The Big Picture - Automation

I said in my opening post that this blog would be mostly technical in nature but I also want to wax eloquently on some best practice issues and some general CRM technology strategy. So let me start by talking about a proposition a friend of mine in the industry presented to me several years back. What he said was basically this (paraphrasing): "Siebel is damn expensive. Most clients spend millions on all the license fees and support costs, and never use more than the underlying data model. So instead of wasting all that money, let me put together a team of developers to install an open source CRM product to customize a data model for you on the cheap." The revenue model for him was in hosting that solution but you could make some money off the customization too.

I find this to be a pretty compelling argument because, in general, he is right. Most Siebel customers I have seen basically do use Siebel as a data model. What I mean by that they have deployed various numbers of views (depending on how widespread their user base is) with essentially the functionality to capture all sorts of data in elaborate ways. Now when Siebel first came out, that in and of itself was a pretty powerful tool. Both from the end user's standpoint who could use it to improve their customer interactions by first reviewing their history, but also from a management reporting (trends and forecasts) point of view. But let's face it. Lots of applications can do that now. I mean the basic idea of a table representing an account, a contact, an opportunity, and a bunch of transaction data with some views sitting on top of them is not exactly revolutionary anymore. So buying Siebel and using it in this way is not exactly going to return a lot of value. And the incremental bells and whistles that have been added along the way in the forms of various interface platforms are nice but do not really separate Siebel from the pack.

Well I am still working with Siebel many years later and I don't think it is enjoyable to work with a product you don't believe in so I must have resolved this value proposition. The key is really to drive process automation. Most initial implementations will probably still consist of implementing and customizing a data model, maybe some interfaces to fill that model with data from internal and external sources. But the important thing for clients to do, and for good system integrators to do is to sell their sponsors on the value behind process automation. This does a couple of things.

1. Increases the return on the investment
2. Reduces the opportunity cost of not investing in a simpler alternative.
3. Delivers a tangible benefit to the day to day end user which improves user adoption.

The first two things are two different sides of the same coin. By automating a process, you are increasing the client's bottom line in a number of potential ways:

• Reducing the number of steps a user is executing, thereby either freeing up user time to do other things, reducing the need to hire additional users, or allowing for maintaining constant operations with fewer users (yeah that is just a really complicated way of saying laying people off)
• Decreasing the time it takes to do things. This can lead to earlier sales, earlier conversions, and reduced downtime; all equating to higher revenues.

As for improving user adoption; how does it do this? Keep in mind when deploying a data model type implementation, the day to day user may end up actually doing more perceived work. In other words, in order to actually capture all those robust attributes about every customer, every deal, contact, order, etc, that data has to be entered by an end user. The presense of this data in a single system may save that user time in the long run

• Not having to enter it multiple times themselves
• Sharing the data with other users so as not to enter it
• Incentive compensated users will hopefully see a better conversion rate as they use the information better

But let's face it, many day to day end users are not the savvyest user groups, and see a Siebel implementation as more work for them to do. This is largely perception but that is the hand we have been dealt. Automation is a way to counter this. First, it is usually quite visible. User's see the records that have been created "behind the scenes" and know that the system did that job for them (obviously there is a sales job here for us to make sure users know this). This has a certain "oohs and aahs" factor to it. Second, more specifically, it directly reduces the amount of data entry an end user actually has to do.

So a good Siebel implemenation strategic lifecycle will first vastly increase the amount of data captured about the CRM universe, and then automate the way that data is captured and used. This should be a fairly iterative process so that end users are never overwhelmed by it. Siebel provides a whole tool kit of platforms to deliver this automation:

• Assignment Manager
• Data Validation Manager/Haley's Engine
• Custom Workflow Processes
• Task UI
• Smart Scripts
• Analytics (outside of Marketing, this can be a trigger to start process to upsell or solve problems before they happen)

And not to sell this community short, it takes a really good integrator to get the job done right. Knowing how to use one of the above tools from a technical standpoint does practically nothing if they are not implemented in a way that makes strategic sense for the client. I have done a lot with Assignement Manager, Workflow, and DVM so I may touch on those in future posts.