For at least the last decade organizations have been finding out just how important automating their business engagement contacts, leads and analytics can transform the way they do business. Most military organizations struggle when it comes to translating best practices from industry over to the Government side of the house. The U.S. Government, and in our case the U.S. Air Force has a very steep bureaucratic mountain to climb each time we spend tax pay dollars to do something we think is beneficial. The problem he and now is this: "How do we find a way to transform the way we do business that can provide the best site picture, provide visual performance and effectiveness data, and decrease the time investment"?
The answer is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System. CRMs have been around for decades and offer a ray of light for transformation efforts. When you are part of an organization that is charged with integrating both internal business and the way we do external business the order is a tall one. We are not trying to solve the hiring of more people problem, because that is been solved for us. We simply cannot hire any more people at this point. So, what can we do? We employ a CRM because what a CRM does is free up the time people spend in our transformation process to do what they do best.
If we intend to destroy our potential success at this "Integration" business we can keep nugging out SharePoint lists and updating PowerPoint slides that come from the mounds of spreadsheets and documents. The first order of business to appoint a CRM "Champion". Someone who is not only passionate about transformation but about the bueiness at hand, seeing it value in the larger context. This champion can lead the efforts to initially setup the CRM structure and develop a path to transformational success.
Laying a CRM on top of your processes is like putting together a puzzle. Create the borders first then start filling in the middle. A priority list of top functions that need to be automated would be a starting point and gives the success map even, consistent improvement boosts as you go along. If we tie the initialization of a CRM system to our efforts creating the Integrated Learning Environment over the cloud can help create a solid platform space for our efforts.
There are going to be a great many questions with this process mainly because it cannot magically appear and solve all of our problems immediately. We must be on board as a team and move our heavy lifting and tedious processes to the CRM such that we can get back those hours to think strategically, act strategically and most of all make strategic decisions.
As an example a CRM can:
– Take repetitive tasks out of the mix and automates them to free up people’s time so they can focus on what they do best.– Allows communication to be better personalized for each segment of our engagements and audience.– Enhances the customer experience by giving all departments access to the data they need to do their jobs better.– Allows us to nurture more university engagements and drive them into relationships and ultimately partnerships.– Helps us increase engagement with your stakeholders and customers.– Gives us a 360 view of customer so you can better target your messaging and deepen your relationships.- Exponentially increases branding, promotions and advocating our business in places we didn't know existed- Insights and full pictures of how, why and when customers are interacting with you
One aspect of our engagement business is to talk with people at conferences and discuss our products as well as how AU can help their organization. We were collecting business cards, and giving business cards and retyping them into a spreadsheet. Then we moved to a exhibit service lead scanner which helps automate the collection of names and organizations. A week after the conference is over, and we have all slept since then, we must cull through hundreds of names and figure out what it was we talked about, what their questions and desires were. We quickly become lost in a mound of confusion.
Adding a CRM to our process would not only help us collect information, but also give us a means to input information on the spot, even allowing us to upload photos and documents to support our engagements. Our picture is done when we get back now we can apply our brains to forming up responses to customers and immediately begin to build relationships and help customers with their pressing issues.
Beyond that understanding customers behaviors can point us to the value of our relationships and help us improve everything we do. Getting back the hours of mind numbing details can prove beneficial in terms of thinking through customers behaviors and using the data to analyze our next decision point.
Thinking, acting and deciding strategically is what we are after. A CRM can help in ways we don't yet understand. The value is there we just have to reach in and grab it.
What do you think?