What is CRM do

Copyright Collective Intelligence Inc 2004, 2005 1

CRM INTEGRATION 2005Chuck Russell, Senior Partner


What is CRM?What is CRM?

CRM – Customer Relationship Management

Manages:Party Information (Company, People) and relationships. Sales Opportunities, Activities and SalespeopleSales LeadsForecasting, Products and Price Lists (catalogs)Closed Sales & ContractsCustomer Support (Cases, Solutions, etc.)

Software Functions: Sales Force AutomationMarketing AutomationCustomer and Technical SupportAnalytics

CRM Goal: 360 degree view of

customer. Manage and monitor all customer touch

points.


Emergence of Strategic CRMEmergence of Strategic CRM

Hosted CRM Debuts with Sales Force Automation

Synchronize with PDA and Wireless

Forecasting and Offline Functionality

Multilingual, Multicurrency, Customization and

Integration

Full CRM Suite

Integration with Enterprise Applications, Embedded

Analytics and Data Warehousing

Integration with the Extraprise. B2B CRM via SOA


360 Promise versus Reality360 Promise versus Reality

• Financials – AR, AP, GL• Inventory Management• Sales • Order Management –

order entry, shipment tracking, return goods management, A/R reporting.

Most CRM Solutions Need to Draw from Enterprise Applications in Order to Provide the Whole Picture


CRM Integration PathsCRM Integration PathsData Integration• Data is extracted from external

systems and inserted into the CRM data store in order to augment the application.

• Can happen in real-time (zero latency), throughout the day (low latency) or on an infrequent basis (high latency).

• Informational.

Example: Sales revenue is added to each customer account in order to provide sales people with a method to rank high volume customers.

Process Integration• Composite processes are

created that envelope a CRM business process and some ‘back-end’ functionality like Sale Order Processing.

• Data is most likely updated in real-time.

• Transactional.

Example: A sales person converts an opportunity within the CRM application automatically into a sales order


Target: CRMTarget: CRM

CRMCRM

FinancialsFinancials

SalesOrder

SalesOrder

ERPERP

Extract, Transform & Load

Data is written directly to theCRM data store. The CRM is thefinal resting place for the data.


Levels of CRM IntegrationLevels of CRM Integration

• Data Integration – combining multiple sources of Customer Information into a cohesive, well-formed, business rule driven repository.

• Process Integration –a common business process model that defines the sequence, hierarchy, events, execution logic, and information movement between systems residing in the same organization (EAI) and system residing in multiple organizations (B2B).


Data IntegrationData Integration

An alternative is to extract data from the CRM system and other Enterprise Applications moving the data into an Operational Data Store (ODS) or Data Warehouse.

ODS,Data Warehouse

Or Data Mart

ODS,Data Warehouse

Or Data Mart

CRMCRM

FinancialsFinancials

Decision SupportEIS, Dashboards

Business Intelligence


CRM Data Integration ObservationsCRM Data Integration Observations

• Data Integration is more Common than Process Integration.

• Data Quality is a Critical Issue Often Overlooked or Underestimated in Integration Efforts.

• Getting the data right is the important first step to getting the business process right. Integrated data facilitates integrated business process.


CRM Data Integration ProcessCRM Data Integration Process

• Requirements Gathering – Data requirements dictate the necessary data to be deployed or analyzed. Many CRM integration projects omit this step which leaves the implementation guessing about the needed data.

• Metadata Requirements – Metadata is literally “data about data”. In its most basic form metadata provides business definitions of data for end-users (does “revenue” mean ‘booked revenue or ‘billed revenue’.

• Source Profiling – Find the various customer related data at its source. Data quality is evaluated as well as its relevance to the requirements.

• Data Mapping – Most data originating from operational systems often lacks the format or meaning to be useable by business people. Data mapping involves translating the data from its source to the destination system and establishing any transformation rules necessary to migrate that data.

• Data Loading – Loading data into the target platform is often complicated even with advance tools. Data extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) is the most often underestimated or omitted activity in CRM integration plans, often resulting in many-month project delays.

• Acceptance – End user validation of key data elements prior to loading all the data into the targets especially if some sophisticated transformation logic has been written.


A Closer Look at Data QualityA Closer Look at Data Quality

Inaccurate and low-quality data costs U.S. businesses $611 BILLION dollars each year

according to the Data Warehousing Institute.


Low Quality Data CostsLow Quality Data Costs

• According to the Gartner Group, in 2004, businesses managed 30 times more data than in 2000.

• Through 2006, greater than 50% of Business Intelligence (BI), CRM and Enterprise Resource Planning investments will suffer limited user acceptance despite the cost and effort necessary to implement them.

• These same companies will continue to invest heavily in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) spending a staggering $206 billion on direct marketing media (internet, traditional mail, telephone).

• Assume that 25% of the $206B is destined to failure due to BAD DATA. (That’s about $52B).


Misspent Marketing DollarsMisspent Marketing Dollars

• Loss results vary but often these losses result from activities/programs such as low quality marketing or sales campaigns, direct mailings, associated staff overhead, etc.

• Loss is usually associated with targeted prospects who no longer reside at a particular address, or customer campaigns that end up sending the same customer 2-10 of the same promotional packages.

• More injurious than the unnecessary printing, postage and staffing costs is the slow but steady erosion of the enterprise’s creditability among customers and prospects.


2% of an enterprise’s customer master file contains records that become obsolete every month as their customers move, die, divorce, marry, etc. Given this fact, it easy to see how the all important Customer Master File, which is the cornerstone of CRM, quickly degenerates over time.

ObsolescenceObsolescence


Extraction from Data SourcesExtraction from Data SourcesMost modern CRM applications provide some type of data-oriented web services. Salesforce.com’s “SFORCE” technology provides complete web service access to the underlying CRM object model (www.sforce.com).

ODS,Data Warehouse

Or Data Mart

ODS,Data Warehouse

Or Data Mart

CRMCRM

ERPERP

Web Services,ETL or

Bulk LoadLegacyLegacy


Synchronization with CRMSynchronization with CRMThe ODS or Warehouse can be used as a data target for consolidation and a source for data cleansing. It supports the collection of enterprise data and the distribution of that data back to the CRM or through a web portal or….

ODS,Data Warehouse

Or Data Mart

ODS,Data Warehouse

Or Data Mart

CRMCRM

ERPERP

Web PortalWeb Portal

Data Distribution

Click Stream DataLeadsSupport RequestsEtc.,

SYNCH

portlets

ETL

Web Services,ETL or

Bulk Load


The Decision Support End GameThe Decision Support End Game

ODS,Data Warehouse

Or Data Mart

ODS,Data Warehouse

Or Data Mart

CRMCRM

ERPERP


Data Distribution (Query/Update)


SYNCH

portlets

ETL

Decision Support, EIS, Dashboards

Performance Management, KPI, CPM

Web Services,ETL or

Bulk Load


Single Source of FactsSingle Source of Facts

Summary Information

Ranked Data

Subject Oriented and Personalized


Remember: These Steps are EssentialRemember: These Steps are Essential

• Requirements Gathering – Ask your user’s for the ‘end-game’ strategy. What do they want to see? How do they make decisions?

• Metadata Requirements – Define your metrics just as you’d define your data.

• Source Profiling – Identify subject areas within the warehouse or other operation systems that support the requirements.

• Data Mapping – How will you move the data into your Visualization tools? OLAP, Reports, Dashboards.

• Data Loading –Data extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) is the most often underestimated or omitted activity in CRM integration plans, often resulting in many-month project delays. Is an SOA available? Do you need to build one?

• Acceptance – EIS is iterative. Build engineering process whereby users can comment on your designs early and often.


CRM Data ManagementCRM Data Management• Web Services Are a Powerful Tool

– Provide an appropriate level of data abstraction.– Removes the need to ‘navigate’ the data store and the need to know and

understand all business rules.– A great example is Salesforce.com’s SFORCE. A fully documented, hosted

SOA.• ETL Plays a Large Part in this Equation

– Used to make the process more efficient and productive. Less code, more design.

– Many ETL tools can read from and write to EAI components (message queues).

– A great example is Embarcadero’s dtStudio. • Change Data Capture

– Only Process changes made to the source data.– More efficient, need for smaller batch update windows– These features are often built into the web services implementation (witness

SFORCE).• Remember the Process


Integration Across CustomizationsIntegration Across Customizations

• CRM is rarely implemented in a vanilla form.

• Customizations consist of:– Additional Attributes– New Objects– New Relationships between Objects– Refined Business Rules with Workflow

• Customization Doesn’t Just Happen Pre-Implementation. It’s a continuous process.


Insulation from ChangeInsulation from Change

• Web Services Adapt– Custom WSDL generated as a result of a CRM

Change.– Caution, these are often ‘data-oriented’ services.

• ETL provides the productivity needed to adapt to object, attribute or business rule changes. Less coding, Business Analyst friendly.

• Your ODS and Warehouse must be built to adapt. Example slowly changing dimensions.

• Accept Change and Prepare for it.


CRM Integration PathsCRM Integration PathsData Integration• Data is extracted from external

systems and inserted into the CRM data store in order to augment the application.

• Can happen in real-time (zero latency), throughout the data (low latency) or on an infrequent basis (high latency).

• Informational.

Example: Sales revenue is added to each customer account in order to provide sales people with a method to rank high volume customers.

Process Integration• Composite processes are created

that envelope a CRM business process and some ‘back-end’ functionality like Sale Order Processing.

• Integration across heterogeneous systems.

• Data is most likely updated in real-time.

• Transactional.

Example: A sales person converts an opportunity within the CRM application automatically into a sales order


Composite ApplicationsComposite Applications

• Business tasks span multiple functions and require knowledge workers to interact with multiple applications.

• This has given way to the Composite CRM Application that combines functionality that may span multiple existing application silos.

• A composite CRM application provides a user with a single interface to complete business tasks and helps support the notion of a 360 degree view of customers or suppliers.


Composite Process IntegrationComposite Process Integration

• A salesperson has just closed a sale and is in the process of updating that opportunity in CRM.

• She needs to check on product availability in her geographical region before booking the order.

• She also must convert the opportunity into a sales order and alert her technical support team that an installation is pending.

A CRM Example:

“For most enterprises, composite applications will prove to be inevitable.”

Gartner Report, (October, 2003)


The ScenarioThe Scenario

Sales OrderingEngagement Management

CRM Inventory Management

Closed Sale


Integration OptionsIntegration Options

• EAI Solution• Web Services• Combination of

Messaging and Services

• Data Integration won’t work because inventory lookup needs to be done in real time.


CRM

Inventory Management

Closed Sale


Enter the Composite ApplicationEnter the Composite Application


CRM Inventory Management

Sale ClosureComposite App

Query/Update

Query/Update Query/Update

Query Only

Web Service

ODBC Connect

ODBC Connect

Message Queue


Technology ComponentsTechnology Components


CRM Inventory ManagementQuery/Update

Web Service

Query/Update

ODBC Connect

Query Only

ODBC Connect

Query/Update

Message Queue

Can be delivered over the web in a thin-client or on the

desktop as a fat-client application.

Technology Provided by Several Companies. Most

Notably: AboveAll Software.


Composite App AdvantagesComposite App Advantages

• Very Agile Solution – can be created with no invasive adjustment to the operational systems.

• No data redundancy and near zero-latency capability.

• Data does not need to move from system to system. The composite application supports the business process naturally.

• Processes become more efficient and accurate.• Extracts value from existing applications.• The duration and labor costs associated with this

type of project is reduced.


Web Portal IntegrationWeb Portal Integration

• Deploying the common customer truth to the enterprise from within a web portal.

• Allows partners to access data via personalized portal ‘spaces’.

• Allows customers to maintain their own personal or corporate data adding to data quality and ensuring that the data evolves.

• Execute many B2B CRM transactions in real-time.

• Web Portal is a perfect location for deploying com


The Web Portal and CRMThe Web Portal and CRM

ODS,Data Warehouse

Or Data Mart

ODS,Data Warehouse

Or Data Mart

CRMCRM

ERPERP


Data Distribution


SYNCH

portlets

ETL

Web Services,ETL or

Bulk Load

High Latency Integration – The data is moved from the portal into some operationaldata store and then synchronized with CRM during some batch cycle.

Portlets are small transactional units that execute within a Web Portal.


Direct ConnectDirect Connect

Web PortalWeb Portalportlets

CRMCRMWeb Service Access

Marketing Management – Lead collection, Product Registration, Direct Marketing

Customer Support – Case Submission, Case Tracking


Q&A