People not cash key to CRM
(Australia) On the day the Commonwealth Bank revealed it would spend $100 million on its new customer relationship management system, other bank IT managers said the secret to CRM wasn’t how much you spent that mattered but getting staff to use the system.
Speaking at Insto’s Technology Evolution Forum, Deutsche Asset Management head of IT James Kent said his company’s "first iteration" of CRM consisted of a "best of breed package, infrastructure like you wouldn’t believe, and cost way too much money".
He said the original system produced "fantastic" management reports but was so big and cumbersome that sales staff were deterred from inputting information, which undermined the quality of data that was being extracted.
Since then, Kent said Deutsche Asset Management had totally redesigned its CRM system, making it simpler for the company’s mobile sales force to enter information.
"It’s about making it as simple as possible for the guys that are filling out their call notes on planes or in taxis. That’s what we got wrong the first time," he said.
"We’ve now made it workable and manageable and we’ve got the sales force to adopt it and believe in it."
Kent said the company’s new approach to CRM was resulting in savings of $500,000 each year.
Westpac head of IT strategy Branko Panich said it was vital that any new system delivered early value to "get the work force to use it". Once that had happened, an organisation could then add extra functionality.
He said the bank was at an early stage of rolling out a new generation CRM system and had learnt from the first generation of CRM and other IT initiatives that a major project had to broken up into smaller pieces.
"These things are so big and so ugly that you can’t attack it all at once, so getting priorities right and working out how to break it down and which bits to do first is pretty critical," Panich said.
He said the original system produced "fantastic" management reports but was so big and cumbersome that sales staff were deterred from inputting information, which undermined the quality of data that was being extracted.
Since then, Kent said Deutsche Asset Management had totally redesigned its CRM system, making it simpler for the company’s mobile sales force to enter information.
"It’s about making it as simple as possible for the guys that are filling out their call notes on planes or in taxis. That’s what we got wrong the first time," he said.
"We’ve now made it workable and manageable and we’ve got the sales force to adopt it and believe in it."
Kent said the company’s new approach to CRM was resulting in savings of $500,000 each year.
Westpac head of IT strategy Branko Panich said it was vital that any new system delivered early value to "get the work force to use it". Once that had happened, an organisation could then add extra functionality.
He said the bank was at an early stage of rolling out a new generation CRM system and had learnt from the first generation of CRM and other IT initiatives that a major project had to broken up into smaller pieces.
"These things are so big and so ugly that you can’t attack it all at once, so getting priorities right and working out how to break it down and which bits to do first is pretty critical," Panich said.
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