Integration—a panacea to CRM woes?

The Indian market may have warmed up to CRM, but the fireworks are still

missing. The belief in the philosophy of customer supremacy is stronger than

ever but teething problems with CRM adoption are far from over. According to

Gartner, "In terms of vendor license revenue, Indian CRM software market

was worth $15 mn (not including services associated with CRM deployment,

maintenance fee, hardware and custom development of CRM solutions, either

in-house or through a third party) in 2004. During the year, the market grew

approximately 11% and is expected to register a 14% CAGR between 2003-2008.

Frost & Sullivan also pegs the CAGR at a comfortable 13% over the next 5

years. But, what these comfortable figures fail to highlight is the fact that

management of customer relationships is still marred by laxities in terms of

deliverance.

CRM Integration-the way to go



Now that some measure of adoption has been achieved, it is time for the
enterprises to move up to the next phase of evolution. What they need right now

is a dose of a more holistic approach to CRM, which means connecting CRM to the

other applications deployed in the organization-to unleash the full potential

of the application as well as plug-in the loopholes. This need, believe

analysts, is going to shape an important trend in the coming years. Amit

Aggarwal, Research Analyst, Technology Practice Group, Frost & Sullivan,

points out towards an increasing trend to integrate CRM with the supply chain,

manufacturing and B2B marketplaces.

“The core issue is not technology related. It is related to the processes and priorities of organizations. Once they are in place, technology is usually a smaller matter”  -Pranav Kumar, Research Director, Gartner India “CRM is all about managing your customer information with the user at every level to provide him with easy access to information which is critical for his work”  -Ashish Kamotra, GM, Adapt Software IAP India

Integration-driving CRM success



Integration is one of the key factors determining the success of the CRM

application. Laxities are there because the various functions within the

business and in cases of larger organizations, the various businesses, have not

been integrated. Taking an example: the credit card division of a bank has no

relation with the home loans division for the same customer. Very often the home

loan customer gets a call from the bank to take its credit cards. The bank, in

this case, has simply leveraged the database of its home loans division to sell

its credit cards without having any clue that the customer already has one from

them.

Integration of various customer touch points needs to be tapped to overcome

this situation. According to Ashish Kamotra, General Manager, Adapt Software IAP

India, CRM is all about managing your customer information with the user at

every level to provide him with easy access to information which is critical for

his work. "Integration is a necessity for the entire system to work

properly," agrees Ravi Kathuria, Director Marketing, SSA Global India.

Apart from driving the basic day-to-day objectives of the CRM application in

an efficient manner, another critical issue today is deriving more

functionalities and analytics out of the application. It is important for the

sales representatives to have basic financial figures for their customers,

delivery status for the sales orders and inventory status, in the field or

whenever it is that they need it. 

“Integration of various customer touch points needs to be tapped. It is a necessity for the entire system to work properly”  -Ravi Kathuria, Director Marketing, SSA Global India

These factors, says Kamotra, are very important for successful implementation

of any sales force Automation tool. Similarly, a service staff should be able to

view pending problems, spare parts availability and service revenue, as an

important factor to drive their CRM initiative. Integration becomes imperative

to meet the growing demands made on CRM owing to increasing competition. Some of

the key applications, high on the agenda of integration with CRM, include

back-send applications like ERP, SCM, accounting, billing, etc., and other

front-end applications like the Point Of Sale (POS) systems in retail where

bills are generated.

Present scenario



Lack of awareness and lower levels of maturity are some of the key factors

for the lack of enthusiasm about integrating CRM.

According to Pranab Kumar, research director, Gartner India, "Often,

companies implement CRM modules to solve a pressing problem without regard to

the big picture. So, there might not be any integration between back end and CRM,

but also between different CRM modules and different customer interaction

channels." Thomas Abraham, Director-India, Interact Commerce Corporation,

explains that the mindset of most of the companies who have already implemented

CRM is to concentrate on the stabilization of the application and ensure that

the primary day-to-day job is taken care of in the first phase, leaving

integration issues and getting more out of the application in terms of analytics

in the next phase.

Future expectations



A positive aspect of the growing awareness is the fact that many of the new

CRM implementations might go for integration right from the beginning. For those

implementing ERP, chances are that a greater number will be going for solutions

with pre-integrated CRM applications. The vendors are counting on the next 2-3

years for some significant action to start on the integration front.

The first ones to take the plunge are the larger enterprises, whose CRM

implementations are in the process of stabilization. Following their lead will

be the SMBs, the next big opportunity in the CRM market. In terms of verticals,

the awareness relating to integration is relatively higher among the banking and

financial and the telecom segments. This will further percolate down to the

healthcare and manufacturing segments as well. According to Sanjay Agarwala,

director, ESS, "As the integration process take off in the second phase it

will lead to more efficiencies and improvements."

Beyond the technology issue



However, at the same time, vendors and analysts offer a note of caution on

putting the blame for loopholes in the deliverance of CRM, entirely on the

technology factor. It's all in the mindset. A basic customer orientation is a

pre-requisite for the technology to succeed. "The core issue is not

technology related. It is related to the processes and priorities of

organizations. Once they are in place, technology is usually a smaller

matter," explains Kumar. Many times, CRM deployment failures spring from

lack of process change or project management. As a result, the issue will have

to be tackled from the very core-of changing the basic orientation towards the

customers, with technology acting as the facilitator.

Team DQ