Customer Relationship Management (3)
Too much of a good thing simplified
Too much of a good thing happens with CRM these years because after years of adding new information to CRM, it means someone will have to enter them all. I've had experience with Siebel and others so I've got a drift of what they were trying to do (see the list of things you need to do in CRM(2)). I had a chance to look at several CRM products that came along including SugarCRM, and another up and coming Tokuii CRM.
The current idea is to simplify CRM input as much as possible. This idea is not new. Everybody in the industry have thought about it. How could a salesperson spends less time in front of his work PC and spends more time in front of his clients? Along came smart contact management module. What do I mean smart?
Every salesperson must be good at least producing a quotation. Spreadsheet skill is a must. So let's start from their ability to use a Spreadsheet application. Salesperson should be able to put in his notes in free form in his spreadsheet. The application should be able to scan through spreadsheet and realize that it's a quotation, it's an invoice, or it's just action items from a meeting. Spreadsheet filename should reflect which customer it's for and what date this document is created.
As for customer contact management, salesperson only needs to type one line to a spreadsheet that contains everything (name, address, phone numbers), CRM application will map that entered line in address, city, state, zip code, country. Before adding any information, this smart CRM will ask salesperson first whether data is correctly guessed. Salesperson can use his existing spreadsheet to get customer contact or download another spreadsheet from CRM for a cleaner contact information. To be even easier to use, most namecard scanners come with spreadsheet support. Salesperson can just use namecard scanner to scan a new namecard, save it in spreadsheet format then feed this new spreadsheet into CRM system. Voila, entering customer information is now a breeze.
Somehow I wonder why didn't someone come up with all these functionality years ago. It's hard for me to imagine. This idea is how I would do if I build Northstar CRM suite again.
Too much of a good thing happens with CRM these years because after years of adding new information to CRM, it means someone will have to enter them all. I've had experience with Siebel and others so I've got a drift of what they were trying to do (see the list of things you need to do in CRM(2)). I had a chance to look at several CRM products that came along including SugarCRM, and another up and coming Tokuii CRM.
The current idea is to simplify CRM input as much as possible. This idea is not new. Everybody in the industry have thought about it. How could a salesperson spends less time in front of his work PC and spends more time in front of his clients? Along came smart contact management module. What do I mean smart?
Every salesperson must be good at least producing a quotation. Spreadsheet skill is a must. So let's start from their ability to use a Spreadsheet application. Salesperson should be able to put in his notes in free form in his spreadsheet. The application should be able to scan through spreadsheet and realize that it's a quotation, it's an invoice, or it's just action items from a meeting. Spreadsheet filename should reflect which customer it's for and what date this document is created.
As for customer contact management, salesperson only needs to type one line to a spreadsheet that contains everything (name, address, phone numbers), CRM application will map that entered line in address, city, state, zip code, country. Before adding any information, this smart CRM will ask salesperson first whether data is correctly guessed. Salesperson can use his existing spreadsheet to get customer contact or download another spreadsheet from CRM for a cleaner contact information. To be even easier to use, most namecard scanners come with spreadsheet support. Salesperson can just use namecard scanner to scan a new namecard, save it in spreadsheet format then feed this new spreadsheet into CRM system. Voila, entering customer information is now a breeze.
Somehow I wonder why didn't someone come up with all these functionality years ago. It's hard for me to imagine. This idea is how I would do if I build Northstar CRM suite again.
posted by Peter Srivaree-Ratana at 2:40 AM
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