KIMSY CONSULTING

CRM

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Organizations often strive for competitive advantages through the relationships with their customers, since they are aware that one big competitive advantage they possess is what they know about their customers and how they make use of that data.

Companies are generating a lot of digital customer-centric data every day. Handling the high amount of data, interpreting, understanding and visualizing customer data structures for discovering insights, trends and needs in their customer base can be quite challenging for almost any organization.

By exploring patterns and relationships between the various data, as a result a company could do a much better job in marketing its products or services and reaching their messages to the customer in a more precise and personalized way. Companies often ask themselves:
Are our marketing campaigns really targeting the right customers? Are we using the right distribution channels? Do we make use of the full potential of cross-selling or service bundling opportunities?

That's where CRM concepts and technology come into play.

Overseeing technological advances while focussing on customer value can be pretty challenging. When companies furthermore have to deal with decreasing profits while handling ever changing consumer demands, CRM-specific aspects require to be addressed in an insightful and competent manner. Hence, improving on all aspects of pursuing and managing the sales process is crucial.

Regardless of your preferred type of CRM solution, hosted or on-premise, we can guide you through your CRM implementation process and ensure your goals and timelines are met and that all necessary business processes are defined in a proper manner.

It is a prerequisite to make sure, that a solid commitment from executive management has been established upfront and that expectations regarding the benefits resulting from the implementation of a (new) CRM system are clearly defined, such as:

Increase of customer loyalty and retention
Reduction in costs for new customer acquisition
Increase in customer satisfaction
Reduction in customer churn
Increase in repeated sales and spendings per customer
Better knowledge of customer behaviour
Improvement in gaining customer insights by tracking customer buying habits
Improvement in the anticipation of customer needs
Improvement in the process of identifying qualified leads
Increase in the quote-to-capture rate (closed)
Speed-up of the lead-to-quote process
Advances in segmentation of customers and prospects alike into target audience
Increase in level of effectiveness of sales pipeline management
Improvement in expanding on ways for cross- and upselling
Generation of more reliable sales forecasts
Increase in quantity of leads and/or sales performance, resulting from better targeted marketing campaigns
Reduction in costs of customer acquisition
Increase in level of efficiency and effectiveness of customer account management
Reduction in cycle times and efficiency-gain by streamlining customer service processes
Reduction of overall customer service costs

KIMSY Consulting has a clear understanding for the specific needs of their clients. We possess of a deep understanding of organizational culture and key business drivers alike. That's why we can help our clients in accomplishing customer satisfaction, reducing churn and decreasing overall costs. We figure out what causes the client company profit to decline or stay flat and how to improve their customer interaction processes.

We possess of the required skills to articulate the key problems of clients' customer and efficiently find ways to resolve their issues by assessing the competitive landscape of different CRM solutions and to help our clients in finding and successfully integrating the right CRM solution in their organization.

As a change management consultancy with a proven track history in successfully managing IT-related technology projects, we have developed the required skills with a particular focus on the following fields:

CHANGE (CM) & PROJECT REQ. (RM)

Establishing Change Management

Requirements Management
Project Management
Management of organizational changes
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CRM PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

Performance Measurement + KPIs

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On-Premise or SaaS
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COACHING & TRAINING

Training & Coaching Measures

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for a seamless roll-out

KIMSY Consulting outlines, plans, projects and implements processes for organizations to improve their sales and marketing activities and target their customers in a successful manner. We support clients in implanting CRM in their organizations' internal sales, customer care and marketing processes. We assist them in using CRM technology to emphasize on communication, collaboration and interaction with their respective customers. Each CRM project and its processes and technology is tailored according to the client's specific needs.

As illustrated below you can find several stages of the implementation process of an integrated CRM strategy in which KIMSY Consulting can provide support and guidance to your organization. From all the different stages/phases of an entire CRM project we mainly provide consulting on the following three:

ASSESSING CHANGE READINESS

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CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Drawing out guidelines for roles, responsibilities and expectations on CRM implementation project success factors and user acceptance

Adapting employee job descriptions and conducting performance evaluations of staff accordingly

Developing and implementing CRM adoption process of cultural due diligence for sales, marketing and other departments

PM & CHANGE CONTROL

Evaluate economical benefits & propose business case

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Planning of Campaign Management

Monitoring CRM effectiveness (KPIs)

Stages and Functions of a CRM System Implementation Project

The following project stage elements are not necessarily meant to reflect a particular sequential order, as few stages are rather intended to be executed in parallel or are at least partly overlapping; some are even interdependent. Therefore the separate stages are rather meant to serve as a high-level framework that in most cases needs to get adapted to the requirements and parameters of every specific CRM system implementation project.
Regardless whether a CRM implementation project follows a similar framework or not, just in parts or in all of its action items, it certainly aligns people, processes and technology to achieve customer-related goals.

KIMSY Consulting has successfully accomplished several strategic organizational change projects, also in implementing CRM processes and technology, as part of Business Development initiatives.

ASSESSING CHANGE READINESS

Situation analysis + Check-up: Appraising organization’s current customer strategy

Determining the processes and workforce that are affected by implementing a CRM system

Assessing for organisational impact, resulting from business- data- & IT-changes analysis

Building awareness for organizational changes and credibility across top management, middle tier and workforce

Establishing a clear understanding for the purpose of a CRM system among stakeholders

Developing stakeholder awareness plan and establishing procedures for invoking stakeholder engagement

Communicating organization’s strengths, needs, challenges and vision & mission related to CRM strategy & CRM implementation project

Contributing to achieving consensus for implementation with sales department and company workforce

Detailing organisational requirements and benefits of a CRM system implementation

Creating in-house awareness on proposed CRM system installation

Ensuring top management buy-in and stakeholder commitment

Achieving cross-departmental consensus: Obtaining buy-in across functions and company workforce

Obtaining commitment and final approval from senior level management

CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Establishing Commitment to CRM system implementation and alignments to corporate business processes

Determining the processes and workforce that are affected by implementing a CRM system

Setting up procedures & controls for responding to resistance and workforce-complaints about impacts resulting from implementation project and change management activities

Outlining CRM adoption processes, departmental-specific (cultural due diligence for sales, marketing, etc.)

Adjusting change management plan accordingly (to required customizations and configurations)

Determining the processes and workforce that are affected by implementing a CRM system

Outlining benefits and the process to come to all affected individuals (meetings, announcements, or newsletters)

Developing and implementing change awareness and user-acceptance plans and programs

Creating change plan according to scope, time and cost requirements, defining quality objectives

Developing and establishing workforce engagement plans and incentives schemes for change adoption

Developing cross functional workforce transition plans

Developing and setting up workforce transition plan (OTP)

Deploying, monitoring execution and re-adjusting OTP

SETTING UP PROJECT TEAM

Definition of cross-departmental project team (cross-business buy-in)

Getting 'business resources' onboard: stakeholders, steering committees, and CRM system end-users

Bringing together a CRM implementation team (incl. executive sponsor, project manager, CRM experts, CRM system administrator)

Assigning key user from each department for requirements analysis and later testing purposes

Developing requirements, conducting workflow and systems analysis

Understanding of all contract requirements and negotiating with CRM integration IT-specialists and subcontracts

DEFINING CRM VISION

Determining purpose of CRM system (strategic-, operational-, collaborative-, analytical)

Appraising customer-related marketing and sales objectives (customer satisfaction, brand strategy, channel strategy, etc.)

Examination of management's expectations on value proposition of proposed CRM system

Outlining benefits of proposed CRM system (quantifiable and non quantifiable (qualitative))

Determining purpose, goals and defining objectives of future CRM system

Concluding, creating and articulating CRM vision by taking all examined/assessed aspects into account

REQUIREMENT MANAGEMENT / CRM OBJECTIVES

Mapping out relevant business processes (sales and marketing, etc.)

Conducting detailed process analysis

Conducting customer portfolio analysis for advanced customer segmentation and profiling

Conducting requirements analysis across functions

Analyzing communication and information processes; conducting workflow assessment

Creating customer interaction map from findings of conducting customer requirements analysis

Identifying strengths & weaknesses of an organization’s customer relationship strategy and current use of tools and IT infrastructure

Assessing present instruments, technologies and procedures for supporting marketing, sales and related service functions

Conducting requirements workshops with impacted stakeholders, end-users, departments, senior management etc.

Determining business needs, information requirements analysis and impact analysis (organisational, IT infrastructure, suppliers, etc.)

Examination of business processes (planning and executing marketing campaigns, driving leads to sales, ways of ensuring customers are being served)

Determining tech requirements, conducting data- and process workflow assessment and IT systems analysis

Assessing implications of legal requirements, concerning data security (acquiring, storing, enhancing, maintaining, distributing and using customer information are critical factors)

Designing information and data workflows, according to results of information workflow and tech assessment

Designing and adapting business processes, including process re-engineering

Comparing re-designed business processes, workflows, etc. with proposed project plan and resourcing

Adjusting and eradicating deltas in functional design, process alignments and business case throughout planning phase

Refining business case from preliminary studies for re-evaluating economical benefits and tech requirements

Refining and detailing functional analysis of proposed CRM system, resulting from requirements analysis and preliminary studies

Consecutively creating criteria catalog for CRM solution (short-list, long-list) according to outcomes from business&requirements analysis

Balancing advantages and disadvantages, derived from requirement analysis, business needs and impact analysis

PLANNING PROJECT / PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Obtaining commitments and approvals for project initiation

Choosing PM framework and methodology according to proposed type of CRM system

Outlining first draft of project plan and fostering approval processes

Estimating project costs

Validating & challenging outcomes of functional analysis, IT requirements and preliminary studies

Writing project plan draft version according to scope, time and cost requirements, defining quality objectives

Setting up PM office and PM documentation procedures

Attracting and retaining specialists for project

Clarifying accounting and financial requirements

Assessing compliance & regulatory issues that apply on the use of proposed CRM system

Projecting budget, costs, constraints and obtaining contract approvals

Estimating for data migration and data integration work

Identification of project risks and creating draft version of risk mitigation plan

Conducting system selection process according to criteria catalog (short-list, long-list)

Obtaining decision on CRM solution (on-premise or SaaS solution) for concluding on proposed PM methodology (waterfall, agile, etc.)

Obtaining approval for final selection of CRM system vendor and IT solution partners

Forecasting a CRM system implementation project budget

Defining change request procedures and change control concept

Defining QM measures, quality assurance procedures and setting out change control

Drafting and detailing project plan and adjusting budget

Obtaining approval on project budget&associated controll. procedures

Putting procedures for claims and constraints handling in place

Planning and coordinating of external specialists

Obtaining approvals on project plan, after refinement by incorporating technology vendors and IT consultants

Performing required customizations and configurations

Mitigation of contractual aspects and services

Putting risk controls and project metrics in place for continuously monitoring project performance

Putting measures of project change control into effect

Aligning and adapting projct CM procedures to organisational corporate change procedures and transition plan

RISK MANAGEMENT

Identification of project risks

Conducting risk assessment

Identifying risks associated with organizational and IT-related issues

Identification of impacted business processes and affected workforce for evaluation and adaption

Quantifying risks

Creating final version of risk mitigation plan

Analysis of risk response procedures

Laying out risk mitigation plan

Putting risk monitoring procedures in place

Establishing procedures for risk response control

DEFINING REPORTING & METRICS

Determining relevant metrics, reporting measures, specific measurements, affected by CRM system

Attributing specifications and reporting configurations to set of CRM

Performing required customizations and configurations

Defining requirements for reporting process, types of information and metrics

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CRM DATA CAPTURE

Defining parameters and objectives on data quality for target system

Creating plan for data capture according to requirements

Conducting data cleansing upfront

Executing data capture procedure and data post-processing

Conducting quality assurance assessment on the level of data quality, obtained from data processing

DATA MIGRATION

Identifying corporate data sources and defining time range (history) of customer relationship data for migration

Determining the processes of data migration and selection criteria

Determining data types, duplication rules, data quality and data cleansing requirements

Creating plan for data migration according to requirements

Consolidating and preparing existing data for migration; data cleansing; normalization of data

Performing required customizations and configurations; processing master data management

Migrating data from corporate data repositories (DBMS, IT legacy systems, etc.)

CRM SYSTEM INTEGRATION (EAI) & DEPLOYMENT

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Planning, organizing and directing the IT-infrastructure integration efforts

DBMS & Legacy IT-Integration

Email Integration

Calendar Integration

Social Media Integration

Call Center/Customer Support Integration

Marketing Automation Integration

Integration with third-party apps (ERP, eCommerce, accounting , Internet portals, databases, etc.)

Identification of customization needs

Migrating data

Determining go-live targets and setting up go-live procedures

Deployment of customized CRM system installation

Obtaining approval from user testing and user training teams for confirmation on going-live

Rolling out new CRM system according to go-live procedures

SECURITY/ACCESS PERMISSION

Determining the processes and workforce that are affected by implementing a CRM system

CRM adoption process of cultural due diligence for sales, marketing and other departments

Setting access permissions

Defining department-specific transactions

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Performing required customizations and configurations

SYSTEM TESTING

Planning for testing procedures

Conducting functionality and stability testing

Testing on potential data mismatch

Conducting user acceptance testing

Analysis of issue tracking system reports for monitoring bugs and fixes

Conducting performance evaluation

Making required adjustments and fixing bugs

Performing customizations and configuration

TRAINING & ENGAGEMENT

Determining the processes for training staff

Prepare training plans

Creating in-house awareness on newly implemented CRM system installation

Identification of further customization and training requirements

Training for system administrators

Training for users on interpreting data and generating reports

Prepare fully CRM trained analytics team

User training and engagement

Identification of further customization and training requirements

Evaluating the success of CRM implementation project

Developing customer engagement channels plan for newly implemented target CRM system and its adapted marketing and sales processes

CRM Performance Evaluation in Anticipation of a CRM System Implementation Project

Customer Relationship Management focuses on establishing, maintaining and enhancing long-term relationships with customers. Countless organizations have implemented CRM technology in the hope that it will enable them to better target profitable segments, reduce churn and enhance customer retention - after all for achieving an increase in the organization’s financial performance.

But how efficient is the CRM performance?

How about the relationship of your organization to its customers? Is the customer care service team really providing such a good customer service, as it's supposed to do? In what way is your organization assessing CRM performance?

Does your organization reflect and monitor its performance on a regular basis, so that organizational and (operational) business process-related improvements in CRM driven processes can objectively be measured and evaluated?

Do you know how the performance of customer service, marketing activities or sales operations directly and indirectly correlate wit company growth, revenue, market share, etc. ? And could you determine in what way improvements in any of these organizational units would contribute to what extent to an increase in customer satisfaction and how those activities can be transferred into tangible benefits?

Reaching for any objective evidences in that sense is not any easy task.

There is still a common limited understanding of whether and how CRM is an efficient use of an organization’s corporate processes and resources.

Besides a systematical exploration of problems and consulting on business-critical projects we support you in developing a set of actionable and targeted change management plans in order to implement your CRM strategy to achieve sustained success.

KIMSY Consulting has a broad understanding about change impacts to organisations, business divisions and functions within the context of Operations, Change Management and Transition projects.

We have many years of experience in consulting both nonprofit and for-profit organizations. We help you in pursuing and establishing an efficient and secure way of your IT-integration with various CRM systems from different vendors.

Initially, we would like to hold a meeting to learn more about your company and to understand your pain points, any issues and your expectations. Following this initial meeting we will begin our analysis, evaluation or audit and on its reports as a foundation layer we would start outlining concepts and targets for transitioning your organization to operate in a more effective way. Together we will find the right approaches.