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Top 5 Customer Information Bottlenecks

Putting Our Arms Around the Customer Data Problem

5 Customer Data Integration Problems

Jill Dyche and Evan Levy, gurus in this field, have boiled the challenges down to five primary categories:

1. Completeness – You don’t have all the data you need to make sound business or organizational decisions
2. Latency – It takes too long to make the data valuable…by the time you can use it, too much is obsolete or outdated (slowed by operational systems or extraction methods)
3. Accuracy – What percentage of your data is inaccurate…your Achilles’ heel
4. Management – Data integration, governance, stewardship, operations and distribution all combine to make-or-break data-value and
5. Ownership – The more disparate data-source owners, the more silos of data, the more difficult it will be to solve the problems.

Our consultants have written a new Journal addressing the top 5 customer data integration issues. Get yours here: Customer Data Integration Journal

Your Company Rocks in a Rough Ocean of Customer Data

Customer Data Changes Constantly

Customer information changes constantly, or can be entered in error, or fraudulently. And, for most medium to large business or organizations, the data is stored in several different places, different departments, different locations,in different formats, etc.

This stuff is extremely complex and ultra-dynamic due to the many changes individuals go through in the course of their lives. Multiply all these fields by the millions of records a business or organization has in its data sources, then consider how quickly and how often this information changes.

The Amount of Inaccurate Customer Data is Staggering

The results are staggering. The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI)says, “The problem with data is that its quality quickly degenerates over time. Experts say 2% of records in a customer file become obsolete in one month because customers die, divorce, marry and move.”

To put this statistic into perspective, assume that a company or charity has 500,000 customers, donors or prospects in its databases. If 2% of these records become obsolete in one month, that is 10,000 records per month or 120,000 records every year. So, in two years, about half of all the records are obsolete, if left unchecked.

Customer Data Integration CDI

Customer Data Integration

Accurate Customer Data Integration or CDI is Critical to your Business

Organizing customer data is a huge task. As time goes by a company can be awash in a ocean of data. The customer data sounds simple but it really is not. 2% of your customers are changing on a monthly basis. They are. Lets look at customer data. You have the name fields, first, last, middle, then fields for Ms. Mr. Dr, Mrs. then lets add jr, Sr. Now address, home, office, shipping and billing. Then comes demographics like married or no, age, work, and then medical status, or allergic to, or US citizen or other. Customer data is complex. Address changes, changes in marital status, the kid goes to college or the customer dies or bears another kid. This ocean of data grows and grows dirtier in time.

Dirty Enterprise Customer Data Causes High Costs

Lets go back to the first paragraph of this entry, the customer information. Now lets add another system like ERP. One role of erp or enterprise resource planning is to keep accounting or the books accurate. Customer data resides here. Consider the business has inside sales and a direct sales team both teams use a CRM or customer relationship tool. Customer data resides here. Lets add a in-direct sales team of reps and distributor partners. Customer data resides here too. This customer data, which resides in a partner system is important to your company, it is. Now the ocean of customer data is pitching and rocking the boat which is your company.

Customer Data Problems

When your customer data is dirty, Murphy, infamous author of Murphy’s Law, is alive and well and stands 7 foot tall right there in your lobby. He walks in your door and looks for low hangers to feast on. Murphy skips though your order entry system. He frolics in your shipping system and he romps through your invoicing process and hops into your billing systems. Murphy has a huge appetite fed by bad data and can bite away at your profits. Errors and more errors, re-orders, bad shipping address, invoice mistakes and on and on. Money is lost, costs go up, orders are lost, customer are mad and Murphy’s boat is happily rocking in the ocean of customer data.

Free CRM Offer Press Release

Date: July 1, 2008 For Immediate Release

Page 1 of 1 Contact DataForce CRM : 888-387-5145

DataForceCRM Offers Powerful CRM Tools with ZERO Licensing Fees

(Dallas, USA) – To help small and medium size enterprises manage and improve their business processes and business workflow, DataForce CRM is offering open source CRM with zero licensing fees. DataForce CRM clients obtain full marketing and sales management, a customer support module with FAQs and a customer portal, full Order Management which covers Quoting, Sales Orders, and Invoicing, Inventory and Vendor Management, with Product Management and Price Book capabilities, and deep reporting. The CRM suite contains a powerful administration module which blankets the look and feel, provides field customizations and user and group profile management.

Peter Fuller, Vice President of Business Development, says “Our strategic direction is to provide to companies including manufacturers, manufacturers’ representative and distributors which sell and service the electronic, the electrical and the industrial business sectors a complete CRM which will provide a high rate of return. In offering our CRM suite with zero licensing fees, and by providing support and training our clients are enjoying high user adoption and increasing customer satisfaction and higher business profitability.”

DataForce CRM is breaking new ground by offering powerful CRM software which is hosted on a dedicated server for each client. Each client accesses the CRM solution using an assigned IP address. DataForce CRM clients can customize their CRM software to fit their business needs.

The Free CRM Offer Includes:

o A User Configurable Dashboard which speeds sales and customer data entry and edit and flags important Activity, top Leads, large Opportunities and top Quotes.
o Robust Calendar management with Team calendars, and Meeting and Task assignment plus Activity tracking and reporting by Account, Contact, and Opportunity to optimize sales person time and sales and support focus.
o A foundation of Key Account Management and Contact Management to organize all key relationships in a safe, secure database.
o Marketing Campaign Management which records details of each marketing expenditure and which will report results by comparing actual campaign driven sales results to set campaign expectations.
o Sales Tracking and Sales Pipeline Management to assign and track all sales opportunities from direct and in-direct salespeople.
o Seamless Quoting to Sales Order to Invoice business process to quote fast and to track quotes to closure.
o Inventory Management module to set inventory locations, inventory alerts and triggers for re-order points.
o Customer Support modules with frequently asked questions capture and a customer support portal to delight customers and ease the customer support process.
o Granular report creation and detailed analytics to drive business strategy and to improve the sales and customer management process.
o Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Office integration and support for emails, calendaring and contact syndication to and from CRM.
o Powerful Administration to customize CRM look and feel and to manage all securely manage all user profiles.
o Importing and Exporting of all data entities including leads, opportunities, accounts, contacts, quotes, orders, products and vendors.
o Full email support, phone support, product wikis, and support forums.

This CRM solution can solve key account management issues plus open sales and order management bottlenecks. Customers find the user interface intuitive and the CRM solution easy to use and fast to adopt across both direct and in-direct sales teams and employees.

Your CRM is Hosted with No Software to Install

This FREE CRM offer is deployed in a professional data center and is hosted on a dedicated server for each client which ensures full data security, 24/7 virus protection and complete data backups. Clients can use the new CRM solution within 24 hours by logging in using any web browser including Safari. The CRM solution is fully documented with user manuals and administration manuals and supported by DataForce CRM support staff.

Get Your Free Trial and More Information

More data about this CRM offer can be viewed at http://www.dataforcecrm.com . All requests for this Free CRM will be honored and new customers can register for a Free no-obligation Trial account here:

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888-387-5145.

Manufacturers Representatives Principal Reporting

Principals are Demanding More Sales Data from Manufacturers Reps Putting Pressure on Sales Systems

Manufacturers reps, sales companies that sell multi, complementary lines of products, are under siege. The reps are independent, and agree to sell lines in their patch for a principal or supplier. Many lines are happy with order flow from their reps, many more are demanding detailed sales data so they can plan and drive their business.

The Sales Data is King

Sales data is important. Please consider that which is measured can be understood and improved. This tells me that manufacturers reps should have an sales lead tracking system and sales opportunity tracking system for internal use. This system is theirs. They are in control of their data. Principals do demand that manufacturer reps sign into a portal to upload sales records and to make edits. Many reps think this is enough, however they are not in control of their sales data and their sales livelihood.

Manufacturers Reps Can be At Risk by Abrogating Sales Data Control

The risk lies in the basic manufacturers rep agreement with Principals. Agreements can be ended then the rep is left holding an empty bag. Manufacturers reps must control their key account data, their sales lead data and sales opportunity data. When all sales history is recorded and safely secured the manufacturer rep can move the sales focus to a new line fast.

Manufacturers Reps Must Control Sales Data

In controlling all sales data, the rep chooses which data to syndicate to the Principal. In a good multi line sales system sales data can be sliced by Line, Product, Sales Stage, Close Date, Distributor and more. More would be any reporting item that is needed by the manufacturers rep. The slices of data can be disseminated to lines in a strict, administered fashion. The rep is in control.

Service Oriented Architecture for CRM

SOA Breaks Down Barriers

Get Open Architecture CRM to Move More Dollars into Your Bank

SOA or service oriented architecture breaks the barriers between applications and partners. CRM should be getting data from other systems. Systems like ERP or pricing engines, accounting systems, product management systems but this is not designed in to most CRM applications. One time saver is adding a new customer to ERP, this should add the customer to CRM. Why not?

Free up the apis, Let xml or soap integrate to other systems.  Let data flow. Business rules are ofcourse set to adminsister data syndication and imports. Think on this. What if your CRM talked to your suppliers or to your in direct sales teams? What if you could wipe out reporting requirements to said partners. Rather that report you sell. If you sell pretty good you make money, money, money.

Sales for Multi Line Sales: Manufacturer Reps or Distributors

Manufacturer Representative and Distributor Sales

Are Competitors Spending Your Commissions?

Selling many lines can be a lucrative business. A manufacturers representative will build his line card with complementary products and the salespersons goal is to find projects and to sell multilines in to this project. Many manufacturers rep salesman are handing deals and partial deals to competitors if they are not fully qualifying project scope.

Qualify the Project: Get Inside Sales Selling stead of Order Taking

Leaving dollars un earned or not qualifying projects fully happens everday. The inside sales team or customer service as they may be called, gets call in orders. Never have I heard one inside salesperson say, “Tell me about this need, is this one widget you are buying part of a project? Can Acme Rep/disty help in other areas? You are buying piping sir, tell me about what the piping is hooking up too? Are there AC units involved? What machinery does the project need? What services or consulting are you using? Can you tell me if you are using a contractor, engineer that we can get to know?

I am in rep firms and distys and NEVER hear this. The inside sales team order take all day. Inside sales management, likes this, they just tally up orders at end of day. Get em to work. They should fire up the inside sales team and create DEMAND as described above. Create the demand by putting one question on a card: “What is the project scope? “

Create Project than add Opportunities

Now record the new Project in your online sales tool or FREE CRM. Then add optys which detail the line and the product that is project required. Now track each opty to win or lose in this project. Then analyze wins and more importantly losses. Competitor B may be kicking your butt because you don’t carry a capability needed and prospects or customers want one stop show. Now you can be one stop because all you do is pick up the line you need.

Multi Line Reporting

Now this type of multi line sales tracking automates reporting. Reporting for some lines is easy, some are a pain and time consuming. Time is spent, away from sales and making money, by pulling reports from ACT or spreadsheets or some other sales killing application. Your sales application should have a multi line focus. All you do then is record your principals and tag this data to optys which make up Projects.

Get All the Commission Dollars: Qualify, Qualify

Man, I know if you tell your inside sales guys to ask about the PROJECT, tell them to ask basic questions, your demand will pick up radically. Just do it. Train the order takers to qualify and sell and then the best inside salespeople become tomorrows directs. IBM did this. IBM learned that inside sales learning curve is fast, fast, and migrated talented ISR or inside sales reps to product teams and outside sales teams.

Manufacturers representatives and distributors can do the above. Call me and II will send you training booklets free of charge for you inside sales teams. Or go to www.dataforcecrm.com and we will add the guide and mini courses to help you with inside sales.

Sales Guy     888-387-5145

Order Management Workflow

Fill Quoting Blackhole with Sales Information or What Happened to that Quote?

When selling with a diverse sales team, diverse meaning multi channel and multi location, sales can drop off radar. Unless a solid sales tracking tool is used, deals will be lost.

Speaking of sales tools, integrated order management is way cool. Like this:

Lead > Opportunity > Quote > Sales Order > Invoice this equals sales revenue. Most CRM does not do this because most companies do not have a quoting requirement. If you do have a need to define products, and price books and quote mult-items, and then track these data entities, the integrated CRM can be great for you.

Look here http://www.dataforcecrm.com for FREE CRM software including quoting.

Comparing Salesforce.com and Free CRM

Comparing Salesforce and Free CRM tools

Salesforce does marketing, sales, customer service

Free CRM does marketing, sales, customer portal and service, integrated telephony, order management, vendor management, inventory management, quoting, invoices, sales orders,

This is true, and many users with experience with sf and free crm say free crm is easier to use.

Test this for your self, get your Free trial