CRM Master Class  - 2 Day Workshop

Who should attend:

This Master Class is designed for management-level professionals in the areas of IT, marketing, sales and customer service–as well as consultants and others charged with CRM implementation responsibility. 

Contents

During this two-day workshop, each attendee will get a head start on mapping out his or her company’s CRM implementation (or re-implementation). The sessions are designed to encourage participants to use tools introduced in the Master Class to assess their individual environments and make good choices about how to proceed. Professionals attending will leave with:

• A thorough understanding of what CRM is–and isn’t.
• Understanding of the economic and historical context of CRM–including the hard lessons no one should have to learn again.
• Pre-technology planning skills for identifying win-win opportunities with customers and expressing these strategies through redesigned workflow.
• How to drill down from workflow to detailed work processes in order to accurately define CRM technology requirements.
• An objective understanding of the CRM software market.
• Software selection tools that help avoid common selection errors.
• A broad understanding of the technology environment surrounding CRM.

Day 1

Definitions

What is CRM? Establishing a common working platform for session; dispelling common misconceptions in the marketplace; relationship to Six Sigma and other current business movements.

Economic drivers

Understanding CRM in the context of recent, current and future economic trends; demonstrating that CRM has economic roots, beyond technology origins, and the future implications of this as CRM continues to mature.

Four steps to CRM success

The increasingly accepted four-step approach to successfully implementing CRM; why this methodology has worked where others have failed; the “ripple effect” of starting CRM as a business strategy and how that flows through workflow and work process to technology requirements.

Change management issues

Management-level issues that must be addressed prior to and during implementation. Common changes in departmental functions and relationships; methods of putting out small fires before they spread.

Step one–thinking like a customer

Taking off your IT or marketing or sales or service hat to think like your company’s customers. Establishing a CRM business context for your organization leading to development of win-win business strategies with customers and channel partners. Critical decisions including moving “live” interaction to the web, internal resource reallocation and redesigning functional roles and responsibilities for IT, marketing, sales, service and even back office functions. “Customer-driven IT,” “non-promotional marketing” and other fundamental changes that result. 

Day 2

Step two–redesigning workflow

Expressing business strategies as redesigned workflow. Breaking up traditional islands of functionality reflecting historical systems’ limitations. New graphical techniques for analyzing and rerouting customer information flow in order to optimize workflow from a maximum vale-minimum cost perspective.

Step three–reengineering work processes

Theory of constraints (TOC) approach to process reengineering. Why “balanced flow” process management doesn’t work in a CRM environment. Introduction to process mapping technology developed by Toronto-based Domain Knowledge.

Step four–supporting with CRM technology

CRM application software functionality. Key vendor reviews across multiple dimensions. Matching software “sweet spots” to user focus. Results of customer satisfaction study that cuts through vendor hype and presents a realistic picture of what to expect.

Vendor selection

Presentation of comprehensive selection process ranging from assembling detailed specifications and writing RFI/RFPs to selecting contenders and scripting and scoring demonstrations. Relative advantages/disadvantages of “one vendor” ERP/CRM solutions. Avoiding common errors made in choosing CRM applications.

Systems architecture and integration

Broader systems implications of adopting CRM: e-business, data warehousing, data marts, back office–front office integration and project management techniques.

Q&A: Opportunity to discuss issues as a group.