CRM Analytics: An Inside Look

By Stefania Viscusi

TMCnet Assistant Editor

 

In today's competitive business world, customer relationship management (CRM) can not be overlooked for its ability to bring customers and their needs to the forefront. Businesses that focus on improving customer relationships have proven successful. But CRM alone will not allow companies to maximize customer relationships.

 

CRM analytics provide businesses with a way of better understanding and leveraging their CRM system and provides a better look at customer facing processes so businesses can enhance the user experience and make quicker, better decisions.

 

To dig deeper into CRM analytics, I reached out to Yacov Wrocherinsky, founder and CEO, Infinity Info Systems, whose company has completed over 50 business analytics related implementations.

 

Infinity Info System provides CRM solutions that help clients to perfect their customer relationship systems and increase productivity and profit margins. Their comprehensive CRM solutions and consulting services assist clients through training, implementation and constant software improvements.

 

 

There is typically a tremendous depth of information about a customer contained in a CRM system. The problem has been how to organize and use this data effectively to enhance the overall customer experience. CRM analytics gives a consolidated and graphical view of all customer interactions, gathers the information, and presents it back in a way that allows trends to be easily spotted so appropriate actions can be taken.

 

For example, a graphical dashboard could be built to show the total number of service issues a company has and the time it takes to resolve them on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. A goal or metric could be set for both these measures (number of issues and average time to resolve), and if either metric is not met, the CRM analytic tool alerts the service manager that the service level for customers is falling below the desired goals. Adjustments could be made to ensure that customers receive an acceptable level of service. In this example, CRM analytics makes it possible to proactively make business decisions and predict trends before they actually happen, allowing you to serve your customers better – as well as coming across as a responsive organization.

 

From a loyalty standpoint a similar approach could be used to monitor the frequency of customer interactions. A customer that has no interaction or involvement with a company in some time might be a customer that is at risk of being lost. In this case, the CRM analytic tool could monitor customers that have not been touched for 90 days and add them to a loyalty campaign or special incentive to make sure they continue as a customer.

 

 

CRM analytics can have a great impact on the effectiveness of a sales team. There are numerous benefits of applying Infinity’s “Metrics Driven CRM” concepts to the sales process. At a high level the main benefit is the removal of some of the “art” of sales and replacing it with real facts and science. A great example of this is with pipeline reporting and forecasting. CRM tools are great at capturing the details about an opportunity – how big it is, who the competition is, who the key players are and when it will close – allowing you to get a bird’s eye view. The problem has been how to monitor the total pipeline to spot bottlenecks or weaknesses that can result in future shortfalls. CRM analytics allow the pipeline to be seen graphically to isolate these issues and take action to correct them as early as possible. A graphical view of the pipeline by close date, size, and stage within the sales process could be overlaid with the monthly sales targets. This would allow a VP of Sales to identify future months where the anticipated sales are not going to achieve the expected target. The VP could then initiate other sales or marketing activities such as email campaigns, telemarketing and short-term purchase incentives to offset the potential shortfall.

 

 

Communication does improve significantly when Infinity’s “Metrics Driven CRM” concepts are applied. This is mainly due to the replacement of ambiguities with key measurements and goals – allowing people to react and respond faster. Many organizations take this a step further by implementing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). These are typically simple dashboards that provide a high-level gauge of how the organization or department is performing against specific goals. The details behind these goals are easily accessed by drilling down into the KPI through the dashboard. The speed with which this data can be reviewed and updated is very important. It allows an organization to take almost instant action when a trend or issue is identified. This is why the dashboard concept works so well. Data is updated constantly to provide real-time updates on how the business is performing. Simply put, you can’t drive a car without a dashboard, just like you can’t successfully drive a business without a CRM system.

A common issue within organizations today is that the data to analyze a specific problem or opportunity exists, but it is not readily accessible. A typical process to correct this would entail multiple steps. First, you identify a problem, then find where the data resides. A report request for IT usually follows from which IT builds the specific report and finally delivers it back to the user. Any changes or updates start the process over again. A well-implemented CRM analytic tool can greatly improve this process. The best analytic tools allow you to quickly access various data sources through a single interface. Because the data is already presented in a format that you can use, the task of spotting problems becomes one of data access and import rather than preparing and modifying a printed report. Most analytic tools also provide the user with built-in queries and analysis tools to slice and dice the data in various ways. This process is much more interactive and allows the user to essentially find the answers they are looking for without needing IT to create custom reports.

 

The great benefit of Infinity’s “Metrics Driven CRM” approach is that it allows data to be analyzed in a virtually unlimited way to help identify trends. Organizations can take advantage of opportunities as fast as they present themselves or avoid problems before they even occur. For example, if a company can monitor a marketing campaign as it is in progress, they can determine if the anticipated number of leads is being generated properly. If not, they can adjust the program or even cancel it if it is a real poor performer. Further, they can look at the lead-to-opportunity conversion rates. This answers the question of lead quality. A high lead-to-opportunity conversion rate is much more important than the raw quantity of leads. If the conversion rate is low, a company may want to change the way they handle leads when they are first generated by a marketing campaign. The advantage that Infinity’s “Metrics Driven CRM” approach brings is that all this is done in “near real-time” while things are happening and can be adjusted, not a month after the campaign is completed.

 

 

Absolutely! We are seeing a significant increase in demand for CRM analytics. These tools are more affordable than ever before, which allows small to mid-size businesses to take advantage of them. Technology is truly becoming the backbone for businesses. CRM implementations are also reaching a more mature state and have typically been operational for a year or more in most organizations. This means a great deal of customer data has been collected. The biggest challenge for most companies now is making the best use of this data. CRM analytics provide a big benefit in making this data actionable. They allow you to collaborate and make decisions quickly, based on real-time information and metrics. These tools have truly become change agents for many companies.

 

 

At Infinity Info Systems, we offer several software solutions in this area. The two most prominent are QlikTech and Microsoft (News - Alert). Probably more important is that we have established a Business Intelligence practice at Infinity. This team has extensive experience and can help organizations implement CRM analytics and receive the benefits from such an initiative.