Friday, September 19, 2014

Implementing CRM systems - links


11 terrible CRM SYSTEMS

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is available in both on-premise (approximately $1,100 per named user and approximately $5,000 for the server software) or via the cloud at $44/month/user.  Dynamics CRM has grown significantly over the past few years, mainly because of its ease of use and seamless integration with all-things-Microsoft, from Outlook and Office to Sharepoint and its other business applications like Dynamics GP.  Dynamics is extremely customizable, scalable to larger, enterprise-size workgroups and serviced through Microsoft’s partner channel.

Salesforce.com is arguably the most well known of these applications.  And deservedly so.  The company pretty much invented cloud-based CRM and remains committed to its future.  Like the products listed below, Salesforce.com CRM -0.35% offers sales, marketing and service management capabilities to its small and (very) large customers.  The application is only available through the cloud and can range in price from $60 to $125 per month per user for the typical corporate version (although pricing can be less for very basic features or more depending on the added modules purchased).

Overview of CRM Systems

Implementing CRM System – Roadmap

BTAR Case

 A North American based retailer that does business primarily in the United States, but also with some stores in Canada sends out weekly promotional marketing material to customers, and potential customers.  Recent legislation has passed in Canada called “Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation” or better known as CASL.  The premise of this law is to prevent Canadian citizens from receiving unsolicited marketing communications over different types of mediums like email, texting, social media, or instant messaging.  The law still allows this type of communication but only when permission is obtained from the individual.
It is still unclear what types of communication fall under CASL, therefore workers need to determine what types of communication apply to CASL for example bill pay notification, or a weekly sales flyer.  Currently  when a customer opt’s into receiving electronic communication their name is added to a database, with CASL regulations it is needed to be determined what determines a person’s acceptance to receive electronic communications.  Our company doesn’t want to lose out on sale opportunities, but we need to comply with the law.  The fines for violating this law reach as high as $10 million per infringing communication.

QUESTIONS

    What does this North American retailer sell? 

Primarily electronics, and appliances, direct competitor to Best Buy

    Are these frequent small purchases or large durable goods type products? 

Both some items like CD’s, cables, hard drives, small electronic components, but other items like TV, and appliances are longer term.

    Are these strictly online purchases or do we have “bricks&mortar” shops?

Both

    What percentage of our customers are repeat customers and what percentage are one time buyers?

70% have made purchase at least one purchase before, 30 percent are new customers.

    What portion of its revenues and profits are derived from Canadian sales?  How significant is this market to our sales and profitability? 

Canadian sales make up only 15% of the company’s revenue, and contributes 10% to the company’s overall profitability.

    What is our advertising conversion ratio?  Churn rate? How much does our email advertising contribute to revenue?  What other advertising approaches do we currently use?

No assessment has been made to determine how much revenue comes from what media advertising streams.  Given the overall drop in newspaper circulation the company wants to focus more on electronic advertising.  For example offering text alerts for special sales, special email alerts, along with regular weekly ad flyer.  The company as well advertises on Social Media through the use of Twitter, and Facebook.

    What is meant by “weekly promotional materials” (WPM)?  CASL only covers “CEM - Commercial Electronic Message.”  So this must be a weekly email or text message?  Do we use social networking platforms such as Facebook or Youtube as well?

Yes think electronic version of something similar to this, http://localad.homedepot.com/HomeDepotSD/LocalAd?storeid=2506260#!/.  A weekly ad that talks about what is on sale that week via email, along with occasional special ads, and special text alerts as well.  Facebook, and twitters are used as well in this communication.

    How were the customer’s email addresses obtained? From a previous purchase?  From a product inquiry?  From a signup on our website?  Product registration cards?  Loan applications?

At checkout it is provided to the cashier, sign up for web or text alerts from the company website.

    Do we just maintain a single “contact List” of email addresses or do we have a customer database that keeps track of how we obtained those addresses?  Do we have multiple databases maintained by different contactors?  (Marketing, Billing, Warranty, etc).”

Currently today this information is stored in a customer profile database that contains just customer information.  One of the fields that is identified by that customer is their email address, and a field that indicates can we market to them or not.

    Messages “to a current customer or someone who has inquired in the last six months” are exempt.  As are messages that “provide warranty, recall, safety, or security information about a product or service purchased by the recipient” or “provide information about a purchase, subscription, membership, account, loan, or other ongoing relationship, including delivery of product updates or upgrades.”  Do message recipients currently belong to these classes?

This is something to be determined the company has suspended all electronic communication in Canada until it can be determine what is safe to electronically communicate.

    If the current WPM is not exempt under one of these classes, it must have implied consent.  Implied consent includes when a “recipient has purchased a product, service or made another business deal, contract, or membership with your organization in the last 24 months.”  Is this the case currently?

Yes if the email address is provided they are currently marketed to unless they request we stop.

    Express consent can be obtained by an agreement to a simple question such as “Do you want to receive monthly newsletters and weekly discount notifications from Company X."  Do we preface our WPM with this question?

This is asked if the customer makes a transaction online, but verbally asked in the store.  Promotions in the past have been offered giving to the customer giving them additional money off a purchase if their email address is provided.

    Do we provide an “Unsubscribe” option on current WPM emails?  The law allows for a three year transition period and we may continue to solicit them unless they unsubscribe.

Unsubscribe option is offered, which then updates that customer’s profile.


NOTES

Alternative A (Comprehensive CRM)
Treat the disease, not the symptom!

The problem is that we treat our customers as unknown to us.  We do not know who they are and we do not care, we simply want them to buy our stuff.  If that means we shove advertising at them randomly, then so be it.

CASL is the result of customers and potential customers growing sick of this shoddy treatment.  They view our marketing offers as unsolicited SPAM, junk mail.  They want to be protected from us.

This is not a good way to gain customers and adherents.

CASL addresses a symptom.  We could view our response to CASL as a workaround.  Just “establish contact” to qualify a person as having granted “implied consent” and then we can continue the bombardment.

Why not use this as a wake-up call and solve the actual problem?

What we need is a whole new way of viewing our “customers.” 
We need to dissolve the boundaries between them and us.
We need to bring them inside. 

Let’s build a community where we have conversations and dialogues about our products and services.
Where all contacts are ongoing. 
Where we know who our customers are
We know Their names,
Their interests
Their needs
Their wants
Their complaints
Their suggestions

“What are our Customers Lifetime Value (CLV) scores? --  based on the relationship
between the revenue produced by a specific customer, the expenses incurred in
acquiring and servicing that customer, and the expected life of the relationship
between the customer and the company.” (L&L 12)

“Customer churn is reduced as sales, service, and marketing better respond to
customer needs. The churn rate measures the number of customers who stop
using or purchasing products or services from a company. It is an important
indicator of the growth or decline of a firm’s customer base.” (L&L 12)

We need a comprehensive Customer Relationship Management platform with an active business intelligence component.
We should be able to personalize and target our offerings so that they do not appear as cheap SPAM, but are virtually indistinguishable from a personalized and direct appeal.

Build loyalty club rewards, offer rewards at time of sale, not some time in the future, build online social networking with reviews, complaints, suggestions, help features, build community resources -- blogs and wikis, analyze all touchpoints! 

In house or in the cloud?

Alternative B (Business Intelligence/Data Warehousing)
Build a customer data warehouse to eliminate redundancies, centralize and standardize customer information into “a single version of the truth”, add information related to implied or explicit consent, such as touchpoint, date of last contact, etc.  Develop data cleansing and validation reports to insure that no solicitations are directed at those who have unsubscribed, and that all recipients of CEM meet implied consent criteria or are within 24 months of last purchase.  Begin using business intelligence to better understand our customers and begin to classify them according to criteria like how often do they make purchases, do they submit registration of their products, do they respond to online or email offerings, have they provided explicit consent, etc.

Alternative C (Data Problem/Trigger Events and Stored Procs)
Build simple data capture tools to game the system.  Tag our contacts with Expiration Dates and keep tabs on their “implied consent” so as to meet the letter of the CASL law.  This is viewing this as a data problem, to be solved, not as a symptom of a bigger problem. 

Using SQL triggers (pg 289)
A trigger is a stored program that is executed by the DBMS whenever a specified event occurs.
Triggers for Oracle Database are written in Java or in Oracle’s PL/SQL. SQL Server triggers are
written in Microsoft .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR) languages, such as Visual
Basic.NET, or Microsoft’s T-SQL. MySQL triggers are written in MySQL’s variant of SQL.

A trigger is attached to a table or a view. A table or a view may have many triggers, but a
trigger is associated with just one table or view. A trigger is invoked by an SQL DML INSERT,
UPDATE, or DELETE request on the table or view to which it is attached.

Figure 7-24 summarizes
the triggers available for SQL Server 2008 R2, Oracle Database 11g, and MySQL 5.5.
Oracle Database 11g supports three kinds of triggers: BEFORE, INSTEAD OF, and AFTER.
As you would expect, BEFORE triggers are executed before the DBMS processes the insert,
update, or delete request. INSTEAD OF triggers are executed in place of any DBMS processing
of the insert, update, or delete request. AFTER triggers are executed after the insert, update, or
delete request has been processed. Altogether, nine trigger types are possible: BEFORE
(INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE), INSTEAD OF (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE), and AFTER
(INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE).

Since SQL Server 2005, SQL Server supports DDL triggers (triggers on such SQL DDL
statements as CREATE, ALTER and DROP) as well as DML triggers. We will only deal with the
DML triggers here, which for SQL Server 2008 R2 are INSTEAD OF and AFTER triggers on
INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE. (Microsoft includes the FOR keyword, but this is a synonym
for AFTER in Microsoft syntax.) Thus, we have six possible trigger types.
MySQL 5.5 supports only BEFORE and AFTER triggers, thus it supports only six trigger
types. Other DBMS products support triggers differently. See the documentation of your
product to determine which trigger types it supports.

When a trigger is invoked, the DBMS makes the data involved in the requested action
available to the trigger code. For an insert, the DBMS will supply the values of columns for the
row that is being inserted. For deletions, the DBMS will supply the values of columns for
the row that is being deleted. For updates, it will supply both the old and the new values.

Triggers have many uses. In this chapter, we consider the four uses summarized in
Figure 7-25:
• Providing default values
• Enforcing data constraints
• Updating SQL views
• Performing referential integrity actions

Using Stored Procedures (pg 295)
A stored procedure is a program that is stored within the database and compiled when used.
In Oracle Database, stored procedures can be written in PL/SQL or in Java. With SQL Server
2008 R2, stored procedures are written in T-SQL or a .NET CLR language, such as Visual
Basic.NET, C#.NET, or C++.NET. With MySQL, stored procedures are written in MySQL’s
variant of SQL.

Stored procedures can receive input parameters and return results. Unlike triggers,
which are attached to a given table or view, stored procedures are attached to the database.
They can be executed by any process using the database that has permission to use the
procedure. Differences between triggers and stored procedures are summarized in
Figure 7-31.

Triggers vs. Stored procedures (Figure 7-31)
• Trigger
— Module of code that is called by the DBMS when INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE commands are issued
— Assigned to a table or view
— Depending on the DBMS, may have more than one trigger per table or view
— Triggers may issue INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE commands and thereby may cause the invocation of other triggers
• Stored Procedure
— Module of code that is called by a user or database administrator
— Assigned to a database, but not to a table or a view
— Can issue INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, and MERGE commands
— Used for repetitive administration tasks or as part of an application

Stored procedures are used for many purposes. Although database administrators use
them to perform common administration tasks, their primary use is within database applications.
They can be invoked from application programs written in languages such as COBOL, C,
Java, C#, or C++.

They also can be invoked from Web pages (as we will in Chapter 11) using, for
example, VBScript, JavaScript or PHP. Ad hoc users can run them from DBMS management
products such as SQL*Plus or SQL Developer in Oracle Database, SQL Server Management
Studio in SQL Server, or the MySQL Workbench in MySQL.

The advantages of using stored procedures are listed (in Figure 7-32. )

Advantages of Stored Procedures
• Greater security
• Decreased network traffic
• SQL can be optimized
• Code sharing
-          Less work
-          Standardized processing
-          Specialization among developers

Unlike application code, stored procedures are never distributed to client computers. They always reside in the database and are processed by the DBMS on the database server. Thus, they are more secure than distributed application code, and they also reduce network traffic.

Increasingly, stored procedures are the preferred mode of processing application logic over the Internet or corporate intranets. Another advantage of stored procedures is that their SQL statements can be optimized by the DBMS compiler.

When application logic is placed in a stored procedure, many different application programmers can use that code. This sharing results not only in less work, but also in standardized processing. Further, the developers best suited for database work can create the stored procedures while other developers, say, those who specialize in Web-tier programming, can do other work. Because of these advantages, it is likely that stored procedures will see increased use in the future.

Reference

Kroenke and Auer. (2012). Database Processing: Fundamentals, Design, and Implementation.  Pearson. 12th edition.


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