and strengthening relationships

Transcription

1 xrm demystified: enhancing business processes and strengthening relationships WHITEPAPER 1 / 15

2 Contents MENU 2 / 15

3 xrm is a strategic approach, used by organisations that need to connect multiple business entities and leverage the relationship tracking capabilities beyond the typical customer relationship management (CRM) scenarios. 1 Whereas CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is primarily focused on customers, the x replaces the C as a variable that can represent any relationship a business needs to manage. MENU This could include customers, members, sponsors, employees, knowledge bases - just about anything a business might wish to manage within a relational database. The x also refers to extended relationship management, in terms of expanding CRM platforms way beyond customer relationship management. xrm opens up a multitude of possibilities for developing relationship-oriented solutions and implementations, providing the framework that can facilitate over and above traditional CRM. In essence, extending CRM platform functionality is the key, helping manage business processes too niche to be addressed by ERP or any other specialist off-the-shelf solution. 3 / 15

4 CRM is the fastest growing software market, with revenues expected to reach over $80 billion by / 15

5 01 xrm vs CRM MENU Classic CRM helps manage the relationship between a business and its customers. For most applications, this extends into sales taking leads and opportunities and converting them into orders. In addition, CRM supports marketing, managing campaigns to assist in generating new business. As a system, CRM facilitates the steps required for any given sales or marketing campaign, and organises all of the communications and knowledge about customers and contacts associated with the organisations being managed. Rather than being defined as a product, xrm is more a set of extensions and customisations that, when added to your CRM, makes it more than just a sales tool. It is an evolved version of CRM, making it possible for businesses to manage more than just their customer relationships and can be used by different departments across the business. Let s say your organisation is a mortgage provider that specialises in helping selfemployed people. For each customer, you may need to collate and facilitate a lot of information required for their mortgage application, which you will then need to process. This may include evidence of earnings, proof of address, client invoices etc. xrm is the management of that relationship between the broker and the applicant, streamlining the process for the mortgage provider. Applied in this way, its purpose is neither focussed on product or sales it is purely to manage internal engagements. 5 / 15

6 xrm is built on a technology framework that enables you to customise and change your system without having to write any code; enabling you to meet the individual requirements of your business. MENU It has the capability to hold additional data and focus on business processes which may not necessarily fall into the classic CRM or ERP scenario. Perhaps you are an agricultural business wanting to collect customer survey data on dairy cattle. The xrm aspect here relates to the relationship between agricultural feed supplier and the dairy herds who are the consumers of their feed. No matter how niche, or how non-standard the relationship xrm bridges the gap between CRM and ERP. Despite the growth of Social CRM, people still want more. The most desired CRM features are social media monitoring (25%) and the ability to pull prospect information from social media (24%) Meeting niche business requirements 6 / 15

7 It could be that you need to engage with stakeholders in a different way that falls in between both CRM and ERP capability. For Housing Associations, xrm may apply to the on-boarding of landlords and the continued management of those relationships. By introducing tenants into their system, the Housing Association gets to act as a go-between, improving old processes and enriching communication. Let s say a boiler breaks down. Traditionally, tenants would have to spend time ing or calling the Housing Association to notify them, then have to wait for the landlord to respond. Or they may attempt to contact the landlord directly, taking just as much time and effort. Instead, tenants can flag the repair with the landlord directly within CRM using self service portals, saving time, enhancing communication, and ultimately improving both landlord and tenant experience. This extension of relationship management that is built into Microsoft Dynamics CRM enables you to enhance other business solutions that may otherwise be very inefficient. Conversely, by swapping the C for an x the x becomes anything you want that relationship to be. 7 / 15

8 By combining an xrm approach with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, businesses are able to develop solutions rapidly while taking advantage of the entire Microsoft stack. This makes it possible for organisations to build business processes faster and with less risk than any other purchased solution. As a result, efficiency gains can be made by reducing time and costs associated with custom-development of applications. If your needs fall outside CRM or ERP and you need a system to manage your relationships - a framework with tight integration to Outlook or Exchange will remove the time and cost associated with building your own integration. They may not yet realise it, but companies of all shapes & sizes can benefit from extending their data framework with x relationship management including those not currently using Microsoft Dynamics CRM. 03 Faster build and lower costs MENU 8 / 15

9 04 Data management and reporting MENU Expanding your CRM functionality with xrm provides you with a deep ability to hold information in a relational way. For example, if you re a council and need to deal with graffiti, you may not need to do this on a regular basis. It could be an ad-hoc issue that is only flagged once in a while however, your residents still need to be able to report this. Being able to log a complaint anonymously may be another key consideration and something off-the-shelf systems may not have the capability to facilitate. In the same way, when it comes to compliance, your CRM can help heavily regulated companies become a lot more streamlined. You could be an insurance company holding tens of thousands of customer records in your system. While you may not constantly require GDPRrelated documents, should you need to produce them, your CRM can provide quick access; thus improving customer service experience while meeting regulatory requirements. 74% of businesses say that CRM software improves their access to customer data. 4 Enhanced workflow - From custom actions to branching, creating additional customer records to sending s, Microsoft Dynamics CRM can run across your entire business, helping you to better facilitate your business processes. In this way, private equity and banking firms as well as medical regulators all use CRM to manage the on-boarding of new people into their profession, as well as membership renewals. The business behaviour here, or the x, is the management of those professional relationships; private banks for example need to understand where their customers money comes from, and so CRM is used to ensure this information is captured. Powerful reporting - Microsoft Dynamics CRM uses reporting services together with Microsoft Excel. This includes a reporting wizard which shows the user how to create very useful reports on the information stored in CRM. You may be a healthcare organisation needing to screen patients, or reach out to communities to understand certain health trends. Or perhaps you need to profile stakeholders using detailed surveys consisting of 100 s of questions. While all your data is stored within your CRM, you can now easily create questionnaires and provide detailed reporting on feedback; removing the painstaking task of having to manually manage everything in Excel. xrm now becomes more about the action needed to acquire certain information, capturing data, and reporting in a way that makes sense. 9 / 15

10 Most demanded CRM features: Ease of Use - 65%, Schedule Management - 27%, and Data Snapshots - (18%) / 15

11 By modifying CRM with xrm to achieve your objectives, you can better meet your bespoke company needs. 05 Enriching business processes MENU Web-based design tools make it simple for you to tailor data fields and application forms, with automation that enables the transformation of repetitive errands into powerful automated workflows. In this way, banks may use CRM to gather knowledge about anti-money laundering, while charities can communicate easily with donors. xrm is all about the utilisation of the framework that exists beneath CRM, to plug and enhance your business processes. 11 / 15

12 Whereas CRM is focused on optimising business relationship management, taking an xrm approach goes further in supporting other business processes. 06 Business-driven development This enables departments right across the organisation to benefit, for example should your business be in manufacturing, your procurement team may need to register procurement and sales contracts as well as all associated information. This could include everything from expiry dates to delivery conditions, product amounts to digital versions of contracts. xrm provides you with the potential to automate tasks such as flagging of contracts that are shortly due to expire, enabling your procurement team to manage relationships more efficiently. 12 / 15

13 74% of businesses using CRM report better customer relationships. 6 Summary What started out as a way to monitor and maintain customer relationships is now a platform that enables the linking of all data sources into one central location. With virtually limitless customisation, applying an xrm way of thinking makes it possible to integrate niche business processes with internal engagements, workflow and communication, into one easy-to-use solution. Whether your business is managing sales contracts, healthcare patients, financial clients or assets, taking an xrm approach allows you to manage the relationship between anyone - or anything - within your organisation. 13 / 15

14 Contact HSO HSO offers a wide CRM and ERP portfolio on an international scale. Do you have a business process within which you need to communicate with stakeholders? If so, what s the process that sits behind that? If you d like to talk more about how to enhance your relationships, get in touch with us today. HSO UK info-uk@hso.com +44 (0) Sources: 1 Microsoft 2 SuperOffice 3 Capterra 4 Capterra 5 IBM 6 IBM 14 / 15

15 Projects Offices Employees 1st Floor, Enterprise Point, Altrincham Road, Sharston, Manchester. M22 9AF T +44 (0) info-uk@hso.com Since 1989, HSO has been a Microsoft Solution integrator and has become a successful ICT company with more than 650 employees and offices in Europe, North America and Asia. HSO supports local and international companies in retail, wholesale distribution, manufacturing and service with their digital transformation journey. The foundation for this is Microsoft Dynamics 365: A complete platform of CRM, ERP, Office 365 and BI software. HSO takes care of the implementation, optimisation and 24/7 support of these cloud solutions. HSO belongs to the Microsoft Dynamics Inner Circle and is proud to have been named the most customer-oriented Microsoft partner. More information about HSO can be found at Follow us on Twitter 15 / 15