then make a recommendation accordingly. While many of Innoveer’s customers now use Siebel 8 or 8.1, a majority use Siebel 7.5 or 7.8, and a handful still rely on Siebel 6, which debuted in 2000. In general, the older the Siebel application, the more reasons you have to upgrade.

Learn More

For best practices to pursue when upgrading Siebel, read our white paper (PDF), Optimizing your CRM Initiative with Siebel 8. In addition, to make Siebel 8.1 also play well with mobile devices, such as the BlackBerry and iPhone, look to Pyxis Mobile.

Finally, if you’re evaluating whether to upgrade Siebel or embrace the cloud, know that from a feature and functionality standpoint, for most organizations today, cloud CRM will offer most of the capabilities they require, including built-in maintenance, upgrades and a more modern interface, at an equivalent or better price to Siebel.

Today, however, the cloud is changing that. Even small organizations have the opportunity to partner with large enterprises, and in some cases, they’re already using the same software, such as Salesforce.com or Oracle CRM On Demand.

To find out more about the benefits, challenges and opportunities for smaller businesses to use the cloud to work with big business partners, I spoke with Jeff Brandes, vice president of business development and operations at EveryScape, an Innoveer client based in Waltham, Mass., that uses Salesforce.com.

EveryScape creates visual guides for local search, using interior panoramic imagery to allow users to “walk around” as though they were at a location in person, for places around the world, including Starwood, Omni and other large hotel chains, over 2,000 small businesses, and even the Cheers bar in Boston.

How does EveryScape reach new accounts?

Brandes: We have a small, direct sales team, but primarily we reach them through our business partners. We’ve partnered with StarCite — covering the hotel and meeting space — and also a number of directory providers that I’m not allowed to name publicly yet. Collectively, they have thousands of salespeople.

With your using Salesforce.com, what’s been the feedback from these business partners?

Our directory services partners are multi-billion-dollar companies, and we’re able to convince them that we’re not a tiny little vendor that can’t handle the scale of orders they’re going to deliver to us. And a critical test was their looking at our systems and seeing that we could scale from tens to thousands of orders with them in a matter of months.

How do you handle all of these orders?

We run our whole business on Salesforce.com, from order entry through post-sales support, no matter how an order reaches us. What that means is, whether we or a partner close a deal, the order gets into our Salesforce.com software through the Salesforce.com partner portal, automated feeds or our own people entering the information directly. We then track the pipeline, and when an order closes, we create a project.

How does Salesforce.com automate the underlying processes?

To build one of our visual guides, a photographer has to come out to the business. So first, Salesforce.com selects one of our photographers and sends an email: “We have an opportunity for you, do you want to accept or reject it?” When they accept, the system automatically provides required information and scheduling. The client also receives a series of emails saying, “Thank you for your order, the photographer will contact you.”

Once they schedule, it’s in the system and Salesforce.com updates them with a reminder, 48 hours beforehand. After the shoot, the photographer uploads the photos to our site, Salesforce.com stores links to the images, and the product goes into the production phase.

When the project is completed, Salesforce.com sends the client a link to their preview and the client can submit changes and edits through Salesforce.com Cases. Once it’s approved, that’s recorded in Salesforce.com, and the client receives the final, approved version. If the deal has come from a partner, the partner also gets notified with the appropriate identifiers, and they can post that tour on their website.

Was it difficult to build that level of automation into Salesforce.com?

Not really. We started three years ago, building a piece of the puzzle, then just kept adding to it.

What advice would you offer newcomers, based on your three years of cloud experience?

For a company that has limited IT resources, there’s no way we could have affordably built a system that scaled and had the redundancy of something like Salesforce.com, it would have cost just too much money. Remember too that the server is the least of the cost. Also factor in the day-today running costs, having a mirrored test environment, IT staff, plus backups.

How does Salesforce.com compare with using on-premise CRM?

Out of the box with Salesforce.com, what you get for your money and what you start with is just so much greater. I also build most of the reports myself.

Customizing Salesforce.com is also relatively simple, but more importantly, there’s a lot of work that other people have done that can be leveraged, some free and some moderately priced. For example, we use Informatica; Innoveer helped us with that. Also electronic signatures from a company called EchoSign.

For Salesforce.com add-ons, there’s no RFP; you just use AppExchange?

Exactly. And the other thing that can be noted is the beauty of SaaS. It’s a painless trial to see if these add-ons do what you need them to do.

What happens if Salesforce.com goes down?

Reliability-wise, we’ve had barely any hiccups. Really, our biggest fear is not if Salesforce.com is going to be down, but if our connectivity is going to be down.

Are your partner pages hosted on Salesforce.com?

The partner portal is a customized view into Salesforce.com, where our partners can see what they need to see. We built that on our own using Drupal, and that talks back and forth to Salesforce.com.

We also track our photography partners — we call them Ambassadors — like we would a sales deal: When they apply, all of their credentials and links to their portfolio are in Salesforce.com. As they get trained and certified, they move to next step, to the point where they sign their contracts. And once they receive an assignment, they again get tracked just like a deal would.

Did you originally plan to keep everything in Salesforce.com?

Having had the opportunity to build a couple of CRM systems in a greenfield environment with not a lot of legacy applications, I’ve found that the longer you can keep it all in one system, the fewer integration problems or headaches you have.

Learn More

For more on choosing between on-premise and cloud CRM, see Upgrade Siebel, or Embrace the Cloud?

For more insights from Innoveer customers into using the cloud, see Genzyme’s Salesforce.com secrets.

Also learn how the cloud can help with customer service, and why integrating with the cloud is easier than with on-premise CRM.

Microsoft didn’t see the Internet coming, and now look what’s happened.

People think they know too much. But more often, we’re surprised not by the answer to a question, but by not even knowing the question existed in the first place.

Errol Morris has been provocatively exploring this issue in The New York Times. His inspiration: the famous observation by Donald Rumsfeld that the problem with military or political intelligence isn’t the known knowns (you can plan for those) or the known unknowns (someone knows the answer), but the unknown unknowns. In other words, you have to watch out for the things that you don’t even know that you don’t know.

CRM and Unknown Unknowns

In the CRM realm, we see this regularly. Recently, for example, I met with a prospective client that had invested $15 million over five years to build its new CRM system. The company was very focused on creating a 360-degree view of its customers, and provided sales reps with every conceivable account-related data point, across 45 different screens, with five tabs on each screen.

Unfortunately, whoever designed the system didn’t take into account that sales reps have to make about 50 telephone calls per day, and when they actually reach someone on the phone, have only about 15 seconds to make a connection and engage the customer or prospect. Having 45 screens doesn’t help. In fact, the system is useless.

Likewise, one of our high-technology clients spent lots of time generating marketing leads, which is a good thing. But the company neglected the handoff point, where the leads flow into the sales department. As a result, salespeople never used the leads, resulting in millions of wasted dollars.

Why We Fear the Unknown

According to Morris’s research, Rumsfeld’s observation — as well as the reaction to it — both have firm groundings in human psychology. Namely, we like matters to be black and white. Too much ambiguity makes people uncomfortable. Even hostile.

Perhaps that’s not surprising, since people tend to ignore what they don’t know they don’t know. As a result, we tend to chronically underestimate the downside or upside that these unknown unknowns pose.

The Internet, for example, has completely transformed society, arguably for the better. But some businesses were caught off guard by its arrival. Microsoft failed to embrace the Internet, tried to play catch-up, and failed. Since 2000, Microsoft’s stock price has decreased by 40%, while Google, the company that came to define the transformational power of the Internet has seen its stock price soar by 347%.

Find Out What You’re Missing

For both of the companies facing CRM challenges above, the problem was similar: not knowing the right questions to ask.

For example, talk to a VP of sales operations and ask what four or five components they think about for excelling at territory management, and maybe they’ll mention account planning or list management. But are they thinking about customer segmentation or cross-functional collaboration? In fact, to do well at territory management, you need to address each of those four underlying components.

To provide organizations with better perspective into the capabilities required to excel at CRM — for marketing, sales, or customer service — we built Innoveer’s CRM Excellence Framework. Our goal is to help organizations see what they do well, see what needs improving, and learn what they may be overlooking altogether.

Having this information helps ensure that you plan and build the right CRM program, as well as get the most bang for your buck. Indeed, if you need to build better territories — one of the five capabilities required for effective sales force management — and your organization already handles territory management quite well except for list management, then start there, because you’ll see the biggest improvement and bang for your buck.

So remember, when it comes to CRM planning, there are no stupid questions. Only the ones you didn’t know to ask.

Learn More

For more information on Innoveer’s CRM Excellence Framework, and planning CRM projects, see the capabilities required to excel at marketing, sales, and customer service.

Mobility is cool. Photograph by Miss Karen.

If you give salespeople a mobile CRM application, will the result be increased SFA adoption?

To find out more, I spoke with Christopher Willis, executive vice president in charge of marketing and strategic alliances at Pyxis Mobile, an Innoveer partner that offers a mobile application platform used by about 500,000 people and more than 3,000 businesses.

According to Pyxis Mobile, about 80% of all projects developed using its mobile platform involve CRM data.

Is using mobile CRM now a no-brainer?

Willis: Absolutely. Today, companies that don’t have a mobile solution are behind. It’s a competitive differentiator in hiring as well. One thing we’ve seen, especially in financial services, where we did a lot of our early work, is that employees move from company to company, and you get a guy showing up on his first day and saying, “Where’s the mobile app? I need my mobile app.”

Especially as younger people are entering the workforce, they’re used to having a smartphone, texting, sending messages, Facebook, all on a mobile device. That’s part of how they do their job, and companies need to be able to deliver that.

Is security still a concern?

People who aren’t in mobility sometimes ask us about security. But when we talk to IT — security, infrastructure, architecture — no one worries about BlackBerry security anymore. If it’s good enough for the Department of Defense and government agencies, it’s good enough for you. So let’s focus on what you can do.

With almost every software vendor today offering mobile versions of its applications, why use a mobile platform such as Pyxis Mobile?

To do a lot more than you think you can do. Yes, everybody from Oracle to now SAP to Salesforce.com has a mobile component. And if the only thing you use is one application — say, Salesforce.com Mobile — that’s cool. But that’s never the case. No one application has all the information your company needs, and if you try to make a small-screen view of a large-screen system, in its totality, then you’ve created a bigger mess than what you already had. Because it’s hard enough to use it on the desktop.

So with Pyxis Mobile, it’s about creating a workflow that allows an employee to be the best employee they can be, using multiple data sources. Doing that regardless of device type, too, creates an overwhelming sense of freedom. As in: “We can tie applications to as many users as we want, make it available on as many devices as we want, and really meet the needs of our constituency.”

What’s an example of how a salesperson would use this single, mobile-friendly view of multiple data sources?

One example is the “fallen angels” report, to show who you did big business with last year, but not this year. The challenge with creating that report is, the data doesn’t come from just one application.

But if you can create that report, you can work your way down the list, call someone and say, “Last year we did $3 million in business with you, but this year only $10,000. What are we doing wrong?” You’ve taken data from all of these different sources, put it into a single view, and made it actionable.

Do tools and workflows such as that help increase CRM adoption?

Yes, because in general, salespeople don’t love their CRM system. … So, our approach is to make it less like a large-screen CRM application, and more about offering intuitive data backed by a mobile workflow that adds value for salespeople.

As a result, instead of it being a system they don’t like, salespeople are getting essential information, and that makes a difference. Because even one more meeting per week can generate additional dollars in the pocket of the salesperson, and for the bottom line.

What does mobile CRM offer sales managers?

Within the application, we can create multiple views of data. These use cases, or workflows, provide different views for management, senior management and reps. So a manager comes in, sees a roll-up of all their sales reps, and can manage them all on a real-time basis. Assuming that we have given them useful data and that they have good levels of adoption — in the range of 70% to 80%, which is what we see in organizations that manage this well.

What’s real time about the platform?

Say I’m on a phone call, and I enter a note. Management can see — in real time — what I’m doing and provide me with timely feedback on my performance, and not guess how I’m doing until I later update. So it goes from that monthly or quarterly review of “I think you’re doing well,” to that real-time “I see you’re doing well,” or not, and I can provide you with feedback. That also allows an organization to have and retain the best employees.

So CRM users aren’t just taking data out, but also putting it back in?

Yes, and nowadays, almost 100% of our business customers also use our real-time automation features. So, for example, say you make a phone call. I go into my CRM application, open a record and press “click to dial,” then talk to a prospect and hang up. Immediately, I’m brought back into the mobile CRM application after the phone call and an activity is created. Now, I can click out without adding anything, but the activity has been added. So with zero effort, I now have an activity update.

Same thing with meetings. Say I want to order you a prospectus. I do that in the application, and it’s marked “sent” from a SharePoint repository or in some cases a third-party literature fulfillment vendor. So for any activity where you interact with a customer, the system will create a CRM record. And it does that right away — in real time — rather than synchronizing the data later, after you needed to see it.

That level of automation sounds like a powerful way to keep the CRM system relevant and useful?

We’re trying to automate as much of this as possible, to take it out of the hands of the sales reps. We have a sales team internally that uses it too, and it’s hard to get them to update it. We’ve found that you’ve got to automate.

Learn More

To further increase SFA adoption, learn how to sell CRM to your salespeople.

Health insurers face a new-member bonanza. Photograph by Adrian Boliston

Health care reform is moving forward, as new laws promise to transform the $2.5 trillion U.S. health care system and extend coverage to 32 million Americans who are currently uninsured. But when it comes to managing customer relationships, will health insurers be left behind?

Forget, for a moment, the millions of dollars that insurance companies spent trying to block the overhaul, the potential increase in costs they may face, or potential restrictions on their rate hikes. Instead, let’s focus on what few insurers seem to be discussing: The enormous influx of new customers, and how to best capture and retain them, as health insurance coverage becomes mandatory as well as more affordable.

Health Care Overhaul: Market Opportunities and Risks

According to Geoffrey Moore, author of Crossing the Chasm, the proportion of profitability to market share is exponential. Meaning that if four companies control 25% of the market and generate a 10% profit margin, but one company controls 50% of the market, then that one company’s profitability will be substantially higher than the competition.

That creates a new market opportunity for health insurers, and likewise a risk. Accordingly, it’s time for insurers to act like organizations that actually need to sell and support a product, or in their case a plan. That’s going to require bolstering their customer service capabilities to handle the increased volume, and ensuring that agents position all of their new products correctly.

Greater Market Share = Better Member Services

Advanced customer relationship management practitioners, in other words, can capture an outsize part of the emerging market. This creates opportunities, for example for Innoveer client EmblemHealth, to increase its membership, as well as improve its market share versus its rival, Empire BlueCross BlueShield.

Of course, like many health insurers, these organizations are not-for-profit entities, meaning that the market-share discussion isn’t about profitability. Rather, these organizations have the opportunity to sign more members, which would provide them with more money to invest in customer care, satisfaction, additional wellness programs and similar capabilities.

In other words, it gives them an opportunity to better serve their members.

Give Members More Control

From a sales and marketing standpoint, health insurers must ensure they properly target the millions of people who will likely be shopping for insurance plans. This starts by having proper segmentation and targeting, to design optimal products and attract the best customers.

But to succeed, insurers must go further, and find new ways to become more member-centric. Speaking at the 2010 World Innovation Forum last month, Jeff Kindler, chairman and CEO of Pfizer, argued that with Baby Boomers becoming increasingly reliant on the health care system as they age, insurers must deliver better customer health care experiences.

One great starting point is to focus on customer service, since health insurance service levels leave room for improvement. Granted, health insurers are getting better, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, developed by the University of Michigan, which periodically measures consumer satisfaction with products and services. Some health insurers are even winning plaudits.

Steps to Customer Service Success

But to properly capture, serve and retain the millions of new customers that the health care overhaul will soon be delivering to them, the majority of insurers must still focus on becoming more member-centric. That starts by improving these five areas:

• Call center processes: Rather than devoting customer service groups to different functional areas (corporate, government, dental), insurers must retool to provide a single, complete view of any individual’s benefits.
• Data consolidation: Likewise, insurers must improve their links with partners and overhaul their online portals to provide customers with a single location for reviewing their benefits, as well as self-service.
• Organizational structures: Supporting a greater number of products and customers may require revisiting call center capabilities, for example to support more sophisticated call routing.
• Member-centricity: To combat the sorry state of member satisfaction, insurers must find new ways of becoming more member-centric, for example by training call center representatives with the proper attitude and approach, and providing CRM systems that provide them with a complete view of a member as well as their requirements.
• Product proliferation: Just like high-technology firms, which constantly iterate products and bundles, health insurers must manage product proliferation to prevent confusing salespeople, group plan administrators and individuals.

Insurers that excel at member service will continue to attract more customers and build their bottom line, enabling them to make their services even better. Conversely, health care insurers that fail to distinguish themselves to the millions of new customers could face irrelevance, declining market share and even corporate end-of-life issues. In short, insurers that want to succeed face their own mandatory reforms.

Learn More

The best strategy for health insurers to capture new customers is to get more member-centric.  In this respect, handling the post-reform customer influx looks a lot like what’s required to support the consumer-directed health (CDH) plans. See our white paper, Planning for CDH Success, for best practices about how health insurers can better target health plan groups as well as individual members with better product combinations, service and support.

Once you launch an SFA program, the adoption clock is ticking. Photograph by wwarby.

Do you have a CRM adoption problem?

When people talk about poor CRM or sales force automation (SFA) adoption, it’s typically shorthand for one issue: “We can’t get our salespeople to enter their activities into the CRM system.” In other words, they have an activity management adoption challenge.

Of course, everyone from sales managers to executives wants to see that activity information, both at a micro and macro level, to know what’s in the sales pipeline, accurately predict financial performance, design better territories and coach salespeople. Likewise, organizations also want to ensure that their SFA projects don’t fail.

Why, then, won’t salespeople comply? Well, adding activity information takes time, and time equals money. Accordingly, salespeople want to know: What’s in it for me? Therein lies the answer to this challenge: you have to sweeten the pot. Add some carrot, to balance the stick.

Overcome Resistance to Cloud CRM

This challenge isn’t new. As long as there’s been CRM, salespeople have resisted using CRM. But what can companies do to encourage them to adopt SFA anyway?

A year ago, I detailed how, when it comes to enticing salespeople to use SFA, selling must start at home. In particular, I outlined the top 5 techniques companies should pursue to encourage their salespeople to use SFA, including ensuring that managers only work out of the SFA system, giving salespeople incentives for using CRM and training people on the CRM system using real-life scenarios.

Since then, however, my guidance has evolved, based in part on customer feedback, as well as taking into account the mass adoption of cloud-based — aka SaaS — CRM.

What’s new? In addition to my previous advice, which still holds, businesses that want to ensure that their salespeople embrace SFA must also provide product information from within the CRM system and, above all, deploy quickly.

Provide CRM-Based Product Configuration

Why do companies need to include product information inside the CRM system? For starters, product proliferation is the bane of any salesperson. Take a high-technology manufacturer. Each one of its products may get slightly altered every month, getting a new SKU each time. On top of that, the company may bundle its products in a million different ways, with each bundle likewise getting a unique SKU. Which salesperson can keep track of every one of those SKUs?

Given such challenges, many organizations are building product information into their CRM systems. For example, Innoveer client Irish Life, which sells life insurance, now provides its salespeople with a CRM-based product configuration tool. Today, when a sales representative visits a customer or prospect’s house to discuss their insurance needs, the tool helps them determine which product best fits the customer’s needs, without the salesperson having to remember the name or exact details of every last product or variation.

The end result: Customers get products which are better tailored to their needs, and salespeople can be more productive.

Deploy SFA Rapidly and Build on the Momentum

The second, major new requirement for ensuring high levels of SFA adoption is to deploy quickly. That’s because salespeople have the attention span of a flea. Once you launch an SFA program, the clock is ticking. Take too long, and you’ll lose salespeople’s attention and program momentum, and likely end up with poor adoption. On the other hand, deploy any CRM software without a modicum of planning, and you may end up with software tailored to no one’s needs, resulting in abysmal SFA adoption rates.

Accordingly, we often recommend using a CRM accelerator to rapidly plan any CRM project, and then begin delivering required capabilities. Note that this approach isn’t about boiling the ocean. Rather, focus on putting a smaller number of high-value capabilities into the hands of your salespeople — among other users — to keep them interested, excited and demanding more. With high levels of CRM adoption, you can also build on it to deliver even more useful tools.

For example, Innoveer recently helped Everyscape, which provides online tours, via panoramic photographs, of hotels, restaurants, parks, resorts and more, rapidly deploy a cloud CRM solution. Because the project took just four weeks, which included not only specifying the project but also configuring and delivering working software, salespeople remained energized and enthusiastic about the software’s potential, and were quick to adopt the new system. As a result, Everyscape has also been able to enhance its CRM system to add even more capabilities, such as automating tasks — such as assigning photographers or tracking packages — that would otherwise require manual labor.

Entice Salespeople With Time-Saving Tools

As ever, getting salespeople to adopt SFA requires give and take.

Savvy organizations start with the give. For example, Genzyme Biosurgery launched Salesforce.com, it first scanned and imported every salesperson’s contact list into the application. As a result, the new SFA system contained useful information from day one. The company also designed a report to automatically compile a list of each sales rep’s monthly activities. As a result, by entering activity information into the CRM system, reps no longer have to spend a few hours every month manually creating their event report. They just click a button. Naturally, it’s a popular feature.

Therein lies the secret of SFA adoption: give, more than you take. And don’t forget to sell it that way to your salespeople.

Learn More

My five rules for fostering SFA adoption still stand. Also know why, as more organizations adopt cloud CRM, SFA implementation failure rates will increase.

For more on the virtues of configuring and deploying cloud CRM quickly, see our SFA Accelerator services for Salesforce.com, Oracle CRM On Demand, Cegedim Dendrite and Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Siebel CRM, like Cobol, won't ever go away. But it won't give you a competitive advantage, either.

Should organizations weighing an upgrade to the latest version of on-premise Siebel CRM embrace cloud CRM instead?

Until relatively recently, Siebel CRM running on the premises was the better choice for large enterprises with complex business processes. Today, however, for 90% of CRM projects, cloud CRM provides all required capabilities, at an equal or better price point.

The New CRM Calculus

To see why cloud, aka SaaS, CRM typically produces more benefits at an equal or better cost than upgrading Siebel, just crunch the numbers:

• Maintenance: In most cases, Oracle’s annual maintenance contract for Siebel costs a bit less — perhaps 10-15% — than an annual subscription to Salesforce.com, Oracle CRM on Demand or Cegedim Dendrite’s Mobile Intelligence. (Winner: Siebel CRM)
• Consulting: Roughly the same cost for either Siebel or cloud CRM, depending on how many current integrations can be reused. (Draw)
• Hardware: Cloud requires no hardware investment. (Winner: Cloud CRM)
• IT support: Cloud CRM still requires some support — setting up new accounts, for example — but needs much less than Siebel. (Winner: Cloud CRM)

Siebel: What’s Missing?

Next, factor in the capabilities missing from Siebel, but included with cloud CRM:

• Mobility: Out of the box, cloud CRM supports numerous devices, including BlackBerries, iPhones, iPads and smartphones, while Siebel does not.
• Killer interface: Cloud CRM sports a modern, Web 2.0 user interface (UI) that will make your users happy. By comparison, the Siebel UI/architecture dates from the year 2000, and hasn’t kept pace with Salesforce.com, Oracle CRM On Demand or Cegedim Dendrite.
• Browsers: Cloud CRM supports IE8, Firefox, Chrome or Safari, while Siebel 8.1 only works with IE7.
• Outlook integration: Cloud CRM integrates well with Outlook, but Siebel 8.1 has a tough time talking to Microsoft Outlook, plus you’ll need someone well versed in the incredibly arcane Siebel Server Sync Exchange (SSSE).
• Upgrades: The cloud gives you free upgrades, demands little management and constantly adds functionality.

Stuck on Siebel?

Now, let’s imagine you’re trying to sell a Siebel upgrade to your CFO. For project rationale, perhaps you’ll detail how:

• Oracle is soon dropping support for your Siebel version
• Oracle already stopped supporting the underlying database platform
• IT has otherwise eliminated all instances of the operating system that your Siebel version requires
• Salespeople — and security managers — want to use a different browser than IE6
• For CRM integration, the underlying middleware is five years old and no longer supported

Next, explain to your CFO what upgrading to Siebel will cost.

What’s missing from this discussion? Benefits. If you’re Coke battling Pepsi, or Christie’s competing with Sotheby’s, this type of Siebel upgrade doesn’t buy you a competitive advantage; you’re just purchasing parity.

When all is said and done, upgrading is a tough sell. Count on a multi-million-dollar investment, using a significant amount of internal IT resources, hitting unforeseen challenges and timing-wise, the project consuming the better part of a year. Furthermore, don’t be surprised if your VP of sales — furious at waiting nine months to get no new competitive capabilities — goes rogue, using his corporate credit card to buy his salespeople a subscription to Salesforce.com.

Ensure CRM Adds Business Value

The Siebel-upgrade scenario isn’t pretty. Again, for 90% of projects, it’s also not the smart business choice.

But some organizations have a tough time hearing that news. For example, we’re currently helping the 20-person Siebel support team inside a financial services firm determine whether it should upgrade to Siebel 8.1 or embrace cloud CRM. For this firm, financially and functionally speaking, cloud CRM makes the best sense. But the internal Siebel team worries that by recommending cloud CRM, they’ll lose their jobs.

Because I’m an optimist, my perspective is different: Firms should retrain their Siebel CRM personnel on the new cloud CRM system, so they can add business value. That way, instead of just maintaining Siebel, you’re using cloud CRM to seize a competitive advantage.

Deploy Your Troops: Frontline or Auxiliary?

Here’s a military analogy to show how cloud CRM can give you a competitive advantage: Say you and your opponent both have 20 soldiers. But only four on each side shoot the guns; the rest are auxiliary forces. What if you could reverse the equation? Bring 16 people to your frontline, and you’d outgun the competition by a factor of four.

From a CRM standpoint, this is what the cloud offers: not marking time with system management, but enabling you to deliver new capabilities to salespeople, managers and executives, including better reports and dashboards, access to more complete and relevant views of the customer, modern interfaces, mobility and more.

Again, if your organization has quite complex sales or business processes, upgrading to a new version of on-premise Siebel CRM may give a competitive edge. For 90% of organizations, however, cloud CRM now provides every capability you need, offers rapid procurement, and at an equal if not better cost.

But is your in-house Siebel CRM team ready to hear that?

Learn More

Which SaaS — aka cloud — CRM applications are best? Read our CRM smackdown to find out.

To rapidly adopt SaaS and ensure that it meets business requirements, consider using a CRM accelerator. Also be sure to integrate other enterprise applications with SaaS CRM.

Finally, learn why SFA failure rates will increase as more organizations adopt cloud CRM, and simple steps you can take to help avoid failure.

Plan, then play. Photograph by Werner Kunz.

How did Genzyme Biosurgery successfully roll out Salesforce.com, meet its business requirements, and foster high levels of user adoption? In a word, thanks to planning.

To learn more, I spoke with Innoveer customer Michael Aceti, senior director of BSS commercial development at Genzyme Biosurgery:

How important is planning? Because we get lots of calls saying, “We just got new CRM technology, now we need help with it.”

Aceti: Right, and you wouldn’t do that with ERP. You wouldn’t just buy a car to see what to do with it. You decide first whether to buy an SUV, minivan or sedan. Depends on what you need.

Planning is the whole game. It’s what I tell everyone who’s considering these kinds of projects, and as I get pulled in as a consultant on other projects, it’s a need that I see a lot.

When people hear “CRM planning,” do they fear it’s going to take 6 months?

The problem is, most people probably think of planning as not being part of the project. They just think planning means, “We’re ready to select our screens.”

It would be easy, too, for a customer to be cynical, to think you’re just burning time. But there are so many analogies — building a house, or sports teams saying that you win the game before you take the field — that show the importance of pre-work. Then when we get into implementation, you already know what you have to do.

Was it difficult to get sign-off at Genzyme Biosurgery for thinking about CRM, before jumping in?

No, because a few of us had gotten through a semi-painful exercise of thinking about very specific functionality and getting ahead of ourselves. We knew we needed some help. Also, Innoveer came in with a very bite-size project. Not a 6-month project, à la Accenture. It was à la carte.

We wanted that: Talk to us for a week, and give us your assessment. And then we added some more weeks, including demos from Oracle CRM On Demand and Salesforce.com, and my team all agreed that we liked Salesforce.com, though we probably could have been successful with either.

What can Salesforce.com do that your existing SalesLogix CRM system couldn’t?

First, Salesforce.com being a Web application, it provides Web-based functionality that client/server can’t offer. Also we’re a small business; we didn’t have the budget to do a new CRM implementation and then a portal. But the biggest benefit was that we didn’t need IT to update or maintain it. By its own acknowledgement, IT said that minor changes to a SalesLogix drop-down menu could take a couple of weeks, and anything bigger would take a month.

Also, we’re an operating-room-based sales force. Reps don’t bring their laptops with them on a regular basis; they need something that works on a Blackberry. And both Salesforce.com and Innoveer said that yes, it will definitely work. And it does.

How much of your CRM system serves sales reps, versus managers?

When we were getting ready to roll this out, I was trying to handle any objections in advance. So the first thing we said was, give us all of your contacts — send us Outlook files, business cards — and someone sent us a CD with 1,200 contacts on it. We got a card scanner and a temp in, and we added anyone associated with a hospital. So the first time anyone fired up Salesforce.com after training, there were like, “Whoa.” And that was a huge win.

We specifically also thought about efficiency tools. For example, we provided reps with an automated thank-you-letter — “thanks, doc, for meeting with me” — capability. That was a win. Also, they had a monthly events report to fill out, requiring 2-4 hours, offline, per month. So we said, you won’t have to do that anymore, instead you just log events in Salesforce.com. Of course, we also want that information, but we always joked that we’re not newly playing Big Brother; we’ve already embedded a chip in your BlackBerry for doing that.

How do you handle recalcitrant users?

Sometimes I’ll be a wise guy and push back. I’ll say, “Let’s pilot turning your Salesforce.com off for a month,” and they think about it and say, “Well, I really do use it.” And they do. Getting clinical information used to take 2-3 weeks — “we’ll get back to you.” Now, they’re talking to a doctor, they hit a button in Salesforce.com, and the information has already been sent. So while we’re still working with some first-line managers to demonstrate the value of CRM, in the last 6-12 months the business has really grown around it.

Also, we have some managers who are quick to adopt. We had a new one come in who’d used it outside, and he just jumped ahead. So I’ve really taken the strategy that I’ll work with anybody, but especially with people who want to work with me. We’re starting to do customizations, and the stars have lined up too for the moment, because those leading users — managers — are also ahead on the sales scoreboard.

Is it better to introduce changes gradually, or aim for a big bang?

We learned to not simultaneously implement a new process and put it on the CRM system. First, define the process, understand how it’s going to work, work out the kinks and then automate it. You’re paving over the cow path. Don’t cut a path through the woods.

When all was said and done, what did the IT group think about Salesforce.com?

They initially put up resistance, but they’re now attending seminars for Salesforce.com. We still have SalesLogix, too, but almost no one is really using it.

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Whether for sales, marketing or customer service, don’t forget to plan first, and implement CRM second.

How do you motivate your salespeople? Photograph by exfordy.

If you’re in sales, you know the classic sales-leadership technique from the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, meant to motivate the sales team into a frenzy of selling: First place in the monthly sales contest is a Cadillac Eldorado. Second place, steak knives. Third place, you’re fired.

All of which begs the following sales leadership question: How are you organizing your sales department to achieve its operational or business goals?

Talk to any VP of sales and you’ll hear about their organization’s sales methodology, such as Target Account Selling or Miller Heiman. But how many have a methodology for how they organize and manage their sales teams?

ABC: Always Be Closing…

The primary requirement for any sales strategy, of course, is to engage clients. But how do you also manage the entire process of choosing the right clients to pursue, managing your salespeople and coaching them to help close more deals? This is the discipline of sales leadership, which combines:

• Functional strategy: Set and articulate a sales direction that prioritizes account attention and activity
• Coaching: Monitor sales performance and provide feedback to get the most from your sales teams
• Training: Using the right learning format, and instruct salespeople not just on products, but also processes and skills
• Climate: Manage the environment to maximize motivation, accountability and performance

What Do Sales Leaders Do?

The sales leadership role isn’t just about sales managers doing ride-alongs, to help them close deals. That strategy doesn’t scale, or help salespeople learn how to become closers.

Rather, you need to create an effective functional strategy for your sales team. One excellent technique for inculcating this strategy is via classes on a sales management methodology, such as Strategic Selling from Miller Heiman.

Measure Performance, Then Coach

To help your salespeople master the organizational and relationship-based aspects of selling, identify how they need help, then coach them accordingly.

For example, sales leaders at biotechnology firm Genzyme have distilled the strategies and techniques that they think make a sales rep successful at selling — including “building rapport” and “showing value” — into a 12-point competency model. The organization measures sales reps on these competencies during ride-alongs, and also measures individual sales reps against their sales targets, such as how many calls they’re making every week. All of that information goes into the CRM system, and gets fed back into the coaching process.

Don’t Waste Time

Behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner posited that people are naturally predisposed to one of these four modes of learning: reading, listening, visual and kinesthetic. Most people, I’d argue, are kinesthetic learners — they learn by doing. Don’t park them in a classroom to stare at a book.

Accordingly, the most effective training for sales reps is on-the-job training. Yet, most training for new salespeople today is done via boot camp: 1) Go to California; 2) Spend three days learning all about the different routers we sell; 3) Go out and sell.

But if at least 50% of selling is about relationships — and some would argue it’s more like 90% — then why spend the boot camp focused on speeds and feeds? Isn’t that why we have systems engineers?

Instead, why not take a page from pharmaceutical companies, which don’t have the luxury of spending a lot of time with doctors? Indeed, their sales reps are lucky to get a few minutes of face time with a doctor. But thanks to how pharmaceutical companies aggressively measure and improve their specific selling competencies, as well as meeting-planning skills, their sales reps know how to close deals regardless.

Create Climate Change

What makes Glengarry Glen Ross so riveting is the atmosphere of pure poison permeating the sales office, culminating — after the pressure increases and increases — in a robbery, in which the best leads go missing.

Few people want to work in that kind of environment. In fact, the best organizations use a more subtle sales climate to influence salespeople’s personal drive to succeed, keeping them motivated, productive and accountable.

At ABN AMRO, for example, when the financial services firm’s salespeople log into their CRM application, the first thing they see is a report about how they’re doing, versus their peers. Of course, 90% of the firm’s salespeople won’t be in the top 10% of the rankings. And the bank has found that showing people where they stand is a powerful tool — backed by proper training and coaching — for motivating them to sell more.

The bank is using the age-old sales leader board — only with its CRM application — to ensure that salespeople marshal the leads and keep closing. And who doesn’t want to be at the top of that list?

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We often get asked, “What’s the next improvement I should make to my field sales program, to take it to the next level?” Based on its extensive CRM experience, Innoveer has identified the five capabilities that every organization needs to excel at field sales: pipeline management, territory management, relationship management, and sales leadership.

In addition, Innoveer offers a brief workshop—over one, two or three days—to help companies identify the cost, time and business benefits associated with achieving new and more mature—which is to say, more effective—CRM capabilities.

During the workshop, Innoveer examines the five core elements of an organization’s field sales program, identifies the optimal enhancements, and produces specific, technology-agnostic recommendations for building next year’s plans and budgets, with detailed estimates of the required project time and costs to make specific improvements in your organization’s sales program.

Do you need a Facebook-like add-on to Salesforce.com?

Can Chatter, the new collaboration application for Salesforce.com, help your CRM program?

To find out, Pervez Alam, part of Innoveer’s Salesforce.com practice, recently took Chatter—currently in beta—for a spin.

Here are his top 10 tips for how to use Chatter:

1. Target CRM adoption. The number-one challenge for any CRM program is adoption. Chatter helps by being another way to engage salespeople with the CRM system. Consider the addictiveness of Facebook on a smartphone; many people check it hourly. Now consider how a similar tool, such as Chatter, might act as a gateway drug to more effective SFA, especially for young salespeople.
2. Understand the role of Twitter-like tools. Don’t worry if information relayed via Chatter is ephemeral; that’s the point. Indeed, one Twitter study found that the majority of re-tweets (re-posting a Twitter message) happen within one hour of a message first being posted. After that, the value of the information decays dramatically.
3. Channel client details. Savvy salespeople trying to close a deal are likely already following their contacts’ LinkedIn or Twitter feeds, to glean clues into what clients are seeing, hearing or doing, to help create better pitches. Think of Chatter as just another tool for sharing client-related intelligence.
4. Build a 360-degree customer view. If I’m a salesperson working on a deal—particularly a large opportunity—and a colleague of mine “Chatters” that he had a great meeting with someone else at the client, that might provide me an edge for closing the deal. In other words, timely updates help busy salespeople seize limited-time opportunities they might have missed.
5. Push important but fleeting information to salespeople. Beyond seeing people’s off-the-cuff updates, you can track documents or data via Chatter’s Facebook-like updates. So every time an opportunity, contact or account materially changes, you get updates without having to go into the system.
6. Create plug-and-play triggers. In the traditional CRM world, creating event triggers—for example, to email an alert whenever a specific client’s opportunity status changes—often requires some manual coding. But with SaaS CRM applications such as Salesforce.com, trigger functionality is typically built in; just click a button. (Same goes for Oracle CRM On Demand.) Now, Chatter extends that alert capability even further, with its Twitter- or Facebook-like interface.
7. Finesse the filters. Will Chatter have fine-grained filters for ensuring that you don’t get too many alerts, or that you only get the information you need? That remains to be seen.
8. Channel non-obvious information. What else might you relay via Chatter? If an opportunity status or the value attached to an opportunity changes, make that change inside Salesforce.com. In other words, don’t broadcast the information via Chatter, since anyone following those accounts will automatically see the changes. Chatter is for more impulsive broadcasting, akin to Facebook—layering additional, timely intelligence or perspective over hard data.
9. Train salespeople to Chatter. With the above in mind, consider training salespeople to use Chatter as an outlet for sharing non-obvious but helpful information. Sales managers and executives can also lead by example. Sample post: “I’ll be in Atlanta this week, I’ll have 5 hours on Tuesday and can visit some clients. If you need me, tap into my calendar.”
10. Test Chatter. If Chatter doesn’t cost extra, why not turn it on, just to see what it can do?

Pick an Approach to Chatter

Don’t expect Chatter to remake CRM or social networking as we know it. But if it helps augment your CRM program, even a bit, that would be worth investigating, no?

That’s the attitude at one Innoveer client, which has a relatively young sales team that’s well versed in using Facebook and Twitter, at least for fun. Recently, after asking us about Chatter, the organization’s head of sales told us that since Chatter will be built into Salesforce.com, he’s planning to activate it when it becomes available, then encourage his salespeople to use it. Because if a CRM-based social networking tool such as Chatter helps his sales force more fully embrace CRM, he’s all for it.

Learn More

Who’s using SaaS? Increasingly, large enterprises as well as small ones.

How can you rapidly adopt SaaS and ensure that it meets business requirements? By first ensuring that SaaS CRM will automate business processes, improve the customer experience, and increase overall levels of productivity and profitability, preferably using a CRM accelerator.

Which SaaS applications are best? Read our CRM smackdown to find out.

What’s the best way to use SaaS? Be sure to integrate with SaaS CRM.

Finally, learn why SFA failure rates will increase as more organizations adopt SaaS.