Beyond the CRM Silo: Extending the power of CRM to your whole business

Extending the power of CRM to your whole business.

Beyond the CRM Silo.

In the Dark Ages, companies did a lot of inefficient things.

In the Dark Ages, companies did a lot of inefficient things.Like having different people calling the same prospect five times in a week.

In the Dark Ages, companies did a lot of inefficient things.Like having different people calling the same prospect five times in a week.

Or ignoring 100 fantastic prospects while chasing a poor one.

In the Dark Ages, companies did a lot of inefficient things.Like having different people calling the same prospect five times in a week.

Or ignoring 100 fantastic prospects while chasing a poor one.

Or treating the prospects you know everything about exactly the same as the ones who you know nothing about.

In the Dark Ages, companies did a lot of inefficient things.Like having different people calling the same prospect five times in a week.

Or ignoring 100 fantastic prospects while chasing a poor one.

Or treating the prospects you know everything about exactly the same as the ones who you know nothing about.

In short, sales processes were manual, inefficient and blind.

Then CRM came along.And it was good.Really, really good.

So companies started doing smart things.

Like focusing on the best opportunities.

And using data to engage more intelligently with each prospect and customer.

For the first time, everyone on the sales team could see every interaction between prospects and sales people.

Twenty years later, some companies still think this is where CRM starts and ends: contact management and sales force automation (both incredibly valuable).

But CRM has moved on. A lot.

And smart companies have extended their use of CRM – and the thinking behind CRM – far beyond the sales team.

Fast forward.

These companies have, little by little, created an incredibly valuable asset that touches almost every part of their business.

They’ve created something a geek might call a ‘Customer Relationship Infrastructure’. Or a civilian might call ‘Extended CRM’. Or ‘Connected CRM’.Whatever you call it, it pays significant dividends.

Extend and connect.

They didn’t do it with some kind of masterThey did it by simply, logically extending the powerful idea behind CRM – that the more you know about your customers, the better you can treat them – and putting that idea to work throughout the business.

This wider, more connected, more strategic view of CRM helps them do some dramatic things like:

Sell moreKeep customers happierBoost sales productivityResolve customer service cases fasterFind information fasterCut down on all that annoying email traffic

All of these things are measurable.And we’ve measured them.But you’ll have to wait until slide 30 for that.

Why it matters.

There’s a great opportunity for companies who are still using CRM as an isolated silo doing one, admittedly very cool thing for one, specific department. It’s a big idea. It’s a quick win. And – if you already use CRM at all – you’re ripe for it.

Why do companies keep all that CRM goodness all locked up?

Two reasons.

Because they don’t know all the things you can do once you have all your customer and prospect information in one place.

Because they don’t know all the things you can do once you have all your customer and prospect information in one place.

Because they don’t know all the things you can do once you have all your customer and prospect information in one place.

Because their CRM system is just a CRM system and doesn’t connect to all the other things it could connect with.

Because they don’t know all the things you can do once you have all your customer and prospect information in one place.

Because their CRM system is just a CRM system and doesn’t connect to all the other things it could connect with.

So what are all these important things you can do once you have all your customer and prospect information in one place?

Let’s touch on a few.

Treat people better: Connecting to customer service.When you connect all that great customer data to your customer support team, they can do amazing things.

Like see each customer’s entire history every time they get in touch.

Or capture knowledge about how you fixed a problem, so it’s instantly available for the next case.

Treat people better: Connecting to customer service.When you connect all that great customer data to your customer support team, they can do amazing things.

Like see each customer’s entire history every time they get in touch.

Or capture knowledge about how you fixed a problem, so it’s instantly available for the next case.When you use your CRM assets in customer

service, everyone else (who’s authorised) can see each customer’s service interactions, too.

So a sales person might notice an issue, step in with a super-relevant proposal and be a hero.

Good things happen when you apply your CRM data and insight and mindset to customer service.

And it worksboth ways

Market smarter: Connecting to campaigns.It’s natural to extend the goodies of CRM to your marketing programs.

It’s also easy and very, very lucrative.

Because now, you’re making relevant, targeted or even personalized offers that reflect everything you know about each customer.

Which is way better than broadcasting generic promotions.

Good things happen when you apply your CRM data and insight and mindset to marketing.

Breaking down your CRM silo and putting that knowledge at the centre of your company creates a virtuous circle that touches everything:

A Virtuous CircleHere’s the big idea.

Let’s look at some more examples…

Connecting to social media.For every conversation your customers have with you, there are many more they have without you. And a lot of these conversations are in social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Social CRM is all about bringing these conversations into your customer and prospect profiles.

Simple idea.

Incredibly powerful results.

But CRM locked in a silo can’t do it.

Connecting to collaboration.

What if you had an internal social collaboration platform that was connected to your CRM (including all sales, service and marketing interactions)?

That would be incredibly powerful.

Because customers are what everyone collaborates about. So you can draw on specific customers, cases and campaigns to inform your discussions.

(Sorry to inject an ad here but this one is a bit hard to picture if you haven’t seen it in action, so you might want to go look at a demo of something called Chatter.)

Connecting road warriors.Some of us work at desks all day, every day.

But more and more of us spend our time on the road, or working from home or out with customers.

So if your CRM is locked up as software that lives on a box in your office… it’s not really going to help.

Extended CRM is mobile CRM.

If yours isn’t, it’s only a matter of time before that becomes unsustainable.

Connecting to data you don’t own.One last example: as much knowledge as you have inside your company, there’s a hell of a lot more outside it.

Extended CRM is all about making it easy to bring in data from all these sources – and make it part of your normal business processes.

So you don’t have to go out

to that business database to find

that golden nugget then go back

into your workflow to make use of it.It’s just there.

Extended, connected CRM multiplies the power of customer insight.

There’s a theme running through all this:

It turbo-charges sales, customer service and marketing.It harnesses the power of social media.It informs and accelerates collaboration.It integrates data from outside.It makes everything available on the road.

Knowing all this, why would any business want to keep its CRM system locked up in its own little ‘contact management’ silo?

The big benefits of asking more of your CRM.If you break down the walls around your CRM, here’s what you can do:

Sell more (on average 27% more)

Keep customers happier (28% happier)

Boost sales productivity (by 32% on average)

Resolve customer service cases faster (by 37%)

Find information faster (52% faster)

Cut down on all that annoying email traffic (30% less email)

Those don’t sound like small things.

They sound big enough to make a company consider change.

Source: Average improvements reported by the customers of a certain CRM-and-way-beyond vendor starting with S.

Why the Cloud is the place for Extended CRM.All the good things that we’ve been talking about here can’t really happen if your CRM lives in a box in your server room.

They just can’t.

Even if you had a dedicated team of IT administrators to try to make it happen.

The debate is pretty much over: connected CRM belongs in the Cloud.

Which is good – because Cloud-based apps are far more agile, secure, cost-effective, available and manageable, too.

If your CRM isn’t connected and extended and powering your sales, marketing, customer service and collaboration…

and if it isn’t social and mobile and plumbed in to the huge business databases out there…

and it isn’t in the Cloud…

Why not?

Sales pitch alert!We’ve tried really hard not to sell to you during this evangelism session.

…and why we do it.

But at this point,

it would be

malpractice

not to mention

what we do

for a living…

What we do for a living :Salesforce.com is really big in enterprise cloud computing.

Our social and mobile cloud technologies – including our flagship CRM applications – help companies connect with customers, partners, and employees in entirely new ways.

By now, you’ve noticed we’re BIG believers in the power of CRM and, just as importantly, CRM thinking as a transformative force in business.

How can you tap into that?

Lots of ways…

What we offer :• Sales Cloud, for sales force automation and contact management

• Service Cloud, for customer service and support solutions

• Marketing Cloud, for social media monitoring and engagement

• Chatter, a private social network for your business

• Data.com®, for the most complete source of accurate business data

Plus some more technical products and platforms that help you extend your own CRM and Cloud thinking even further:

• AppExchange, the leading marketplace for enterprise cloud computing applications

• Force.com, for custom application development

• Heroku, for building social and mobile apps

• Database.com, the world's first enterprise cloud database

What unites all this?They all leverage the power of customer insight.

They all live in the Cloud.

So they’re all low cost, low risk and quick to payback.

But we would say that, wouldn’t we?

Our 100,000+ successful customers tell the story best.Here are just a few.

Where to go if you like the sound of all this.

salesforce.com/uk/socialsuccess/form/crm-switchers-guide.jsp

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