CRM Entrapment: 2018 Look at More A THInc.IT Conference. Jim Holman February 22, Speakers

Transcription

1 CRM Entrapment: Speakers Jim Holman 2018 Look at More A THInc.IT Conference February 22, 2018

2 Meet the Speaker Jim Holman Director, Strategic Consulting THInc.IT

3 3 CRM Entrapment

4 The CRM Entrapment Backstory Since December of 2016, we ve engaged closely with 2 organizations to help them manage their stack of deployed business systems technology. Both organizations had CRM solutions that had greatly extended past the boundaries of the initial scope of implementation. Our project wasn t to untangle their CRM deployments, but rather to assess their business process requirements and determine the degree of fit that their stack of deployed technology met these requirements.

5 Modern CRM

6 Modern CRM The experiences of our clients are similar to many organizations that have widespread adoption of modern CRM solutions, which is that modern SaaS CRM are powerful and user-friendly software solution that when customized, can easily mitigate operational functional gaps with a multi-tenant, cloud-based CRM ecosystem with a powerful API. Salesforce has 150,000 customers with approximately 25 subscribers per customer, or roughly 3.75 million total subscribers.

7 CRM as the Swiss Army Knife

8 CRM as the Swiss Army Knife It seems like a good idea at the beginning Salesforce roll-outs tend to be successful and have high user adoption. This success leads to momentum which begets additional development. When coupled with a weak ERP (QuickBooks) and a limited inhouse development platform (FileMaker / Access), it s natural for Salesforce to be the Swiss Army Knife of small to mid-sized businesses, absorbing the Quote to Invoice business requirement that a weak ERP solution can t adequately address.

9 ERP Light?

10 ERP Light The CRM deployment begins to expand Salesforce has little if any functional overlap with core financial business systems and extensions begin to appear in the CPQ ( Configure-Price-Quote ) or Quoteto-Invoice business cycle. Adding extensions such as Conga ActionGrid, Juno Orders, or GridBuddy (to name a few) to a Salesforce deployment makes the final solution ERP Light in many ways.

11 ERP Light More users added to the Salesforce deployment + More custom functionality developed + More data maintained + More API calls made The net result = Generally happy users albeit with high TCO and an extended life of weak ERP.

12 How did we get here?

13 ERP Light Questions asked Most serious questions rationalizing the deployment of a Business Systems Software Solution / ERP come when users responsible for making the decision to buy are no longer present. In the case of heavily extended CRM, the increase in scope of the deployment is subtle, gradual, constant and takes many years to evolve and as such doesn t face the level of functional scrutiny that ERP does. Sales leadership rarely questions the deployment of Extended CRM since it was primarily their idea. Most critical questions are not functionality or Fit related, but are cost-related and come from Accounting / Finance.

14 ERP Light How did we get here? Ironically, in the long run it often costs more to expand and run the CRM deployment right into entrapment territory than it would have to have replaced the weak ERP system years ago bringing in a stronger system that could handle many of the business requirements now in CRM. Many organizations look at how much they spend with Salesforce at this point and ask themselves, How did we get here?

15 Solution Entrapment A Sticky Solution A primary concern for organizations with an extended CRM deployment is called Solution Entrapment. This means that given the lack of portability of the solutions built in Salesforce, including and especially what was enhanced with unique Force.com extensions or customizations utilizing proprietary development languages (APEX), it becomes impractical, or at least costly and painful, to migrate to a competing CRM solution (Dynamics 365 CRM, Infor Saleslogix, Oracle Siebel).

16 Build or Buy? Reinventing the Wheel Since end user satisfaction with Salesforce tends to be high, the scope of Salesforce deployments with extended toolsets continually expands because of continued requests from the business. Eventually, organizations may find that they have developed much of what is commercially available in other strong SaaS ERP solutions (Microsoft Dynamics 365, NetSuite, Sage Intacct). The common metaphor is, Why build a car from scratch when you can buy a car?

17 Build or Buy? An Ah ha moment While conventional wisdom says that in the long run, organizations become locked into an expensive, bloated, Salesforce solution with low portability, and that this is a bad thing, end users continuously express high satisfaction with the Salesforce platform. Since end users don t complain, management tends to not rationalize the continued deployment closely. That is, until they find the need to change ERP or operational software and realize that it s likely much more scalable and extensible to build within Middleware technology to meet unmet business requirements.

18 Stages of CRM in a Small Business The lifecycle of Extended CRM Stage 1 Small start-up and small CRM deployment Stage 2 More sophisticated business processes and tools. CRM is extended and other non-erp tools fill the gaps. Stage 3 Now what? Choices 18

19 Stages of CRM in a Small Business

20 20 Stage 1

21 21 Stage 2

22 22 Stage 3a

23 23 Stage 3b

24 24 Stage 3c

25 In Conclusion Extended CRM isn t necessarily bad, but before you push CRM functionality beyond its original borders, consider these points. Will you be replacing your ERP solution in less than 3 years? Don t extend CRM into the ERP space if you plan on replacing ERP in the near-term. It only adds cost and complexity to your future ERP project. 25

26 In Conclusion Does your business have a relationship with a trusted software developer should you opt to have your own Middleware developed? 26 Modern cloud-based ERP solutions with open APIs greatly simplify webbased applications that can talk to ERP in near real time Have you engaged a consulting firm to have your organization s business requirements mapped to your current processes and the capabilities of your technology stack as currently deployed? This will help you understand what gaps need to be addressed by a combination of process and technology changes.

27 Thank You! Speakers Jim Holman Director, Strategic Consulting Look at More A THInc.IT Conference February 22, 2018