David LaPlante Explains The Keys To Relationship Building

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Twelve Horses

David LaPlante is president and CEO of Twelve Horses North America, headquartered in Reno, Nevada, and director of Twelve Horses Technology, Ltd., based in Dublin, Ireland. Mr. LaPlante brings 13 years of marketing automation, business process management, and CRM/application development experience to the position. Twelve Horses North America provides the applications, infrastructure, and professional services to automate and integrate email and Web-based marketing and business dialogue across multiple systems and channels.

Defying the Limits: For many companies, CRM has failed to live up to its promise. Why do you think that is so?

David LaPlante: While it’s easy to paint it black and white that CRM has failed, when you actually inspect many of the so-called “failures,” you find that the reasons are complex and convoluted. From infrastructure issues around hardware, software, and integration, to the knowledge and diligence of those operating it, to the relevancy of the deployment, to the realities of what the business needs - it all adds up.

The fact that CRM companies are selling and booking revenue means they’re generally holding up their end of the promise. What is distorted is perhaps the “utopian” desire to think that a check and an install will solve customer relationship management issues. When you get down to it, there are several common denominators behind why many feel that their CRM has “failed.”

The first that we see frequently is the failure of understanding the commitments to process, procedure, and diligence behind the “promise.” It’s like buying a Jacuzzi for your house. The promise is that it will work and provide hours of relaxation. Without the commitment to taking the time to use it, it quickly becomes a hassle. It’s a costly capital investment and its return is based on use. If it’s not used, it sits there. If not maintained appropriately, it will cost even more.

The second denominator is as old as the software industry itself. I vividly remember my first computer class when I was in seventh grade. On the very first day we learned an acronym that has stuck with me my whole career: GIGO - garbage in, garbage out. For CRM to be effective, the flow of information in and out has to be accurate, relevant, maintainable, adaptable, and able to be leveraged.

The vast majority of all CRM solutions has done an excellent job of being at least one or two of those. In particular, maintenance, adaptation, and leverage have been the challenge not so much because the intent was not there, but the processes, procedures, and above all “passion” from the business end has failed. It’s not something that a check and a few consultants can solve.

The final denominator is that businesses are unwilling to adapt their processes to feed the CRM. Often that speaks to lack of foresight to what is required, and often it comes down to the sum of minor “paths of least resistance” business processes that leave the CRM starving for accurate, relevant, and maintainable information.

DTL: How can companies avoid having their one-to-one marketing campaigns viewed as spam?

DL: Everything comes down to the relationship and how it is managed. The keyword here is “laziness.” A lot of companies believe that the ability to add personalization to a campaign is a demonstration of a relationship. They believe that by sending more messages, a relationship is strengthened. They look for dynamic content, trigger-based dialogues, and eye-popping creative for the solution. In other words, they look and explore all kinds of avenues for cementing the relationship when they’ve put little to no effort in understanding what their customers want in a relationship. If they focused on how best to start, maintain, and enhance relationships at the starting point and then matched the technology to support those strategies, they would be far better off.

Relevance, permission, and dialogue are the keys to relationship building. Weakness in any one of those three components increases the likelihood your communications are going to be viewed negatively. Failure in managing permissions and relevance spells SPAM.

A lot of businesses are trapped in an endless cycle of large number indicators tied to routine campaigns looking for signs of success. They’re absolutely fixated on the total number of people they can reach with little attention to relevance and dialogue. The mere thought of engaging and supporting one-to-one conversations puts them on system overload. They figure, “Hey, we got the message out to everyone. Let sales sort it out.”

DTL: CRM technology has been evolving rapidly for the past few years. Where do you think we will five years from now?

DL: CRM, SFA, MA, ERP, billing, call center, etc. are all headed in the direction of blurred lines of distinction. I think we tend to look at “software” installation as a “footprint” within a company and consider how big and extensive that is. The reality will be centered on blending the right applications to meet the requirements while keeping a wary eye on adapting to tomorrow’s challenge quickly.

For Twelve Horses, we’ve found resonance in the after-market solutions philosophy such as customizing a base CRM or SFA application with products and solutions to get to where you want to be. Personally, I’ve never bought a pair of ski boots that I didn’t have custom footbeds and a power-strap added. Every bike I’ve owned has slowly transformed from that original bike to a new bike with only the original frame. The family SUV now bristles with add-ons to accommodate two children and our desire to travel in comfort. The core value of any application today is how well it will play with others.

Twelve Horses is often the answer - the follow-on product - to businesses that need to communicate electronically in a more effective way and still leverage their CRM, SFA, or billing system.

Twelve Horses has found an excellent fit with business CRM in the areas of maintenance, adaptability, and leverage. Our messaging platform and engine really addresses a common hurdle most businesses are facing: how do we effectively communicate electronically and ensure our CRM is integrated and leveraged and have the information we gain factored in to our accuracy and maintenance. Or simply put, can we take a stock CRM and make it communicate better?

DTL: When do electronic communications count?

DL: The majority of businesses today is still learning how to manage electronic relationships, and beyond that, how to fuse their nonelectronic communications together to bring intelligence to the focal point of all customer communications. Twelve Horses corresponds well with business CRM in the area of electronic communications, particularly centered on email and Web-based campaigns, scenario management, dynamic content, dialogue, and process automation.

Many businesses today face significant electronic communication challenges pertinent to CRM:

A business may find its CRM weak on accurate and relevant information about its customers. As a result, it relies increasingly on email and web-based communications to validate and expand its intelligence with greater efficiency and frequency.

A business looks to find automation between fax, voice, and email with triggers from call center activities. Instead, they find disparate systems unable to centralize the business logic and rules.

A business desires CRM to handle the complexities involved with engaging in scenario-driven and automated dialogues with customers. The company finds its CRM incapable of the task.

A business’ deliverability requirements for mass email and Web site-dependent communications are not core to the business’ CRM. Email service providers (ESPs) can deliver the email and the results while successfully navigating the issues of security, privacy, and capacity, but not always leveraging information between the CRM and the ESP effectively.

Finally, the CRM lacks the data analytics to react quickly and modify to today’s needs. The dynamics of electronic communications have become increasingly complex in even a year’s time leaving a gap between what is required and what the CRM can support.

Essentially, Twelve Horses’ messaging platform and engine address two common questions most businesses are faced with:

First, how do we effectively communicate electronically with customers and ensure our CRM is integrated and leveraged? Second, how do we assure the information we gain is factored in to our accuracy, relevance, and adaptability?

DTL: What lessons has Twelve Horses learned that you would like to share with The CRM Project?

DL: People’s eyes are always bigger than their appetite. By that I mean that everyone is very keen on the utopian version of perfect management of information and relationships. They see it; however, to realize it, they have to move people. They have to motivate people. They have to change processes. Challenge procedure. Hold out for accountability. In other words, they have to realize that their CRM investment is not the solution, but the catalyst for the solutions to be developed and realized.