| |March 20198CIOReviewCRM: MONETIZING DATA THROUGH CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPSBy Anand Bhatia, Head Analytics & Digital Marketing, Fino Payments Bank ustomer Relation-ship Management or CRM is one of the three letter acronyms (TLAs) that generate much interest and much heartburn in Marketing, Tech-nology and Service teams, not spar-ing even the corner office. Especially with the much touted statistic that 90% of all CRM applications fail!Let us step back and understand what a CRM really is NOT.It is NOT a lead management tool and surely it is NOT a sales manager review tool.Remember when on a shop floor a well-meaning manager walked around with a stop watch to do a time and motion study? Well, the equally well-meaning workers slowed the pace of work. They did not see any value in being tracked as such or tasks being optimized to suit the needs of the management over their own needs.And that is the sen-timent on which CRM applications fail.Ask yourself or the managers who have to work with the CRM, "What is the CRM for?" and if the answer is, "It is to track perfor-mance?" You know your implemen-tation is doomed to fail.Staying with failure, let us list why CRM applications fail. In no particular order:· Bewildering list of features there are just too many things a CRM is touted to deliver. From as-signing leads, driving campaigns, to analytics. The list can be endless. Enough for a paralysis to set in. And with each potential implementation partner positioning it as a magic bullet or worse a Santa Claus, figur-ing what is needed and how to use is a challenge.· Use of buzz words like AI AI works where there is clarity on what is needed basis some underlying data that is authentic. · A platform to penalize Since the focus is to simply track perfor-mance, it joins the ranks of other platforms which churn out MIS on how things are moving. And leadership teams have managers to pull out even more data cuts which mean nothing.· Does not account for the mo-tivations of the frontline sales teams Sales teams are simple people. They do not have the luxury of be-ing ambiguous. Life is a clear set of numbers which needs to be de-livered - as simply as possible. And anything which needs him or her to do "extra work" (filling up forms or updating records etc.) is unwelcome. If pushed too hard, will be addressed by random data points designed to look good in MIS reports. And this starts the downward spiral to failure and hence questions on ROI.Hence, there is a challenge of how to measure ROI since the CRM is touted as a platform to increase conversions, interest flags when the conversions do not grow dramatically. Business leaders forget that effi-ciency in movement of data is one of the many factors which drive con-version. Other key factors being:· Story telling creating a com-pelling case for consumers to buy· Product availability in a service set up that means the abil-ity of the sales team to help the prospect buy· Product configuration fea-tures, pricing etc as per consumer choice and affordabilityC IN MY OPINIONAnand Bhatia
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