Teknologi och Samhälle
Datavetenskap
Examensarbete
15 högskolepoäng, grundnivå
Transitioning to a new Customer Relationship Management System:
Challenges and Recommendations
Per Hansson
Anton Persson
Examen:
Kandidatexamen 180 hp Handledare: Aleksander Fabijan,
Huvudområde:
Datavetenskap Helena Holmström Olsson
Program:
Informationsarkitekt Examinator: Nancy Russo
Abstract (English) - Efficient Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is critical for successful understanding and collaboration with Customers. Companies frequently change or update their CRM systems in order to increase their work effectiveness. Customers and markets are always evolving and in order to keep up with increasing amounts of data and competition, companies should use efficient ways of working, regarding assistance in making data more accessible. If companies do not successfully integrate their CRM systems they risk falling behind other possible competitors and deteriorate. Change is often approved by those who are commanding it and questioned by those who receive it. The recipients of the change often experience uncertainty and hesitation. In this thesis, we describe how our research of CRM process, CRM systems and the stakeholders within the case company lead to finding challenges and needs. Our main contribution is the analysis of recommendations based on our findings, which can be used as a basis for creating a requirement specification in the context of integrating a new CRM system. With the empirical data collected in our thesis, and with the literature that we reviewed, we aim to assist the case company and other organizations in their process of implementing a new CRM system.
Abstrakt (Svenska) - Vikten av att ha effektiv hantering av kundrelationer (CRM) inom företag väger mycket, för att på ett lyckat sätt öka förståelsen och samarbeten med kunder. Företag ändrar eller uppdaterar sina CRM system för att kunna öka arbetseffektiviteten. Kunder och marknad utvecklas ständigt, och för att kunna följa upp med större datamängder och ökad konkurrens bör företag använda sig utav effektiva sätt att arbeta på, när det gäller hjälp med att göra data mer tillgängligt. Om företag inte framgångsrikt integrerar sina CRM system kan de halka efter och försämras. Ett byte gällande CRM är oftast bestämt av ledning och ifrågasatt av de faktiska användarna. Mottagarna av förändringen upplever ofta osäkerhet och tvivel. I denna avhandling beskriver vi hur vår forskning kring CRM processer, CRM system och intressenterna i fallföretaget, leder till att hitta utmaningar och behov. Vårt främsta bidrag är vår analys av rekommendationer baserade på våra resultat, som kan användas som underlag för att skapa en kravspecifikation av fallföretaget. Med de empiriska uppgifter som samlas in i vår avhandling strävar vi efter att hjälpa fallföretaget och andra organisationer i deras process att implementera ett nytt CRM system.
Table of content
1. Introduction 4
1.1. Purpose and Ambitions 4
2. Background 6
2.1. Customer Relationship Management 7
2.2. Customer Relationship Management Challenges and Success Factors 7
2.2.1. Known Challenges from earlier research 8
2.2.2. Known Success Factors from earlier research 8
2.3. Customer Relationship Management Systems 9
2.4. effectiveness of CRM system on Management Process 11
3. Research Methodology 13
3.1. Case Study 13
3.2. Case Company Description 13
3.3. Data Collection 14
3.4. Data Analysis 17
3.5. Threats to validity 18
4. Results 19
4.1. Existing State 19
4.2. Challenges with current CRM 20
4.2.1. Common Challenges 20
4.2.2. Common Challenges in Sales 22
4.2.3. Common Challenges in Marketing 23
4.2.4. Common Challenges in Customer Operations 23
4.3. Transition to a new CRM 23
4.4. Common Challenges 25
5. Analysis 27
5.1. Relating common Challenges 27
5.2. Produced Common Challenges in Sales 29
5.3. Produced Common Challenges in Marketing 30
5.4. Produced Common Challenges in Customer Operations 30
5.5. Prioritization of recommendations 31
6. Conclusion 35
Acknowledgements 38
References Appendices
1. Introduction
To this day, there are many companies which have invested or are planning to invest huge
amounts of resources in implement customer relationship management strategies, tools,
and infrastructure in order to win the constant battle in the increasingly competitive
economy [1]. As a result, the growth in demand for CRM solutions has been increasing [1]. In this thesis, we study a case company and their transition from an existing customer relationship management system to a new system used by the company's owners.
In the case study we investigate there has been an ongoing project to phase out the currently used CRM system and to move everything into the new system that is used by the company's owners, the Radiometer Group, but it has not really been prioritized. Our case
company recognizes the benefit of having a common CRM system and have therefore
decided to initiate the project again. There should be no doubt regarding the importance for companies, with their abilities to determine where exactly they need to be in the future, but also how to manage all the different changes required to get there [12]. To accelerate this transition, they asked us to analyze the needs of the different stakeholders in terms of use for making their work as efficient as possible.
We solve this task through observations, interviews, face to face meetings, phone meetings, and Skype calls. We will analyze the data collected, and examine if it is possible to find
common themes regarding challenges from interviewees, and come to conclusion with
possible recommendations.
1.1 Purpose and ambitions
The entirety of the company’s project is in a first phase, divided into three areas. The first
area is making a gap analysis on the company’s CRM system and their owners CRM
system, which has already been made. The second area is making analyses and
prioritization, in order so that the case company may proceed in making their requirement specification. The third and final area is developing a requirement specification based with input from different stakeholders. Our purpose in this entire project is to assist in finalizing
the second area, including interviewing stakeholders in order to understand the needs
and challenges that they might have in a new CRM system.
Change process to a new CRM system can be seen as an extremely important factor in an
environment of high competition to achieve success. However, a previous study shows a
failure rate of nearly 70% of all change projects. The extremely high rate of failure is based on the absence of structured framework of how to handle the process of change within an organization [12].
Our ambition is that after completing our task, the case company will be able to move forward with decisions and planning, for finalizing their requirement specification for the
Our research questions for this thesis are:
RQ1. What are the key challenges that the stakeholders experience with the existing CRM process and system?
We will answer this question with the combination of a literature review and the analysis of
the empirical data collected through interviews, observations and other methods from the
stakeholders. The complete list of stakeholders is visible in Figure 2.
RQ2. How can we make the use of the new CRM system more efficient for the stakeholders based on the identified challenges and recommendations?
This question will be answered by our literature review where we will research what
recommendations can be used to solve the experienced challenges, and supported by the
empirical data from our interviewees.
Companies that are in a change process often experience challenges along the way. In our
case, the problem which the company is experiencing is managing changes to the CRM
system, in terms of ensuring that different stakeholders needs are fulfilled since our case company's system differs from that which their owners use.
The remainder of this thesis is structured as follows. In the following section, we present the background for our thesis. Specifically, we describe what CRM and CRM system is, and
how efficiently it may or may not provide an improvement on several points of work
effectiveness. In section three, we describe our research methods on how we worked with the case company and important key stakeholders in order to gain understandings of what needs to be analyzed and summarized. In section four we show our results and present an explanation of the different factors which have affected these result, both with the case company’s existing CRM problems and what could be major issues when transitioning to a
new CRM system. In section five, we analyse our findings in relation to the related
research. We conclude our thesis in section six.
2. Background
In this section, we present the background for our thesis. First, we start with an illustration of a funnel providing a description of our background review process. Next, we describe
what customer relationship management is, and also typical purposes involving the area.
Next, we describe known challenges and success factors which can be of importance
regarding CRM implementations. Afterward, we describe what a customer relationship
management system is and what typical purposes of such are, and also how change
management is of great importance for companies to have when renewing the company
structure. Detailed literature review protocol can be seen in Appendix A.
In Figure 1. Background Review , we illustrate with a funnel how our research starts wide
in Customer Relationship Management, goes narrow towards Customer Relationship
Management System Challenges and Success Factors, continues towards Customer
Relationship Management Systems and finishes with Effectiveness of CRM System on
Management Process.
Figure1.BackgroundReview.
2.1 Customer Relationship Management
CRM is a customer focused based strategy which integrates marketing, sales and customer care service in order to create and add value for companies and their customers. The concept of CRM has been around for a long time, and is a further development of a
well-known concept in the marketing sphere: relational marketing [16]. CRM differs from
relational marketing in such a way that it integrates earlier mentioned sales, marketing, and customer service.
There are several different definitions of CRM [7], [13], [15], [16]. The most representative Chalmeta [16] describes the concept of CRM as ‘‘a coherent and complete set of processes
and technologies for managing relationships with current and potential customers and
associates of the company, using the marketing, sales and service departments, regardless of the channel of communication’’.
Not surprisingly, plenty of resources are spent in order to attract new customers. However, according to Lambert [15], managements of several companies can often be self-satisfied in terms of nurturing existing customers to build and strengthen relationships with them. For most companies, existing customers represent the greater opportunities for possibilities to
gain beneficial growth. Customer relationship management becomes a critical business
process due to high pressure towards competition, needs to gain cost effectiveness in terms of high quality and low costs and understandings of differences between customer equality in terms of profitability [15].
When examining the domain of a CRM there are three perspectives which were dominant
[7]. The first perspective relates to a better understanding of the customer base by
identifying various customer segments and gaining knowledge on their needs. A primary
motivation for companies to implement good customer relationship management and CRM
systems is to track customer behavior to gain insight into customer tastes and evolving
needs [13]. The second perspective includes opening up different channels of
communication. The reason given was to enable the customer to access products and services whenever they want, the relevance may differ from different companies and their
work methods. The last perspective is based on building a knowledge base of
information that is required to provide assistance by combining customer interaction data
to offer the customer a strengthened experience in terms of service [7]. Customer
relationship management is classified as operational, analytical and collaborative.
2.2. Customer Relationship Management System challenges and
success factors
In this subsection, we present known challenges with CRM systems and success factors,
which is already known through previous surveys to have major impact on an
implementation.
2.2.1 Known challenges from earlier research
Changing into a new CRM system is proven to be difficult [8], [10]. Building customer relationships is very complex since it is no longer adequate to only focus on the customers themselves. Nguyen et al. [8] mention in a survey that according to several cases, managers are becoming deeply concerned about potentially losing customer loyalty, due to competitors
attract them with lower prices and purchasing encouragements [8]. Companies face much
more thoroughly different landscape. The market today demand companies to be much
more conscious of how they might be doing business in such a competitive environment, both culturally, ethically and socially.
CRM systems have come to be very popular and many companies choose to implement
them. A previous survey of more than 200 CRM projects discovered that only 30% of the organizations felt that they had achieved a more efficient way to sell and service their customers [10].
A major study conducted by Mendoza et al. [10] shows that 70% of companies that
implement CRM will ultimately fail. The survey reveals that [10]:
● Companies underestimate the complexity of CRM,
● They lack clear business objectives,
● Invest inadequately in the provision of CRM software.
Another conducted survey of over 700 companies [17] regarding the different causes of
failures showed that the main causes were:
● Organizational change,
● Company policies,
● Little knowledge of CRM,
● Poor skills in CRM.
This result shows an importance of describing CRM as a business strategy and taking the change of environment of the working people into account. Next, we present a number of
known success factors that can play part to make the CRM implementation work
efficiently.
2.2.2 Known success factors from earlier research
There are major success factors regarding customer relationship management. For
example, two of them are to focus on key customers and to manage knowledge [9]. These can have a significant effect on customer satisfaction level. However, it is of great value to take into consideration that customer satisfaction itself is not directly affected by how
Another survey mentions the basis of customer relationship management to be a process of creating relationships and also to create a value between companies and their significant customers. By doing so, it can become a win-win situation for both factions, where it increases the profitability of firms and enhances customer value for life [8].
A CRM application combines people, processes, and technology with a purpose of
understanding the company’s customer base. Further relevant aspects to known success
factors are [8], [9], [10]:
● Structures. Project managers, directors, etc, need to have a clear view of achieving
full commitment, which includes participation from all involved management levels.
There also needs to be a clear set of criteria and work methods to ensure
stakeholders are working with the system on equivalent terms.
● Objectives. It is of great importance to establish general and specific objectives.
These objectives need to cover all the areas of work and should be sorted as short, medium and long-term objectives.
● Automation. Stakeholders have to be able to fully utilize all of the existing
information regarding customers in the most efficient way possible. Stakeholders
need to be able to interact with systems and departments of a company which is involved with customer data.
● Company nature. Companies need well structured, easily understanding means of
communicating the CRM strategy used, as well as commitment from staff to use a customer relationship management system to its fullest.
2.3 Customer Relationship Management Systems
A customer relationship management system is a software system used to achieve and
maintain relationships with customers or clients [6]. The purpose of a CRM system is to increase the effectiveness of the CRM process. These systems guarantee that you don’t lose track of all the different tasks required to maintain and nurture the relationship with the customers. Every customer or client has different needs and by using a tailored treatment
for every customer, the chances of maintaining an ongoing relationship will most likely
increase. As a result of this the total profit and effectiveness of the company has the potential to increase.
The core of the CRM approach is based on three different concepts in marketing: customer orientation, relationship marketing, and database marketing [9]. In today's society, it is difficult to reach out to customers because of a large amount of advertising emanating from multiple channels, this, in turn, led to customers losing their uniqueness. As a result of this, companies are losing the individual needs of their customers. To regain, achieve and nurture good relationships with customers, companies are using CRM applications.
CRM applications provide the ability to target customers accurately [9][11]. The use of
CRM application can lead to increased profit and effectiveness by providing lower
operational costs, higher revenue, increased customer satisfaction, reduced detention rates
by customers, and asses customer loyalty and profitability measured by repeat purchases,
money spent and longevity [11].
A typical CRM system has many different features and functionalities, therefore the
different systems can vary depending on the organization or the team using it. The most common CRM features are the following:
● Managing contacts. A CRM system allows you to establish groups with your contacts or any context that fits the case.
● Case management. Managing every customer individually with a tailored treatment to improve the customer's satisfaction.
● Sales Data. The CRM can convert sales and the customer's data into convenient pieces that can be used later on to inform other data that a decision has to be made. This will simplify the process of determining what measures that have to be made by considering the collected data.
● CRM Data. Storing the data properly to access it efficiently whenever it is needed.
According to a survey regarding CRM implementation [6], only approximately 20 to 30
percent of companies asked were able to successfully achieve improvement after
implementing a CRM system. The other 70 to 80 percentage resulted in either losses or no
bottom line improvement at all, in terms of organization performance. Manufacturing,
logistics, etc. have been able to perform great results in both failures and success. It is no big surprise that the risk of failure can be great. After all, big changes mean big chance for failure.
In recent years the success and failures in implementing CRM systems have attracted lots of publicity [6]. In fact, there is a close relation between successfully and failed CRM implementations [1]. The successful systems managed to:
● Observe the change management disciplines, while the failed ones did not.
● The ones who succeeded were planned carefully with pretty much every aspect
involved covered.
● The employees were the right people for the project itself.
● The company worked great with the external suppliers as a team.
The opposite of these marks mentioned, could be involved and eventually be classified as failed projects or such who were only partly successful with their implementation.
Change management has been studied for several years in order to identify challenges for
processes similar to our case company. But what exactly defines change management? It
can be specified as a process for continuously renewing a company’s structure, direction and capabilities [12]. The need for change within an organization is often unpredictable and usually occurs when the organization is experiencing a crisis.
2.4 Effectiveness of CRM system on management process
A customer relationship management system favors organizational learning about
customers by enabling companies to analyze purchasing behavior throughout transactions
through different channels and also points of customer contact [13]. Companies with a good distribution of CRM system have a greater position in terms of influencing their stock of
accumulated experience and knowledge into support processes of customers. In fact, they
are efficient in their customer management process.
Proposed sub-components that CRM systems could have:
● Customer Interaction Systems
● Integrated Channel Management Systems
● Analytical tools
Other explored observations have a similar categorization. For example, classifying CRM
systems as a set of modules: analytical, operational and collaborative. Some also had a
proposition which mentioned modules could be added to assist with marketing campaigns
[7]. The lack of CRM strategic framework from which to define success could be viewed as reasons for disappointing results. In order to succeed, a full commitment must be held from
involved leading parties. Payne et al. [14] mention in their study about customer
relationship management, that a series of supporting conditions is greatly valuable in
terms of implementing CRM system. They are helpful as they consider implementation
issues. The considered conditions are [14]:
● Culture and leadership
● Procurement processes
● Human resource management processes
● IT & Data management processes
● Organizational design
To summarize, Customer Relationship Management implementation is a complex process.
This process can be supported with various CRM systems that enable companies to become
more efficient with customer relationship. However, integrating CRM systems is a
challenging tasks where many companies struggle to gain improved effectiveness due to
lack of knowledge or lack of clear business objectives, etc.
The aim of this thesis is to analyze the challenges of the different stakeholders in terms of use for making their work as efficient as possible, so that the case company will be able to move forward with decisions and planning, for finalizing their requirement specification for the new CRM system integration. In the next section, and to achieve our objective, we present our research methodology.
3. Research methodology
In this section, we provide a description of our research methodology. We explain how we
approached the key stakeholders order to conduct our research. We managed to obtain
valuable information from twenty interviewees to base our findings from a wide variety
work departments. We received support from our case company supervisors to contact their departments in other countries, including India, England, South Africa and Finland.
We start by providing an introduction to case studies. Secondly, we describe the case
company we conducted our research for. Next, we present our data collection techniques
(specifically: interviews, observations and also CRM data collections). Later, we explain our data analysis, where we describe how we analyzed every fraction of data collected from interviews and observations, etc. Finally, we discuss our threats to validity.
3.1 Case study
Case studies are powerful empirical methods [5]. Primarily, they are used for exploratory
investigations, in an attempt to understand and explain a phenomenon or construct a
theory. In general, they are observational or descriptive in their nature, however, they can be relational as well [5]. Case studies become more popular and are frequently used in
papers in order to acquire an understanding or to demonstrate possible new methods,
techniques, processes etc[5]. Since case studies encompass a wide set of techniques(CRM
system analysis, data collections, joint meetings, recordings, observations and reporting of results), they can be based on both quantitative or qualitative evidence [2]. We conducted an in-depth case study with a single case company. In the sections below, we describe our case company.
3.2 Case company description
HemoCue is a subsidiary company who is conducting work regarding medical diagnostics
with a base of operation in Ängelholm, Skåne, with 200 employees in Sweden alone. They
are currently developing, producing and selling instruments for measuring hemoglobin,
glucose, and albumin. For these instruments, HemoCue is also developing their own micro
cuvettes for analytical testing on liquid substances. HemoCue, which became part of the
parent company Radiometer Group on the 13th of April 2013, is selling medical products to
more than 130 countries around the world, involving several clinical areas. They are
continuously developing more microcuvette methods, using vast knowledge and experience
in advanced chemistry, in order for them to be of use for future important analyses.
The subsidiary company have decided to implement a new CRM system. Due to the benefits that they recognize with CRM systems at the crown company, they want to work with the same system as the crown company currently is using.
The objective for the stakeholders of the subsidiary company is to be more effective when
working with the new system and to be integrated into the crown companies working
methods since they have been successful with the implementation of the system.
In order for the project to work as flexible as possible, a consideration was made early for applying time to work at the case company with the assignment given, but also to deliver continuable updates for our supervisors. Due to our time limit of twenty hours a week, an arrangement was made for a flexible schedule, where time could be put aside to study on our analysis at the company and conduct interviews, but also to find the time and work with reporting the thesis to the university. In the next subsection we explain case studies.
3.3 Data collection
In order for us to retrieve a large amount of information about the CRM system and all the potential challenges of different types of stakeholders around the company, we decided in an agreement with the supervisors from the company that interview meetings were to be conducted. In our case study, we chose to use semi-structured interviews to get results of a
qualitative nature. We considered multiple data-collection techniques for example
questionnaire however, we decided to conduct interviews. Since we interviewed
stakeholders from different departments within the company, these types of interviews
suited us very well as they enabled us to investigate the area of interest in greater detail.
In our interviews, we used a list of questions and topics, but the scheme and content were tailored to match the interviewee's roles and answers. If we decided to use a survey, it would not have resulted in the same type of qualitative response. Since stakeholders work in different areas, they have different uses in the system, so we created a set of questions
for every department to get a more comprehensive picture of the different needs and
challenges within the area.
Interviews: We conducted a total of twenty interviews to ensure that potentially valuable information from different departments that will be affected, were involved in participating. A large reason to why interviews became the best way to achieve success in finding information, was mainly due to support from senior superiors who have been involved in advancing the integration to CRM system further forward.
In
Figure 2 we illustrate the key stakeholder areas of the company’s CRM system that they wanted us to observe and analyse. Note that the different areas of work contain many different roles.
Figure2.TheKeyStakeholderAreasWith AssociatedRolesIn TheCaseCompany.
With assistance from Director of Customer Operations, Business IT and Sales Support
Manager, we created our first draft of interview questions which were tested beforehand on
the last mentioned stakeholder (see appendix for interview templates). The interview
questionnaire was to be used in consultation with each and every interviewee that were to join for our cause. Even with core objectives, finding out about possible similarities between needs or challenges could prove to be more challenging than expected.
The data collection for this specific case could differ in terms of answers since different key persons or stakeholders could have considerably different needs from a CRM system. This study can, therefore, provide a deeper insight into aspects which can be investigated to
develop or confirm possible theories which explain our observations [2]. Note that the
structures may vary, simply because some interviews were conducted with more than one
interviewee, while some other were performed via phone, skype etc. It may be of value to
understand that not every interview was conducted alike, due to several reasons. For
example, some interviewees had their base of operation in different countries and could
therefore only be available through a link. Also, the time it took for each interviewee to respond and find an available spot for joining in on our task could differ from each and every person. To get in contact with specifically recommended key persons could also vary due to their role in the company, which of course causes them to have other assignments and important errands which needed their attention.
Table 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 on the next page illustrates the different interviewees roles, what
department they belong to, the type of interview conducted and the duration of the
Table1.1.
Department: Sales Type Duration (minutes)
Vice President Sales Phone Conference 20
Regional Sales Managers Skype 30
General Manager Sweden Skype 20
Sales Development Specialist In-person 25
Sales Area Manager Phone Conference 25
Sales Representatives In-person, Skype 25
Table1.2.
Department: Marketing Type Duration (minutes)
Global Campaign Manager In-person 35
Marketing and Event Project
Manager In-person 35
Technical Manager DM and
Connectivity In-person 35
Table1.3.
Department: Customer
Operations Type Duration (minutes)
Vice President Customer
Operations and Supply Chain Phone Conference 25
Director Customer Operations In-person 45
Business IT manager In-person 45
Sales Support Manager In-person 20
Customer Operations Coordinator
and Trade Compliance In-person 25
Export Coordinator In-person 25
Customer Complaint Manager In-person 50
Customer Service In-person 25
The participants were all familiar with the research topic, however, the knowledge of the topic differed between interviewees, due to different needs and or previous expertise in terms of use of a CRM system.
Observations: Observations were made on a couple of different stakeholders(e.g. salespersons) of the system, as some of them showed us how they performed their daily
tasks in CRM. This gave us the opportunity to identify how working methods differs
between various stakeholders of the system. During these observations, stakeholders also
described from their point of view how missing functionalities of the existing system could be implemented in the newer system according to them, in order to simplify their daily tasks.
CRM Data Collection: We were able to obtain accessibility to the case company's existing CRM system in a student environment, meaning we had the option to explore some of its different features and settings without risks of hurting valuable data. The reason for giving us an opportunity to navigate through the system was in order for us to acquire a general
understanding of how tools could work and also for us to have a clear idea what
interviewees described when they explained how they could be using the CRM system.
3.4 Data analysis
We read our raw data, meaning that we analyzed each and every document, emails, taped
recordings, etc. All word by word from which we had gathered information from our
interviews. By scanning our files from each interviewee, we had speculations that we could enable greater findings in terms of vital data for acquiring a common thread. After our first performed interview we analyzed the data in order to highlight and try to find different topics which emerged.
The biggest reason for why it was made several times, was to try and find a certain pattern
for how upcoming interviews could be conducted. More or less discovering potential new
critical information and how we could develop our questions deeper depending on the
interviewee's position at work.
3.5 Threats to validity
Construct validity: To increase the validity of the case study, we used several data
collection techniques (interviews, observations). We got the opportunity of interviewing
multiple roles from three different departments. By conducting the study in this way, we
have constructed a comprehensive understanding of how different stakeholders work with
the CRM system and what challenges and needs they experience.
External validity: The result/main contribution of our case study cannot directly translate to other case companies. However, some of our findings such as the importance of a well structured way of communicating the CRM strategy, establish clear objectives, achieve full commitment from the different stakeholders and a clear set of criteria and work methods to ensure stakeholders are working with the system on equivalent terms, can partially relate to other companies as they are challenges which often occur in change processes.
Internal validity: In our case study, we do not determine if there is a cause-and-effect
relationship and therefore we cannot exclude that external variables in addition to the
independent variable might affect the dependent variable.
4. Results
In this section we present our results. First, we describe the current CRM practices.
Second, we present the overall common challenges followed by common challenges within
different departments of the case company. Next, we describe the transition to a new CRM
where we present our suggested recommendations to mitigate the challenges. Finally, we
present a table of every challenge, showing how many times they were mentioned in the interviews and which recommendation it is linked to.
4.1 Existing state
The current CRM used by the case company is mainly used as a storage database where stakeholders can access information about customers or distributors.
“IusetheCRMsystemasareferencetool.”
- CustomerOperationsCoordinatorandTrade
Compliance
“Idon’tuseCRMthatmuch,Ionlyuseitto accesscustomerinformation.”
- SalesRepresentative
“IonlyuseCRMwhenIneed toaccessinformation aboutnewcustomers”
- ExportCoordinator
The system is therefore not fully used and to make up for missing functionality multiple
systems and communication channels are being used instead. In this case the
communication between stakeholders is complicated since most of the data and
documentation are mainly distributed throughout regular mails that are sent between
colleagues. A key functionality of a CRM should be accessing detailed information about customers with ease, although that is not how the existing system is being used. In some cases, the CRM system is mostly used as a contact list, which salesmen use to have a look upon information regarding possible customers they will associate with, in order to see what kinds of items could be needed for the customer.
“Weuseseveraldifferentprogramstoperformwork thatcouldbedoneintheCRM”
- SalesRepresentative
“Functions as calendar and notebook are not cooperating with one another, the reason for
inactivityisthatCRMisnotthemain sourceofdeliveringdata,salesorprices”
- RegionalSales
Manager
4.2 Challenges with the current CRM
Our conducted interviews were performed in consultation with supervisors at the case
company and stakeholders from several work divisions, whom were all mentioned earlier at chapter 2, subheading 2.5. Based on our analysis of the data, we present the common challenges next. These challenges answer our first research question: “What are the key
challengesthatthestakeholdersexperiencewiththeexistingCRMprocessandsystem?”
4.2.1 Overall common challenges
Challenge 1: Lack of assistance
We questioned the interviewees regarding how the CRM system helped them, or could help them perform with their respective daily objectives. Numerous interviewees told us that it would be of great value to be able receive some sort of assistance with upcoming objectives, sort of being able to keep track of different activities in order make sure that stakeholders get reminded of what actions to perform.
“I want to be able to keep track of my customers, if I have not visited my customer in six
months,Iwantthesystemtoremindmeofthis”
-SalesDevelopmentSpecialist
Challenge 2: Inaccurate information
All of our interviewees told us that they mostly use the existing system to collect data from customers or distributors. However, the information that is logged into the system is not always correct. There is no history of previous meetings or activities and if a customer have more than one installation they are not able to view all of the different installations. The information that gets logged into the system easily gets out of date and can therefore lead to complications for the stakeholders if they have access to inaccurate information about a customer or distributor when contacting them.
“There is currently a lot of out of date information in the system and no one is responsible
for keeping the system up to date, therefore I can never trust the system to give me the correct
information”
-Customer Operations Coordinator, Trade
Compliance
Challenge 3: Various work methods
It is of no larger revelation that due to the fact of important key stakeholders having different needs of the CRM system, is partially because of all the distinctive work methods
used. Assignments are performed and data is being documented through Excel by some,
depending on assignments of course, while others could be using CRM partially. Different working methods lead to stakeholders being uncertain about what their obligations to the system are and what information they need to put in the system since there’s no standard way of working.
“You have to develop a standardized way to work with the system to get the right
informationintothesystemandensurethattherightpeopleadd therightinformation”
- SalesRepresentative
Challenge 4: State of training
After analysing our performed interviews, a general correlation to why workers use
different methods of performing tasks became clear. No actual training were made on how
to work with different tools in the case company's CRM system. More specifically was
regarding which information has to be there or needs to be put in, and what information should absolutely not be in the system. What more is that it could be problematic to add or remove contacts in the system. Regional managers needs to follow up more with CRM as well according to some, since people are not working with it willingly.
“Help stakeholders to familiarize themselves with the system and learn the key features” - SalesRepresentative
Challenge 5: Limited accessibility of leads
We asked our interviewees how they would describe the biggest obstacle to overcome to achieve more effective sales, the interviewees answered that the access to view leads is limited since they are not accessible for everyone. It is very important that everyone have visual access to the leads in order to find out who is interested and who can drive the business forward.
“We need to make sure that everyone has access to the marketing module to get more
visibilityonourleads”-GlobalCampaignProductManager
Challenge 6: Traceability of products
The ability to track the company’s products is very limited in the existing system. There is a big chance that a customer has multiple products but it does not appear in the system. In turn, this means that the sales representatives get inaccurate information from the system because the products are not properly registered.
“Only3000outof14000soldproductsgetsregisteredinthesystem”-SalesAreaManager
4.2.2 Common challenges in sales
Challenge 1: Feature exclusion
When asked about manually performed work which would presumably mainly reported to
superiors, the answer was the sales funnels and adding customers or distributors to the system. The reports are made manually in Excel because the sales funnel is not being used in their CRM, for the simple reason of the CRM sales funnel visibility and functions not being as effective as when based on the excel sheets reported by salesmen via e-mail. According to the sales managers, that was considered the more efficient way to consolidate the data. Though nearly all of the interviewees said that they wanted the funnel to be included in the CRM system to be able to see where a customer is in the sales process. They also wanted to be able to extract the data from the CRM instead of receiving it by e-mail to get easier access to the data. Another challenge that users face because of insufficient functions, is the duplication of work that needs to be done as a result of the current way to report collected data.
“What drives the sales is simple and clear recording of customer needs and data” - Regional
SalesManager
Challenge 2: Mobility usage
The stakeholders are currently incapable of creating accounts and tasks while out in the field, because of that they need to add the gathered data from e.g. a customer meeting in the system on their desktop instead of using the application directly.
“There is a lot of work that has to be added to the CRM after the meeting when it could have
beendoneduringit”-SalesAreaManager
4.2.3 Common challenges in marketing
Challenge 1: Categorization of customers
There is no categorization of customers or distributors in the existing system, the only way to see what type of customer you are dealing with is through the sales funnel. Classifying the customers or distributors can help stakeholders take the right action and target their marketing for specific needs of their customers.
“Imissbeingabletoputthecustomerinascaleinthesales process”-ExportCoordinator
4.2.4 Common challenges in customer operation
Challenge 1: System integration
Another challenge that the stakeholders experience is the use of different systems since
they do not interact with each other. This makes things complicated and is very
time-consuming for stakeholders since they need to have the knowledge of how to operate the different systems and know where to put in collected data and how to extract it.
“We use several different systems, and they do not communicate with each other” - Marketing
andEventProjectManager
4.3 Transition to a new CRM
Recommendation 1: Notifications
The solution to lack of assistance is to make sure that stakeholders receives
notifications when an activity needs to be performed. By using notifications
connected to an account, stakeholders should be able to see the proposed action for the customer when such an occasion occurs. This could for example occur when a customer have a contract which is about to expire. Following actions should be to contact the customer regarding a possibility of creating a new contract. This action should be presented as a notification for the stakeholder.
Recommendation 2: essential functionality
To be able to use the system fully, all of the necessary functions that facilitates
stakeholders everyday tasks needs to be implemented into the system. Stakeholders
want to be able to get access to detailed information about their customers and distributors, extract and edit statistics and have visual access to up to date leads. These are the overall main functions that stakeholders want to see materialized into a well defined, easy to use CRM system.