CRM the second most prominent business management tool

The financial newspaper, The Economist, recently reported that, according to the latest survey of management strategies by management consultants Bain & Company, CRM is now ranked as the second most prominent business management tool.

CRM is now second only to strategic planning, and it is said to be used by four out of every five companies. The survey is part of an ongoing analysis of management strategies that has been conducted by Bain & Company for the past 12 years.

In the survey, CRM has risen an incredible five spots, from seventh place last year to second place this year. In the same article, Darrell Rigby of Bain & Company, who founded the survey, said managers are now particularly keen on anything that helps them get closer to their customers, as two-thirds of them say that "insufficient customer insight" is what hurts their business.

Another research organisation that has been carrying out management market surveys recently is the Hewson Group. It carried out a programme whereby senior managers of mid-market companies were interviewed, many of which were existing Maximizer CRM users. The companies interviewed typically employed less than 1 000 people and constituted a market that has, of late, been attracting a lot of attention from vendors such as SAP, Microsoft and Salesforce.com.

The reason these big vendors are so interested in this market is because across the EMEA region the CRM mid-market space is relatively underdeveloped as the CRM systems that are in place are often inappropriate, homebuilt or obsolescent.

This means that there is, potentially, a $3 billion marketplace available for those who can get it right. However, getting it right is not that easy, and that is one of the reasons why the mid-market has not been properly addressed until now.

It is commonly agreed among analysts that smaller companies do not necessarily have smaller problems (other than integration to legacy systems where there are often far fewer to deal with) in terms of how they service their markets. They need to provide levels of customer access and response that are comparable with their bigger competitors. In a multi-channel world, it will not be good enough to offer disconnected and incoherent experiences to the customer, nor can organisations function properly if their data is not controlled.

To remain competitive, smaller companies must adopt increasingly sophisticated solutions. The challenge is to acquire and implement the appropriate systems at an acceptable cost, within an acceptable time frame and with the correct alignment to business strategy. This really is a significant challenge, and one which the enterprise vendors are struggling to come to terms with. The history of CRM tells us that getting it right involves considerable thought before-hand, and expert assistance during the implementation. Almost certainly, it will involve a network of resellers or business partners who can address both the business and technical issues that clients face. It is equally likely that these resellers will have the advantage of either local or specialist expertise within a specific domain.

There are many things in the mid-market that are not known for sure, and it was therefore especially interesting when the Hewson Group researched Maximizer Software`s clients. Maximizer has one of the largest and longest established reseller channels in the EMEA region, and it was perhaps no surprise that the clients, almost without exception, thought they were very dependent on the business partner for support and advice. Perhaps less obvious was the discovery that most users were still concentrating mainly on internal processes rather than dealing with external customers as a priority. In a sense, this mirrors almost exactly the type of project common in the enterprise area about four years ago.

The views conveyed to the Hewson Group suggested that the mid-market would follow the enterprise area in the adoption of more customer-centric applications within Maximizer, such as contact centres, analytics and portals. While analysts tend to regard sales or contact management as a tactical application, it was also interesting to discover that most of the directors interviewed regarded their use of Maximizer as strategic. Without it most would have had no control over key data, nor would they have been able to engineer the main processes or work flows the company operated on. The lesson here is that most mid-market companies in the EMEA region still need to address the fundamentals, such as data and IT infrastructure, but they also require a lot of help in visualising how they should move on to the sophisticated use of this infrastructure, which will enable them to close the technology advantage that their bigger competitors have.

Local CRM solutions provider and Maximizer Software Business Partner, Camsoft Solutions, says the Hewson Group`s research is borne out in its own experience with its customers, and Camsoft has reported that Maximizer`s Enterprise 8 CRM solution is enjoying widespread success in the South African market. "This year we have already started implementing sophisticated portal and custom Maximizer Enterprise solutions at several large corporates having offices throughout SA," comments Mark Annett, national product manager at Camsoft Solutions.

"Maximizer has proved itself to be very affordable for these customers and is considered unrivalled in the marketplace in terms of features and benefits versus total cost of ownership," continues Annett. "Another popular option is the Product Upgrade Agreement, where for a very affordable yearly licence fee organisations automatically get to use the latest version of Maximizer Enterprise each time it is released. We are finding that many companies have already put policies in place whereby software upgrade agreements are required to keep all of their software on the latest versions, and we have also noticed that this appears to be a growing trend in SA," concludes Annett.

For further information, visit Camsoft Solutions at the Futurex exhibition, being held at the Sandton Convention Centre from 17 to 20 May, located on stand F9, in Hall 2.