When CRM products dont fit, platforms are the way to go

Some verticals like manufacturing are blessed to have products that fit their business processes to a high degree, and Enterprise Application products make a lot of sense for them. Similarly a standard CRM or Financial applications make sense for smaller companies since business processes are common across organizations. One can leverage the best practices,economies of scale as well as ruggedization that products have undergone and gain from it.

However, if you are in a vertical where its rare to find products that fits your business, or worse still if you are in a business where the operational processes keep changing, products can be dangerous for your business. Its common knowledge that if product fitment levels are low then you should avoid customizing the product since it can break down the architecture and become incredibly expensive to maintain.

But what are the options in front of such organizations? Custom solutions take too long. The answer lies in platform based solutions. In the past three to four years a number of scalable and rapid development platforms have appeared in the market. These allow organizations to quickly mash smaller applications meant for fulfilling a localized need. Force.com has been succesful in providing good extensions to salesforce.com. Longjump and Coghead are some other companies. These products would come under the category of PaaS.

Are these platforms good for mainstream applications on which enterprises run? The answer is yes, but one would need a Mainstream Platform as a Service (MPaaS - a term I coined for this) provider to do this. An MPaaS solution has a mainstream product, as well as a very rapid application development environment to enable customers leverage the core product for the backbone areas like CRM or financials and the platform to deliver the unique processes that are operationally dynamic. While numerous vendors will promise to do this, the ones that can be truly classified as MPaaS are ones who

Have already delivered ERP class products to a market using the platform
Can deliver rugged and power packed modules as extensions in short timeframes
Can offer unique methodologies where customers can see what they are going to get for the unique processes very early in the development cycle.
Can build massive applications that span the Enterprise in short timeframes

At KServe (http://www.kserve.net/) we continue to focus on Mainstream PaaS. The link below points to a case study of a construction company that leveraged this approach when their product approach did not work out. An end to end solution was delivered this company for their operations in a years time.

http://www.kserve.net/pdf/KServe%20ERP%20enables%20Dodla%20Engineering%20go%20100%20percent%20%20online.pdf

We have also fine tuned a methodology to delivery such solutions to customers - and this link gives more details about its success.

http://www.kserve.net/Enterprise_KServe_Apps.html

In my next blog I will expand on the methodology and how it can revolutionize the way software is delivered worldwide.

CRM and ERP – do they need to be tightly integrated?

A hard question, but a question that many CIO’s are asking. The key to the answer lies in asking just one question

Is the volume of leads/opportunities that converted to orders very high?

If yes, plan to integrate your CRM and ERP
Otherwise, it is not necessary to integrate them

If you are selling very high value projects, where you perform a lot of activities to get the business but the number orders per period may be low. The number of customers may also be low but the number of support calls may be very high. There is no need to integrate the CRM to ERP in this case.

If you are selling products where there are a large number of opportunities converted into orders, you should plan for integration. When leads/ opportunities get converted there are numerous entities like Customer codes, product codes, price lists, discount codes, currency codes, exchange rates, pay terms, company and division codes that need to be sync for opportunities to be converted to orders. You cannot manage without the integration. If you are buying disparate systems and want to integrate, it is feasible but plan for a complex project.

At Kallos, we have executed a project integrating a CRM with an ERP for a multinational with plants in 7 countries. It is complex, but we delivered succesfully and it has been running for 4 years.

This may be a simplistic answer , and we may have exceptions, but is a good thumb rule. In either case don’t let your ERP vendor tell you that it has some CRM features and that is enough. CRM has enough business processes covered that are not a part of ERP and if your business needs that, don’t expect the ERP to extend to handle them. Ask for a separate CRM.

KServe CRM can be run separately, integrate with the KServe ERP, or a custom integration can be made with another ERP. Its your process that determines our response.

Without an underlying platform, a CRM software product will crumble

Take any good product and you will notice something - consistency across the board. The interface will be the same across

* User screens,
* Reports
* Alerts
* Help pickers
* Menu structures
* Login and navigation
* Text fonts

Look deeper under the hood and you will see consistency in smaller things like

* How to recognize mandatory fields and document identifiers
* What type of fields default and under what conditions
* How does one delete, modify or view a record
* What referential integrity checks should be done during deletion
* How can one export data or send trigger mails
* How are additional business rules or logic added

Many products are built without an underlying platform. However once customer and industry specific variations occur, it is almost impossible to keep adding to the product without affecting the underlying consistency and architecture. It is like building a house without a foundation. The wise man built his house on a rock - or in today's terms a good foundation. Take any product that has succeeded over a long period of time SAP, Oracle, Peoplesoft, Siebel - all of them have a good foundation.

The KServe products (www.KServe.net) are all built on the same underlying platform. Take a look at CRM, HCM or our ERP products - they will have consistency and a uniform architecture. This is because we built a strong foundation. The foundation is proven across many customers, and so all our products are proven. You only have to verify if the process covered is relevant to your business and be sure that the application will stand the rigor of rugged usage by enterprise users.

CRM - Open Source or Regular Software?

Open Source is great - for software that is being used en-masse around the world. It works well when

* there are millions of users around the world for that need
* when there is a strong core that stays frozen and innovation is limited to open areas
* when there is a powerful consortium playing the role of a regulator and innovator
* when there is enough motivation for partners and individuals around the world to have their own successful business models around it

I love Open Source models when it comes to Operating Systems and Databases e.g. Linux or MySQL.

For CRM, I am skeptical of Open Source doing well in the long run. This is primarily because Enterprise Applications & CRM vary depending on the industry vertical, organization model, country specific statutory needs, different product and customer models and hence there is a need for a large number of flavors. There are hundreds of vendors and most are surviving because there is a need to serve these variations. Open source solutions may appear to be adaptable to these variations, but when deeper modifications are to be done, partners in the consortium will find the going tough. Vendors who know their code and provide good tools do better.

At the surface CRM may be the same, but if you are a distribution company one CRM may be better, if you are a financial services firm something else may be better and if you are in real estate you may need a version that specializes in that vertical.

The open source model relies on partners and it is not easy for partners to modify the source code even though they have access to it. Such applications may have half a million lines of code and wrong modifications may make the applications unstable. A product with strong core functionality, business relevance to your vertical, good adaptability features and good services around it may be the better choice.

Don't be swayed by the freedom of open source - finally it is parameters like relevance to your business, reliability, service levels and affordability that matter. These do not change - open source or not.

That is why KServe is not an open source model, but an open customer model. We make sure that your business is served well by our CRM product, the associated utilities and the implementation service model.

Slowing Economies and CRM

The bubble has burst and economies are slowing down. It is time to cut back to the basics and the essentials. In the sales and marketing function questions different questions will inevitably be asked.

Is the sales team focussing on the right opportunities?
Can we identify the productivity of the good and not so good performers?
Are campaigns analysed for effectiveness and corrected?
Is there a need to redesign the sales organization?
If there is a plan to cut back on operations and build up of inventory, won't the sales pipeline be a better indicator than past operations data?
What are the payments due where efforts on collections can be put?
How can key customers be kept satisfied?

Organizations which had a CRM in place would be in a much better place to get quick answers, act rapidly and weather such storms - may be even gain from it. Such times are also the best times to implement a CRM since there is more leeway to create a team responsible to execute the project.

Try getting the sales team to enter data to the Sales CRM

A typical response in Sales CRM by a rep.

"Sure, the Sales CRM is great. All big guys up there want to get real time data up to the minute. What about us - we enter the data and the same data is used to beat us up with. Moreover, its too difficult to enter. I hate reporting".

Well, partly correct. But if done correctly that same person may become an ardent fan of a Sales CRM.

"Wow, Sales CRM truly is great. Now the big guys out there are off my back and are not calling me for information about cases, or paining me for delays in reports. They get it direct from the system. I used to spend 6-8 hours a week on reporting and now I just spend 10 minutes a day. I can do it while Im traveling and I dont miss my appointments with all those nice alerts on my mobile. I seem to be getting more leads sent to me than ever before. Wonder how I managed without it".

To make this happen, you need a good CRM, a Sales CRM designed to ensure that data entered is minimum and entered once".

A well crafted software with good defaulting, good navigation and good design can achieve a lot. At KServe we make this our mission - how to make the end field person enjoy using the software and want to use it, rather than be forced to use it.

CRM - Saas (Software as a service) or your own license?

While implementing a CRM this is a vital question and should be seriously evaluated. This question is not about hosting - because today hosting options cost the same whether you host it or your vendor does it for you. The hosting question is related to the availability of IT staff and is not answered here. The question is whether you share the application and pay a periodic payment for it with no ownership rights as per the SaaS model, or do you buy the license for usage in perpetuity.

Is the customer facing part of your business unique or is it generic?

If your business is unique - especially in some core CRM process, then shared applications are not an option. Look for a vendor that provides CRM as a more as a platform, and provides adaptability tools and services to make this happen. Then buy the product for your own usage. If your business processes maps well with the CRM products processes, then SaaS is a viable option. CRM solutions are often generic and a good product usually covers the core processes well.

Can you take the leap or do you want to test the waters?

If you you want to test the waters first before taking the leap then SaaS is a good option. It enables you to try out the application, and it even helps you determine what you need to modify before you make the actual leap. You can try it out for a smaller team first. However in cases where the fitment of the product to your process is low, this is not an option.

Which is more expensive?

If you are likely to use the application for a long period of time, ownership is the better option. If your companies budgeting policy prefers periodic spending to show faster return on investment, Saas is the better option.

Which is more secure?

Both options have good security features and need to be implemented well to be reasonably hacker proof. Full security needs a multi-pronged approach - in terms of hardware, software, application as well as usage related procedures. A fully bought out solution has more options for security, but if badly implemented can be worse off than a SaaS one.

We at K-Serve (www.KServe.net/crm) provide both the SaaS option as well as the perpetual license options. Similarly we allow hosting to an environment of choice or we provide the SaaS option. We even individualize the product for customer. That way the customer has all the options. Here are a couple of articles on this topic. Another option is to type in 'Saas or in-premise' in your search engine.

http://www.industryweek.com/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=14774
http://www.online-crm.com/saas_crm.htm