June 2000

BY KIM MACKAY, LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES

The question I am most often asked by clients is, "What is the single most important element of an effective CRM strategy?" It's a tough a question, given the complexity of organizations today, the constantly changing nature of technology, increasing customer demands and varying degrees of intensity in competition. Indeed, there may be no single answer that fits all circumstances, situations and clients. If I were to venture a conclusion, though, it would probably be this: Open, standards-based, multivendor solutions are absolutely critical to success in today's highly dynamic CRM environments.

Overarching business strategies like CRM focus on bringing the intellectual capital of an entire enterprise to bear on customer interactions, so they must have flexibility and diversity at their very core. To properly align the many disparate departments within an enterprise -- from the back-office through multiple customer interactions to final product or service fulfillment -- requires the use of flexible, open-standards-based technologies that work easily within existing infrastructures in all areas of an enterprise.

Far too often today, we see companies approaching CRM as a single-vendor, single-technology solution. But CRM, especially in a world where e-business is becoming more and more important, is far too complex -- too far-reaching in its implications and implementation -- to be achieved by proprietary products and single-vendor solutions. The most successful CRM strategies embrace multifaceted approaches to marketing, sales and customer care. To fully realize all the benefits of CRM, an organization must align its entire enterprise into a highly productive, customer-focused environment that can manage every aspect of a customer interaction, no matter what the technological medium.

This means organizations must use a CRM vendor who views the process as end-to-end, can incorporate new systems efficiently into existing infrastructure, can deliver advanced technologies designed specifically to use open standards within complex voice and data environments and can grow with a company's ever-changing needs in the marketplace.

On the surface, this may appear to be asking a lot. But no one said CRM was easy.

This explains why today, no single vendor is capable of delivering on the total concept of CRM. All vendors must partner with other top players in the industry to offer the broadest possible portfolio of solutions and capabilities to meet every client's needs. In addition, it is important that forward-thinking vendors embrace CRM as an evolving strategy in the marketplace. Today's CRM vendors must provide companies with the ability to implement CRM when and where they need it most, and as their business strategies call for additional elements of a total CRM solution. For example, companies today can -- and do -- begin perfectly valid long-term CRM strategies by deploying interactive voice response (IVR) systems first, then building on top of that. A total solution does not mean everything must be done at once and from the beginning.

Through partnering, CRM vendors and providers can form strategic alliances to integrate various CRM elements, such as customer care and workflow management solutions, with specialized front-office software packages. This is being done today industrywide and quite successfully. Through such combined solutions -- which are almost always unavailable from one company individually -- CRM organizations have access to a mix of technologies and services that deliver more consistent, intelligently managed customer interactions across an entire enterprise. This holds true no matter how and when customers choose to contact a company, whether in person or through voice, e-mail, fax, postal mail or the Internet.

The fact is, integrated solutions help ensure that all customer requests are quickly and efficiently managed, tracked and fulfilled.

Delivering On The Promise
Today, we are also seeing vendor partnerships that integrate existing call center software solutions with, for example, advanced computer-telephony software to provide seamless CTI applications that help call center agents worldwide work more effectively and deliver better service. This cross-product integration provides agents with timely access to business and customer information at their desktops, allows them to control their telephones through their PCs for more efficient calling and helps call center managers monitor the effectiveness of their operations by providing real-time performance data.

Other areas where integrated products and technologies are delivering unique benefits to CRM-based companies include the following:

Multimedia customer interaction software combined with universal queuing telephony. Regardless of the communications channel -- phone, e-mail, Web, fax or IVR (interactive voice response) -- all customer inquiries can be treated with the right priority, ensuring that customers have multiple communications channels available to get through. This helps them obtain service and support faster while using their preferred method of interaction.

Intelligent routing of customer inquiries. Every customer inquiry (regardless of channel of communication) is automatically matched to the most appropriate agent or resource. Today's predictive algorithms can automate real-time decisions based on customer requests and service levels, as well as agent skill, availability and workload.

Automatic workflow routing combined with basic onsite switching technology. Once a customer contact is made, work can be automatically assigned and routed to appropriate individuals across an enterprise based on predefined business processes and service objectives. As a result, customer requests are processed faster and completed with more consistency, streamlining customer interactions and improving overall customer satisfaction.

Integrated customer-management software. During every customer interaction, software tools provide agents with a consolidated view of all customer information stored throughout an enterprise. This allows them to be more responsive to customer needs and intelligently suggest new products and services, maximizing the overall customer experience.

An example of a company that has taken advantage of the industry's new multivendor solutions is the Acacia Life Insurance Company, which needed to reduce its turnaround time for processing insurance applications. The complexity of Acacia's IT infrastructure is typical of those found in large national and international companies. Acacia's embedded systems included a Microsoft Windows 3.1 platform, Compaq Prosignia servers with Pentium 166MHz CPUs and 32 MBs of memory, an Ethernet 100 MB (Fast Ethernet) LAN topology, a database server running NetWare with Microsoft's SQL 6.5 Database, a series of Fujitsu scanners to archive hard copy documents, a Hewlett Packard 5�" Model 120 optical jukebox for storing documents, and application systems that are mostly Pentium 166 MHz machines with 32 MBs of memory. In this case, you must ask yourself: Would a proprietary, non-standards-based solution fit such a broad mix of technology? Of course not. But a multivendor, standards-based solution did.

The Industry Buys In
The industry's expanding commitment to standards-based CRM solutions has also resulted in the recent announcement of industry "alliance networks" designed to build innovative, multivendor CRM solutions for organizations worldwide. One such program is the CRM Solutions Alliance Network. Here, participating hardware and software vendors, value-added resellers and systems integrators team together to provide a host of integrated solutions that help CRM organizations build long-term customer relationships.

Such programs can simplify the process of implementing complex CRM solutions, while also expanding the range of solutions everyone in the industry can deliver. Industry alliances benefit member companies, as well. Typical full-featured alliance programs provide members with training, technical support, co-marketing opportunities and other benefits.

In other words, when business customers work with an alliance, they can get broader, more direct access to creative and forward-looking CRM-enabling companies. Indeed, effective, multivendor CRM solutions would not be possible without the powerful cooperation of multiple vendors and a commitment to today's standards-based technologies that deliver capabilities customers can use well into the future.

Some industry naysayers might question why alliance members would want to promote the use of other vendors' systems and solutions. The answer is simply this: No one vendor has all the right answers. If the industry is to deliver the right hardware, software and services that fully meet all customer needs, companies must partner together and offer solutions that integrate easily with other vendors' systems. Only in this way can we help fulfill the promise of CRM as a comprehensive customer-serving strategy.

The goal of CRM vendors worldwide is to help customers meet their customers' needs, in a way that strengthens the ties between them. Through an end-to-end, integrated approach, all of us in the industry can help deliver on this goal and develop more sustainable, highly successful, long-term CRM strategies, products and services for everyone to enjoy.

Kim Mackay serves as executive general manager of Marketing and Business Development for Lucent Technologies' Enterprise Networks Group's CRM Solutions. Lucent Technologies Enterprise Networks Group is the unit Lucent intends to spin off into a separate company by the end of September. It includes Lucent's CRM Solutions unit, enterprise communications systems, business cabling and LAN-based data networking business.