Some problems just sneak up on you without warning.

“How do we move from Siebel to cloud CRM?” Hands down, that’s one of the top 5 questions I hear today. Many businesses, in fact, tell us that they’re thinking of moving away from Siebel, concerned over Oracle’s long-term plans for the software. Accordingly, they’re investigating cloud-based (aka SaaS) CRM applications, including Salesforce.com, Oracle CRM On Demand, and Microsoft CRM.

With over a decade of experience in helping companies implement on-premise Siebel, as well as years of expertise in helping organizations adopt cloud-based CRM, when it comes to migration, we’ve identified a few strategies to avoid, at all costs.

For example, we visited a large, international company that had rebuilt its Siebel screens in Salesforce.com, by sending the existing Siebel Repository File to India. Smart strategy, right? Only, the resulting Salesforce.com screens lacked leads, dashboards, analytics, and other “wasn’t in Siebel” functionality.

Top 8 Mistakes (To Avoid)

On that note, when moving from Siebel to cloud CRM, here are the top 8 mistakes to avoid:

1) Implement “Like For Like” Interface

Salesforce.com and Oracle CRM On Demand are Amazon- and Facebook-esque. Now, while the Siebel interface may not be as bad as a Microsoft Windows 95 screen, it’s definitively of the client-server computing era. Ditch it.

2) Ignore New Capabilities

SaaS CRM offers capabilities Siebel users may never have had before, such as having leads in the CRM system, or ready access to built-in analytics tools. Ignore these options (which you’ve already paid for) at your peril.

3) Don’t Reexamine Business Processes

One of the least effective approaches is to implement cloud CRM — or any new technology — without reexamining your organization’s business processes and understanding the overall objectives. For example, we worked with a large pharmaceutical company that — technically — built a great new system, yet failed to account for the sales program’s completely new methodology. As a result, the organization spent $1 million to build a system that no one could use.

4) Select Technology Shop For Business Implementation

Innoveer’s #1 CRM project ground rule: Never spend money on CRM unless it’s going to improve revenues, growth, or customer satisfaction. Notably, these are all business goals. Accordingly, if you treat CRM as a pure technology exercise, and select an implementation partner that’s just a technology shop focused on delivering something technical, expect to fail.

5) Forget Pilot Projects

Another great way to kill a CRM project is to not pilot it first. (Caveat: Call center pilots aren’t always feasible.) Why pilot a project? Simply because user adoption is the number-one challenge for any CRM project. Accordingly, running a pilot enables you to identify challenges (especially if you’re embracing new business processes at the same time), address them, tweak the system, and only then roll it out to all users. Counterintuitive as it may seem, running a pilot reduces the overall time required to roll out a CRM project.

6) Completely Ignore Data Quality

Many companies moving to cloud CRM think that the software will magically clean their existing data. Whatever you do, beware this trap, and ensure your project has a data cleaning track. Use QAS Experian, for example, or a similar data cleansing product. No matter whether you’re moving up from ACT, Siebel, SalesLogix, always clean existing data to remove duplicate or erroneous entries. (Bonus: this improves user adoption of the new system.)

7) Fail To Give Users Report-Writing Capabilities

Not taking advantage of the reports prebuilt into cloud CRM applications is another frequent mistake. In Siebel, writing reports required hiring a programmer. The Salesforce.com and CRM On Demand world, however, has made citizen developers of us all. Now, anyone can write their own reports; no IT assistance needed. Accordingly, give users access to these tools.

8) Ditch Prebuilt Dashboards That Guide User Behavior

Adding dashboards to Siebel required implementing OBIEE, often to the tune of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars. But in the cloud CRM world, dashboards are built in. Yet, many organizations just moving to the cloud miss the opportunity such dashboards offer to drive user behavior. Just think what a real-time “leader” dashboard — top 5 salespeople, top revenues per office, top agents by call problem resolution — could do for motivation.

Instead, Migrate Right

If those are the top mistakes, how should organizations moving from Siebel to SaaS CRM go forward? Here’s our “how to do it right” list of steps:

1. Forget about your existing application (at least at the start)
2. Identify your project’s business goals and objectives
3. Map those objectives to software options
4. Select “best fit” technology
5. Map and address gaps between Siebel and the new software
6. Ensure project embraces the cloud CRM software’s new features
7. Address data quality at all project stages
8. Migrate to the new software, in stages

As always, don’t start with technology, but rather with business goals. And above all, regardless of the CRM application you ultimately select, don’t fail to maintain a relentless focus on user adoption.

Learn More

To ensure that your CRM program excels, see the big picture. To help, review our “top 10” marketing, sales or service steps to see how your program compares to best practices and our benchmarks.

Ready to move forward? To enable organizations to identify the best way to migrate from Siebel to cloud-based CRM, Innoveer helps businesses identify their business requirements through brief workshops, then plan CRM projects, select the right vendor, and implement the best CRM software (if required, in just four weeks.)

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user The Pug Father.

Spring has sprung, and Salesforce.com is doing its part to chase the winter blues away by introducing its new spring '11 release. Our short video details the best new features.

Forecasting Improvements

Ah, springtime. While it may still be snowing occasionally here in Boston, the signs of spring are all around us. The baseball season has started, the Boston Marathon is only days away, and Salesforce.com has pushed out its spring 2011 release.

As longtime readers of this blog know, we don’t often gush over new technology. Our view is that software is a tool for helping improve CRM-related business processes — everything from campaign management to territory assignment.

Nonetheless, the Salesforce.com Spring ’11 Release has captured the attention of our Salesforce.com certified consultants, and their response has been universally positive.

Green Shoots Signal Springtime

To sum up the best new features in Spring ’11 Release, we turn to Innoveer consultant Brandon Barat, who’s crafted a short, seven-minute video exposé.  Packing true cinematic punch, Brandon demonstrates three key new Salesforce.com features:

• Outlook Integration: While Salesforce.com has integrated with Microsoft Outlook for some time, it’s now better. And making things easier for salespeople is a great idea, not least for addressing the perennial CRM adoption challenge.
• Better Chatter: The second major release of Chatter sees great new features, some ripped from the pages of Twitter and Facebook — no bad thing.
• Dashboards & Reporting: This essential functionality gets a makeover, resulting in better reports that are easier for consultants and admins to create and use.

Cue Lights, Camera …

Without further ado, here’s Brandon on the new Salesforce.com release:

Learn More

See our Salesforce.com success stories, starring Genzyme Biosurgery and Integra LifeSciences.

And despite this blog post’s technology focus, remember that no technology — not even Salesforce.com — stands alone. Accordingly, whether your project involves sales, marketing or customer service, don’t forget: First, plan. Second, implement CRM. Third, prosper.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Beachwood Photography.

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.

Fashion: just a folly? Photograph from Tumble Fish Studio.

Cloud computing and cloud CRM are generating a lot of excitement and buzz these days, leading of course to the inevitable backlash. Having lived and worked through many technology cycles—minicomputer to PC, PC to client/server, client/server to Internet, to virtualization, to the cloud—I find it quite amusing to hear the same old arguments get recycled, again and again, to trash whichever new idea comes along.

One frequent line of attack is that “there’s nothing new in information technology.” To wit, one oft-heard attack has been that cloud computing is nothing more than time-sharing on the old mainframes, now applied to the Internet. With his characteristic punctiliousness, of course Oracle’s Larry Ellison pushed the related cloud criticism even further, saying:

The computer industry is the only industry that’s more fashion-driven than women’s fashion.

Larry’s implication: Fashion is random, devoid of meaning and ultimately very shallow. But this perspective is unfair to both fashion designers and IT professionals. More importantly, it’s also misguided.

Cloud Computing: The New Black?

Perhaps the best rejoinder to Larry’s observation is the song “Fashion,” by David Bowie:

It’s big and it’s bland
Full tension and fear
They do it over there
But we don’t do it here

This “us versus them” mentality, so often present when someone comments on fashion or the fashionable, often dismisses what’s new as being shallow, random or fleeting.

But fashion is an immensely powerful tool, not just in the technology sphere, but for arguably the most powerful imperative of all: propagation. Cue male peacocks with their elaborate feather displays, all trying to dominate by outdoing each other and luring mates.

We Followers of Fashion

Same again on the human front: Why have millions of people purchased an iPhone or a sport utility vehicle, instead of less expensive and still quite utilitarian alternatives?

Not just for show. Photograph by frielp.

One answer is because it’s fashionable—as in, a psychosexual vehicle for flaunting status, wealth, or yes, perhaps even promoting one’s procreative potential. No wonder that fashion changes all of the time. It’s our arms race, as a frenzy of people—or peacocks, for that matter—each try to outdo each other.

The cloud, too, is fashionable. But it’s also the newest technique that businesses can use to exert some advantage over their rivals, by helping them gain new economies of scale, innovate more quickly and better focus on the core activities that make them more competitive.

For example, say Experian uses the cloud to gain an advantage over a competitor, such as Equifax. In short order, Equifax will respond by also adapting cloud-based capabilities, thus nullifying Experian’s temporary advantage. Meanwhile, both will continue hunting for the next competitive edge. This cycle involves investing some money, testing new technologies, driving innovation, seeing others catch up, and then repeating the cycle. Altogether, it looks like fashion, because it is.

That’s not a bad thing. In life, as in technology, fashion can be fleeting, seem random or appear immaterial. But this cycle is far from irrelevant. Fashion is about how we live, work and play. From a species standpoint, this urge to embrace fashion—and to outdo everyone else—is likely hard-wired into our brains. Why denigrate it? It’s who we are, and part of what makes life worth living. Instead, embrace it. Because fashion matters.

Learn More

Cloud CRM is increasingly suited to the needs of many organizations, including large enterprises. But if you’re not yet sold on SaaS, see our white paper on choosing between on-premise and SaaS. Or to learn which SaaS CRM application is best, read our CRM Smackdown.

Nothing works in isolation. Photograph by Mariano Kamp.

Sales force automation, marketing and service—in a word, CRM—doesn’t work in isolation. At some point, perhaps yesterday, an organization will want to integrate its CRM software with any number of applications and sites. Perhaps with its ERP system to automate quote-to-order processes, financial software to handle billing, marketing automation tools to run better campaigns, shipping services such as Fedex and UPS for easier package dispatch, or to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to connect with customers.

Accordingly, when evaluating on-premise versus SaaS—aka cloud-based—CRM software, many organizations ask Innoveer which is easier: integrating with CRM software based on the premises, or in the cloud?

SaaS: Integration is Easier

Perhaps counter-intuitively, most organizations will find that integrating with SaaS CRM is easier. Innoveer consultant Timothy Watt helps me detail the top 10 reasons why:

1. Security: Many large organizations have security policies that prohibit integrating on-premise applications with outside applications or even the company’s website. Regardless of whether these security policies are right or wrong, they create serious operational obstacles.
2. Support for emerging standards: On-premise CRM applications typically support a broader range of existing Web standards and protocols, but lag in supporting the newer standards favored by Web 2.0 applications. For example, organizations can use OAuth to integrate with Facebook, Twitter, and other Web applications without having to store a username or password. Salesforce.com has had built-in OAuth support for more than a year, but not on-premise Siebel CRM.
3. Frequent releases: SaaS applications have frequent and mandatory releases—Salesforce.com, for example, logs three releases per year—which keeps all customers up to date with the latest capabilities. Whereas if Oracle releases new features, such as built-in SAP connectors or OAuth support, for the latest on-premise Siebel CRM application, and you’re still using Siebel 7.8, then you’re out of luck.
4. Mobile integration: With the right add-ons, any CRM software can support mobile devices. But with SaaS, or at least Salesforce.com, you can access any application customizations—made, for example, using the Visualforce framework on Force.com—directly through the standard Salesforce.com application on your handheld (iPhone, BlackBerry or even iPad) without having to use third-party integration software.
5. User experience: Compared with software running on the premises, SaaS CRM applications tend to sport a much more modern user interface that’s easy to augment, for example if you’re blending CRM data with external data. By contrast, the integrations I’ve seen mocked up in on-premise Siebel CRM look clunky and tend to expose the non-intuitiveness of the interface.
6. Integration tools: Cloud-based applications such as NetSuite and Salesforce.com ship with a fair number of tools that make integration with third-party applications easier. For on-premise applications such as Siebel CRM and SAP CRM, we haven’t seen anything similar.
7. AppExchange: AppExchange can provide needed functionality without the need for custom development. Take credit card processing. Siebel CRM offers a few prebuilt integrations to credit card processors, but for anything else, cue roll-your-own code. Whereas a quick search of the AppExchange lists 20 prebuilt credit card processing applications that can be integrated into Salesforce.com with the click of a button.
8. Crowdsource: In a similar vein, SaaS CRM—by virtue of the vendor offering the same version of an application to all users—makes it much easier for a developer to create an enhancement or connector and then sell it to many users. As with the Apple AppStore, with enough of a market, buyers and sellers benefit from the economies of scale.
9. Abstract complexity: Want to get data from a Web Service to Siebel CRM? Typically, that requires four steps (importing the Web Service into Siebel, writing code to interact with the representation of the Web Service, creating database-level fields and columns to store related information, and then adjusting GUI design to display the related information in the user interface). At a high level, the same is true for SaaS CRM, except an administrator can manage the whole process in minutes, not hours or days. Furthermore, the changes won’t break when the application gets upgraded.
10. Cast Iron: If your SaaS CRM application doesn’t have the connector you need—for example, to your SAP system—rather than having to develop your own connector, you have another option: use Cast Iron Systems, an integration-as-a-service provider.

A Question of Convenience

When it comes to raw features and functionality, you can do almost anything with on-premise CRM software. But integrating with cloud-based CRM costs less, takes less time and is much easier to manage. For organizations already inclined to use SaaS CRM, this ease of integration is just one more way in which SaaS helps organizations avoid the hassles associated with installing, maintaining and upgrading on-premise CRM software, and focus instead on selling.

Learn More

Why not run CRM in the cloud? For most organizations, SaaS-based CRM will meet all of their needs. Not sold? See our updated view on the end of Siebel CRM.

Which SaaS CRM application is best? Read our CRM Smackdown to find out more.

Does the new Oracle CRM On Demand, version 17, deliver?

Oracle is gradually switching users over to this new release. Already, however, two of Innoveer’s most experienced CRM On Demand consultants, Sue Stevens and Oliver Dunford, have been kicking the tires, testing what version 17 delivers.

Based on their tests, they’ve identified three highlights:

• Time-based workflows: Configure a “wait” step or time-based trigger for any workflow step.
• Record copying: “Copy button” now creates a new record from an existing one.
• Improved usability: Application resizing, more themes, plus easier skinning and logo additions to rebrand the application.

Here are more details—again courtesy of our consultants Sue and Oliver—about how these changes will help CRM On Demand users:

Nail Contract Renewals (Time-Based Workflows)

Do you sell services via renewable contracts? Salespeople at one Innoveer client, which sells services via annual contracts, have had difficulty using CRM On Demand to sell contract renewals. While renewals are lucrative, salespeople largely focus on finding new business. What salespeople needed: reminders to approach clients soon enough—but not too soon—to discuss annual renewals. (Previously, the company used elaborate reports to try and track contract renewal dates.)

Enter time-based workflows. If an opportunity record has a close date—or a contract expiration date, in this case—then based on that date, CRM On Demand can now automatically trigger any workflow, such as sending an email to the client 15 days before the expiration date, or creating a task for the salesperson to contact the client to schedule an appointment and discuss renewing the contract.

How does this compare to Salesforce.com? We’re not going to keep score here. But at least from a time-based workflow functionality standpoint, CRM On Demand has jumped past the capabilities built into Salesforce.com.

Offer Savvier Service (Time-Based Workflows)

The above example focuses on sales, but time-based workflows are much better known—really, a “must have” feature—in service environments. That’s because, if a customer contacts your service desk and you have a contractual 48-hour response requirement per your service level agreement (SLA), then you need to escalate that service request if the deadline draws near. (Escalation, by the way, also works well for marketing, to ensure that salespeople rapidly pursue high-priority leads.)

Helpfully, the new time-based workflow functionality works not just with standard date/time fields, but also custom ones. One of Innoveer’s clients, for example, uses custom date fields in CRM On Demand to manage service requests, because they can start and stop. So even though the organization has a five-day SLA after it receives a service request, if the organization has to contact the client for more information, the countdown pauses.

Currently, managers must use complex reports to monitor the custom time and date fields. With the new version of CRM On Demand, however, they can now track each SLA and automatically escalate any required response from within the system—a much more elegant approach.

Copy Records Easily

Next up: record copying. In previous versions of CRM On Demand, every new record had to be built from scratch. A workaround involving a Web link did exist, but it was complex, time-consuming and most of our clients found it unreliable. In particular, and for no apparent reason, some fields would simply never copy.

In version 17 of CRM On Demand, Oracle introduces a copy button. Select a record, press the copy button, change or retain any part of the existing record, then hit “save.” Voila, you have a new record.

In addition, administrators can configure what a user can or cannot copy—great for ensuring data quality. For example, if a customer renews an annual contract, when the salesperson copies the old opportunity, all extant information (opportunity name, links to accounts, integral reporting information) may copy automatically, but the system can then be set to require salesperson to enter the new contract expiration date and revenue before it will save the new record.

Screen Size, Themes, Logos and Skins

The new version of CRM On Demand offers multiple usability enhancements, including:

• Themes: More out-of-the-box themes, though aside from tab placement, differences are merely aesthetic.
• Skins: Easily skin the interface with your company’s colors to change application branding.
• Logo: Before, adding a logo required emailing it to customer service. Now, upload your own logo directly.
• Resizable interface: Instead of a screen stuck at a relatively small size—annoying for users with large monitors, especially when scrolling endlessly through reports and dashboards—the application window now resizes.

Out With the Old—In With the New

The above list of new features in version 17 isn’t meant to be exhaustive. Rather, we’re highlighting features that we think current users will want to embrace. And based on our tests, we can also report that they work.

Our advice for Oracle CRM On Demand users: Evaluate these new features—especially time-based workflows—to see how they can help you eliminate existing workarounds or even provide you with valuable new capabilities.

Learn More

To help organizations rapidly configure SaaS CRM applications, as well as to utilize industry benchmarks to ensure that they rapidly achieve their desired sales and business outcomes by using CRM, Innoveer offers its CRM Accelerator: a fast and focused engagement to deploy Oracle CRM On Demand for a group of 50 or fewer users in a fixed time period of under four weeks. Note that Innoveer also offers a CRM Accelerator for Salesforce.com, Onyx and Microsoft CRM.

Curious about which SaaS CRM application is best? To find out, read our CRM Software Smackdown.

Why run customer service in the cloud? Well, let’s rephrase the question in terms of business results. Namely, doesn’t every top-notch call center want to improve:

• Growth by cross-selling and up-selling customers with relevant offers?
• Efficiency by providing service representatives with a better picture of the customer?
• Customer satisfaction by talking with customers more knowledgeably, as well as with greater empathy and intimacy?

For example, you call to renew your car insurance policy. In the call center, the service representative sees not only your account history but also your current Facebook profile picture—a family photo—and notices you have a teenage son. He asks if you’d like to add him to the insurance policy as well.

Or say you’ve been in a fender bender and need to get your car fixed. When you phone your insurance company to locate the nearest auto body shop,  the service agent notices—again from your Facebook photo feed—that you have small children. She asks if you need car seats with your loaner, or if you want to use the ones you have.

In both of these situations, giving the service agent a fuller picture of the customer they’re assisting helps everyone and makes for a richer customer experience. These are just some of the benefits of moving customer service to the cloud.

Insurance Agents Relocate to the Cloud

Recently I asked, Why not run CRM in the cloud? (Just for definition’s sake, by CRM I refer not only to sales force automation, but also to marketing and customer service.) In other words, why not use software-as-a-service (SaaS) CRM applications, provided they deliver—as they typically do—more rapid procurement, easier manageability and a lower total cost of ownership, compared to on-premise CRM applications?

For many organizations, SaaS customer service applications will meet their needs. For example, Innoveer recently helped a property and casualty (P&C) insurance company deploy a SaaS-based customer service application for about 100 call center agents. This isn’t the largest call center we’ve ever worked with, and perhaps the SaaS application doesn’t have all of the advanced features that some of our bigger call center customers have, such as interactive voice response (IVR) integration or computer-telephony integration (CTI) support.

But from a functionality standpoint, the application meets all of the organization’s case management needs—from case capture and assignment to resolution and closure. Furthermore, thanks to having a good plan (because pursuing SaaS CRM applications without a plan is a recipe for failure), the P&C insurer quickly got and running.

What’s not to like about less expensive software that rapidly delivers business value?

Cloud-to-Cloud Integration Benefits

Another reason to run service applications in the cloud is for cloud-to-cloud integration. Many organizations, for example, would love to link their customer service platform to Facebook, so when a customer calls in, the service agent can literally see who they’re helping.

Well, connecting your SaaS customer service application to Facebook is much easier than integrating on-premise CRM with Facebook. (For example, salesforce.com has a Facebook connector; on-premise Siebel does not.) In fact, integrating any two cloud applications will always be easier than integrating an on-premise application to the cloud. With SaaS, one person builds a connector and thousands of people can use it. Whereas when integrating an on-premise application to the cloud, finding that economy of scale is, at best, difficult.

As the Cloud Expands, So Do Service Possibilities

Is SaaS right for all customer service requirements today? No. But that’s changing as the cloud (which includes platforms and infrastructure—not just SaaS) continues to expand.

In other words, as the cloud evolves, the attendant costs and benefits will drive more companies to host their call center in the cloud.

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Mastering customer service, regardless of whether it’s backed by on-premise or SaaS applications, first requires treating the call center as a strategic asset. In other words, drop the “necessary evil” thinking and remake your call center or contact center into a valuable corporate asset.

Until you get your customer service business practices and self-service sites in order, from a service standpoint also forget social networks. (For more on setting the right service priorities in a social networking world, see The Tweet Must Die.)

Finally, with online self-service success rates declining, maybe we should all just use Facebook for every online customer service interaction instead.

As the cloud expands, it's extending SaaS to even the biggest businesses. Photograph by Doug Siefken.

Large + Complicated = On-Premise CRM?

Why not run CRM in the cloud? In other words, why not use SaaS CRM applications, provided they deliver—as they typically do—more rapid procurement, easier manageability and a lower total cost of ownership, compared to on-premise CRM applications?

Well, size may be one factor. Many people’s perception is that SaaS doesn’t work well for large enterprises. But in fact, we’ve found that SaaS solutions are quite a good feature and functionality fit for many organizations, large or small. As the list of salesforce.com customers shows, many heavy hitters are SaaS devotees.

On the other hand, SaaS isn’t the best fit for every organization, and especially large organizations with quite complex requirements. For example, we’re currently helping a large legal information services provider to adopt a new CRM system. Based on our recommendations, the company is implementing an on-premise application, in part because it needs to integrate its CRM software with various back office, order management and provisioning systems. The goal: to enable the company’s sales force to quickly move from quote to order, and then organize product delivery, all from within the CRM application. Building this is relatively complicated, technologically speaking.

Given that technical complexity, as well as the required integration, this type of project is not a great fit for SaaS—at least not in 2010.  I include that caveat because, going forward, we do see more projects of this nature—technically complex CRM implementations requiring advanced functionality and integration—being well served by SaaS.

Redefining the CRM Choice: On-Premise or SaaS

A little over one year ago, Innoveer released its guidance about when to use SaaS versus on-premise CRM software: The New CRM Choice: On-Premise Software or SaaS.

The gist is that in 2008, SaaS CRM applications didn’t offer as many features, or as much functionality, as on-premise applications. For projects with a greater degree of technical or organizational complexity, on-premise CRM software was the better choice.

But that equation has been changing rapidly—and will continue to do so—as cloud computing evolves, further extending SaaS and providing greater business benefits. CRM analyst Denis Pombriant explains:

The Cloud [has] three parts: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), software (SaaS) and, now, a development platform (PaaS). (…) The new ubiquity [of computing access] spawned by Cloud Computing — all three components — is spawning new, fast and, above all, mobile business processes, not just applications.

In other words, SaaS is now just an application layer—albeit with some minimal accompanying tools—in the cloud. To which the cloud adds an infrastructure layer (servers, storage and bandwidth from the likes of Amazon and Google) and platform layer (such as Force.com). Altogether, these layers can make any SaaS application much more useful and easy to work with.

Bigger Clouds, Greater Benefits

As cloud computing expands, it makes SaaS more extensible, useful and cost-effective. Hence my prediction is that SaaS CRM will evolve to become more deeply connected with the expanding cloud ecosystem. In other words, organizations of any size will be able to support much more complex business processes, at lower cost, using SaaS CRM applications.

In 2008, we said that “CRM projects must now begin by answering this fundamental question: on-premise or SaaS?”  Today, however, the question is simpler: Why not use SaaS? And as the cloud evolves, in another three or five years, will we even bother to ask?

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When weighing the pros and cons of on-premise versus SaaS CRM software, assess functionality requirements, organizational structures, costs and long-term goals. For more information, see our aforementioned white paper, The New CRM Choice: On-Premise Software Or SaaS.

Finally, want to know which SaaS CRM software is best? See our CRM Software Smackdown.

CRM: A History of Failure?

Are customer relationship management (CRM) projects prone to failure? ZDNet reviewed analyst firms’ reports to chart general CRM failure rates for 2001-2009:

• 2001 Gartner Group: 50%
• 2002 Butler Group: 70%
• 2002 Selling Power, CSO Forum: 69.3%
• 2005 AMR Research: 18%
• 2006 AMR Research: 31%
• 2007 AMR Research: 29%
• 2007 Economist Intelligence Unit: 56%
• 2009 Forrester Research: 47%

Failure is defined broadly, covering projects that didn’t meet expectations (at best) or failed outright (at worst). Because these statistics come from different research firms using dissimilar research methodologies, you can’t accurately compare year-on-year trends. But to pick just about any given year, my immediate reaction is: There’s no need for CRM failure rates to be this high.

Will project success rates improve? In fact, I predict that sales force automation (SFA) project failure rates are going to increase even more. (The majority of CRM implementations today are for SFA.) Why is that? Simple: Companies are shooting without aiming, just like it was 1999 all over again. The only difference is that instead of implementing on-premises CRM software, they’re using SaaS.

SFA Success Starts With a Plan

What can companies do to ensure that their SFA—or broader CRM (encompassing not just sales, but also service and marketing)—projects meet expectations?

For answers, let’s flash back to 1999, when Lee Iacocca, then CEO of Chrysler, was still a well-known business figure. In those days, he talked a lot about planning as a way of saving money.

Here’s the great thing about planning: you don’t need to spend much money to get a great return. For example, say you spend less than 1% of your expected return on a one-week—or, if you like, two-week—exercise to identify the objectives of your SFA system, as well as what your two-year plan will be to achieve those goals.

As a result of having that plan, you’re probably five times as likely to achieve your objectives, versus just implementing this or that software. And really, what did the planning cost? If your returns are over 100 times that initial planning exercise investment, wasn’t the planning more than justified? In fact, why would you neglect such a foundational step, given the potential returns?

Is SaaS Short-Circuiting Our Brains?

If you follow the Freakonomics camp, you know that psychologically speaking, we humans approach financial matters not from a rational perspective—though we think we’re being objective—but rather with our emotions. And perhaps that’s the answer: SaaS offers the opportunity to have something up and running in days or weeks. It’s the latest and greatest. You want it now. Why bother pausing for even a week or two, to plan?

Just as we’re not naturally adept at rationally analyzing financial patterns, when it comes to CRM projects, we also need to check our innate tendencies at the door. Meaning, sit down and figure out what you really want to do, and how you’re going to do it. Unless you want to fail?

Planning Is Cheap

Based on our experience, and—organizationally speaking—having lived through the dot-com bust as well as the boom that preceded it, we’ve continued to emphasize this theme: Want to succeed? Then don’t just implement software. First, plan.

The good news is that over the past 12 years, we at Innoveer have codified what people should be doing in terms of their CRM planning, and have developed best practices to very quickly help people determine what their plan should be. So whereas a decade ago, planning may have been relatively expensive, today, it’s much easier and less expensive, because we already know the best practices for sales effectiveness, marketing, or customer service.

As a result, creating a plan doesn’t require starting from scratch. Rather, to create an SFA plan, one excellent starting point is to benchmark your company’s sales capabilities—in such areas as relationship management, territory management and pipeline management—against other companies to see understand where your organization excels or needs work.

We’ve found that companies often continue to invest in what they’re already good at. In fact, we recommend investing in what you’re not doing well, because that weakest part of your SFA—or wider CRM—program is what holds you back. Of course, you won’t learn that from just having SaaS CRM software. To find out, you need to build a plan.

Learn More

Innoveer offers a brief workshop to help organizations identify the cost, time and business benefits associated with achieving new and more advanced—meaning, more effective—SFA 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 plans and budgets, with detailed estimates of the required project time and costs to improve specific elements of your sales program.

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