Quality Data – Fuel for Your CRM Engine
So how does a company begin to get its arms around the volatility of customer data? Most businesses rely on a CRM system to collect customer information and make it readily available to employees. The data contained in the CRM system, however, is often pulled from various sources that may not offer the most reliable information. If sales, marketing, customer service and other departments cannot depend on this information, CRM will not be utilized to its fullest potential and, more important, the business could miss opportunities, and relationships with customers could suffer.
To help meet this challenge, business information providers specialize in aggregating information from various sources and offering a centralized resource for facts, figures and knowledge required to help customers develop and manage their businesses. For example, data from Hoovers, a business information service, focuses on three key content areas that provide customers with a more comprehensive view of the business environment: industries, companies and people. The data is constantly updated by a team of 90 business experts who can find information not only about a company and its current events, but also its industry and its people, to provide insight into the factors influencing the companys operations, direction and decisions. Companies rely on this insight to acquire new customers through both sales prospecting and advertising/marketing campaigns. In essence, this type of intelligence is integral for conducting research on new and existing customers to better understand their businesses and leverage this knowledge to further develop opportunities.
According to Dun & Bradstreet, companies that use a business information resource grow 40 to 50 percent faster than those that dont. This detailed information and insight could mean the difference between closing a deal and walking away empty-handed; between an effective marketing campaign and a campaign that misses the mark.
The Impact of Quality Data in Your CRM System
Combining the advantages of a CRM system with data from a trusted business information resource is critical in establishing an effective CRM system. Sales, marketing and customer service departments, among others, can directly benefit from having easily accessible and dependable customer information. A CRM system is merely the engine; the data within the CRM is the fuel that powers that engine.
Sales: Data Mining for Gold
For sales departments, inaccurate or incomplete data in the contact management system is unfortunately, commonplace. Often, a company does not have a clear understanding of what comprises quality information and it is left up to the sales executives discretion as to where to locate information relevant to their customer or potential customer. According to the 2004 Miller Heiman Effectiveness Study, 63.4 percent of sales leaders agree that their teams do not qualify leads as well as they should. Additionally, 55.9 percent of sales leaders agree that their sales team wastes time pursuing poor sales leads and opportunities. Accurate and efficient data mining is critical to a successful sales strategy and companies should assume their competitors are doing it in some capacity.
Well-informed sales executives have a much better chance of closing a deal than those with insufficient or outdated information. By incorporating data from a reliable business information resource into a CRM system, they can find comprehensive information to prospect and qualify a potential customer, prepare for the sales call and then manage the customer over time. With information readily available in their daily applications, they can utilize a vast array of criteria such as geographic preferences, company size, industry membership, key decision-maker information, employee counts, financial information and recent news articles to engage customers and prospects more effectively. Sales executives are more productive when they are confident and fully equipped with accurate and relevant information, thus minimizing the time and costs associated with outdated information.
Sales representative can also mine hidden or missed opportunities among their current customer base if they have access to quality information. In Figure 1, a wholesale food supplier has two customers with restaurants that have similarities.
With the data presented, a sales representative can easily see that Customer B has additional spend potential. Not only will the salesperson have the opportunity to increase sales penetration and outperform her competition, but she can further build the relationship with Customer B, possibly reducing the number of vendors the restaurant has to manage or saving it costs due to volume selling.
Marketing: Pinpoint Accuracy
Marketing departments are also impacted by the quality of data within their companys CRM system. Often, information needed for market sizing and analysis differs from what is housed in sales contact management applications. The data is available, but fragmented and inaccurate, making it difficult to conduct an in-depth analysis of the customer base and target markets or identify new opportunities within the current customer base. Marketing and advertising dollars are frequently misdirected and wasted because they are focused on inappropriate audiences or based on irrelevant information.
Careful examination of accurate customer and market data can provide the insight required for a successful marketing campaign that results in faster business growth. For example, with an effective CRM loaded with current and accurate information, a company can scrutinize its customer base to uncover markets that have a higherthan- average spend in its industry, yet have little sales penetration thus far. Therefore, a company can discover a new target market it may have previously overlooked. The effectiveness of marketing/advertising dollars can be greatly increased if the spend is hinged on quality data.
Customer Service: One Size Doesnt Fit All
Customer service is often the differentiator among companies within an industry. No matter the product or service offered, a company will find it hard to survive if it provides poor customer service, especially in todays competitive environment. Whether the customers serviced are companies or individual consumers, they both require customized, timely support from knowledgeable representatives. With so much capital going toward product R&D, sales training, and marketing and advertising campaigns, a business cant lose customers because of its lack of effective customer support.
The fundamental structure supporting this essential department is the data accessed by the representatives. By providing customer service representatives with access to complete, accurate and real-time customer information through a robust CRM, your company can adapt support processes to the meet customer requirements. Organizing customer service to mirror the needs of customers is crucial for a successful retention program. Equipped with a complete picture of the customer, calls can be more quickly routed to the right person with the appropriate skills for faster resolution, and customer support can be more personalized with relevant dialogue.
A typical scenario: Its early Monday morning when an employee of a global company is denied access to her companys on-demand sales application. She calls customer support for assistance, which may or may not be able to resolve the issue on the first attempt. If the call reaches a technical help representative equipped with accurate customer data, the representative could recognize, for example, that the customer had various operational locations besides the reporting location where passwords would be affected by a technical problem. The representative could then coordinate the reinstatement of service to all locations, precluding inevitable call escalations from the other sites to the call center. This kind of detailed customer data can not only save the company helpdesk costs, but translates into more targeted and customized support for increased customer satisfaction and retention rates.
Single Source, Common View
A quality, data-powered CRM is a crucial tool for any company, and its benefits are widespread. Employees from every department have access to one engine housing all the data they need to function at the fullest potential. Not only is the entire company depending on the information to be accurate and relevant, but each person within the company is sharing the same data. Certain data points will be more relevant to some than others, but multiple business units should be able to rely on the fact that the data is consistent throughout the company. Therefore, a company is wise to create the processes and resources to ensure that the data within its CRM is accurate, timely and comprehensive because there is no room for errors or outdated information.
Bringing Data Into Your CRM
A companys CRM warehouse contains not only information about a customer that is pulled from a business information resource but also contains specific customer data as it relates to the company itself. The CRM houses historical account information, sales notes and other confidential data that can enrich the customer profile beyond the information provided by the business information resource. Sales executives and customer service representatives play a critical role in further developing the customer profile.
As a company loads customer information into its CRM database, the necessity to standardize the data in a common format so it can be easily recognized cannot be emphasized enough. One of the most commonly overlooked data elements in a CRM system is the unique identifier, such as a D&B DUNS number. A standard and globally recognized identifier is instrumental in delineating unique entities and eliminating duplicates within a database. It is a key factor in identifying companies for more efficient marketing and effective customer support. For example, if a business using a CRM lists two companies with similar names in its database, it would be easy for a sales executive or customer service representative to confuse the companies and implement invalid sales or support strategies. With a unique DUNS number assigned to each company in the CRM database, there is no risk of confusion because the company is identified by two criteria: its name and its DUNS number. The unique identifier can also be used as the common denominator when sharing information across systems, further leveraging data across business units.
Accessing the Data
It is common practice for best-in-class organizations to access detailed company and industry information via a business information website. Traditional means of importing this data has consisted largely of copying and pasting information from these sources directly into destination applications or pulling data from the Internet or other third-party files into CRM systems via an application programming interface. However, the momentum is building toward integration as is the demand for cleaner data, so technical innovation has stepped up to eliminate the manual processes of transferring data in favor of automation.
With the emergence of technical solutions built around Web services, companies can group CRM processes together to create custom applications that can quickly and easily be modified to meet business demands. Integration of data into applications is also reflected in this rapidly changing environment. Data can be directly imported into most CRM applications, leveraging Web services without the need for time-consuming custom coding or manipulation. These technical solutions addressing data integration are being created every day, so there are fewer touches and less programming required to integrate and maintain the data in your business applications. The main benefit to companies utilizing a Web services-based information source is that current data is readily available for use with relatively small investment, saving resources and improving data quality.
Conclusion
As more companies depend on CRM applications to house their customer information and manage the processes supporting customer relationships, the cornerstone of the success of the CRM is having the most accurate, reliable and inclusive data available within your system. Providing outdated, incomplete or erroneous data can only result in wasted resources, lagging sales and most importantly, dissatisfied customers and employees. Companies must take advantage of the quality information available to them and use it as fuel within their CRM to enhance decision making and business performance. With the right fuel for the CRM engine, a company will be more efficient, more adaptable and ultimately more successful.
