CRM—It’s Just Good Business
A conversation with Andrew Pery, Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President, Hummingbird, Ltd.
It would be just TOO easy if CRM—Customer Relationship Management—could be easily pigeonholed as a discrete set of tools and processes that have a clear beginning and ending. But like most business processes, there are few defining boundaries and even fewer easy answers that would make our lives, well, easy. Andrew Pery, Chief Marketing Officer & Senior VP Marketing, is still willing to give it a try. We recently had a freewheeling conversation with Andrew on the subject of CRM, and struck upon several key themes that go some of the way toward defining the current state of CRM, and the role of applications vendors, knowledge workers and decision makers within it.
—Andy Moore, Editorial Director KMWorld Specialty Publishing Group
Learning from the Customer
From the vendor point of view, a healthy level of self-awareness is clearly a plus. “Customers don’t buy technology,” says Andrew, “they buy relationships.” So from a purely business standpoint, selling a “CRM vision” is just good business. “Having a slightly better mousetrap does not differentiate you in this market. This market is very polarized right now. You either have infrastructure capabilities or you’re in the solutions business.”
He uses the legal industry—a Hummingbird stronghold—as an example. “Lawyers are very conservative about technology. So it’s very important that solutions providers such as ourselves pay attention to them, and understand the way they work.”
So, we wondered, whether CRM could be packaged into a shrink-wrapped box, and delivered as a product...or is it something more?
“CRM encompasses multiple technologies. I don’t see CRM as a standalone market long-term—although today it still is. But ultimately it will be the convergence of knowledge-supporting technologies, working together, that will support a true customer relationship management solution.”
Here’s a thumbnail of what the future of CRM effort looks like, from Andrew’s viewpoint: 1. A centralized document repository that allows organizations to profile and manage their customer documents, fully integrated with the company’s business systems. 2. the ability for staff and clients of that organization to securely access and collaborate around those documents, whether synchronously or asynchronously; 3. the ability to apply business rules and processes to those documents in order to achieve greater efficiency and accuracy; and 4. create triggers and events to those documents that would enable decision makers to “wrap documents around their decisions...in essence, develop better knowledge management capabilities.”
So CRM, at least in Andrew’s view, is not a specific product set that is titled “CRM,” but is instead an “end-to-end customer relationship management environment. There may be specific parts of this environment that are targeted as a specific CRM solution, but in the long run, CRM will evolve downstream to become the culmination of many technologies working together toward the ultimate goal of great customer relationships. CRM as a standalone market will become part of the greater content management market.”
Disrupting the Org
If all that is true, then pegging CRM to a greater “holistic” document management effort blurs and, in fact, erases many of the organizational lines that now define job responsibilities, Andrew agrees. “It’s a perplexing question. In many ways, organizationally speaking, in order to effectively support a customer, EVERYBODY has to be a customer relationship manager. You can’t really distinguish between a CRM function, and the rest of the organization,” he says.
“Part of the failure of CRM systems can be attributed to this idea that, somehow, it’s a self-contained system. But it isn’t. It’s an enabler—a way of accessing information and domain expertise anywhere in the organization.” Adhering to the dogma that CRM is a “thing” and not a “process” has, it can be argued, dug the dreaded “trough of disillusionment” (so-called by Gartner Group), where technologies often languish and die, having overpromised and underdelivered on the key expectations.
Viewing CRM as a “thing” has led to these inevitable consequences, says Andrew. “Viewing CRM as a standalone technology has prevented users from focusing on the key constituent elements that would enable better delivery of information to customers and finding the right content.”
Secondly, the measurement metrics have been skewed. Most organizations “measure” customer satisfaction (usually through surveys and whatnot), but few—in the sub-30%-range, in fact—admit they have results that are providing useful information. “There are no ROI metrics that have been developed to clearly measure the success of their customer service,” says Andrew. “For instance, the distinction between customer loyalty and customer satisfaction is easily misunderstood. Many times, customers remain loyal to a product only because the cost of switching to a new provider is too high.” That, as Andrew correctly points out, might be prudent, but it is not the same as satisfaction.
After reading this, one could get the impression that pure-play CRM systems are ineffective, but nothing could be further from the truth. As a first line of defense, CRM has no equal. “CRM systems are very effective in initial triage. They can identify a problem, and they can track that problem. They can eliminate some of the repetitive issues, maybe by consulting a database that provides resolutions to common problems,” Andrew explains.
CRM in a B2B Context—The Legal Biz
CRM takes on a different complexion when it is applied in a business-to-business setting. We asked Andrew if there were any trends in a more B2B environment that shed a different light on the conversation.
“Yes. Think of the law. The practice of law is an increasingly global business, and not all firms are global in reach. So they must specialize in domains of expertise. Increasingly, law firms operate within an extranet, a secure environment where they can exchange information and thus expand their boundaries. These extranets often encompass other law firms, outside counsel as well as multiple clients. It is, in some respects, a kind of supply chain,” Andrew explains.
Andrew’s take on it is that the tools you use to accomplish this professional supply-chain analog are very similar to CRM. After all, what is a supply-chain relationship except a customer relationship management environment directed at your business partner “customers?”
“The question in this case is: how much do you want to protect?” asks Andrew. “What is your core competency?” Law firms are now operating around specialty areas—one may specialize in bankruptcy, but not litigation, and vice versa. It’s in both their best interests to pool their resources. “Lawyers are constrained and driven by one thing—time. That’s their commodity. You can only generate so much billable revenue based on the amount of time you can spend on one case. So the more you can delegate tasks to outside and junior counsel, the higher your productivity and billings.”
This leads to an entirely new business model for law firms, says Andrew. “This practice of co-opetition is becoming so engrained, especially in the UK, that law firms employ a non-billable lawyer for each of their practice areas, or domains of expertise. The lawyers’ only job is to make sure they build sufficient knowledgebases, for example, precedent databases, that allow their firms to get valuable information that strengthens their clients’ cases faster and more effectively.”
The beauty part, says Andrew, is there’s revenue attached to this new requirement of doing business in the legal realm. “They can bill for infrastructure, now, and the resources necessary to maintain these knowledgebases. Ultimately they can increase their billings, and they can bill for multiple parties ... not just the counsel who is assigned to that case.” So there’s an enormous amount of incentive to create this cultural change.
To make it work, there has to be uniform access to all the various databases—precedent databases, billing databases, case law and work product—in the form of reusable templates for creating contracts or other documents.
This is where the technology of integrated application suites comes into play. And this is where the future of CRM and technology will intersect.
Legal Firm Looks to the Future of Collaboration with Clients
Aird & Berlis LLP (A&B) is a prominent, full-service corporate law firm with a large, diversified, national and international practice. The Canadian-based firm represents some of the world’s largest corporations as well as a wide array of entrepreneurial businesses, associations, government agencies and individuals.
Gary Torgis, the firm’s Executive Director, recognized that A&B’s continued success was dependent upon the best current technologies available to support its business strategies. He turned to Paul Knapp, Director of Information Technology, who was charged with the task of improving the firm’s ability to deliver cutting-edge service to current and new clients.
One of Knapp’s key responsibilities was to ensure that clients have secure access to the documents they need and if necessary, access to other applications. “The way in which law firms are providing service is changing,” said Knapp. “Clients are starting to expect the accessibility and collaborative features provided by portal solutions,” such as Hummingbird Portal.
Planning Spares Headaches
“Future collaboration with our clients is going to continue to evolve in directions that we can’t completely identify at the moment,” said Knapp, noting the ability of Hummingbird Portal to integrate new applications and allow for enhanced functionality in future. “You certainly don’t want to spend a significant amount of money and find out a year down the road your portal can’t handle new software that’s critical for your organization to remain competitive,” he said.
Before the portal was implemented, A&B lawyers and administrative staff collaborated with clients primarily through email. This method of communication limited the size of files that could be exchanged and raised security concerns. “One of our criteria when deciding on a portal solution was airtight security,” said Knapp.
The ability to use predefined or custom-made e-Clip plug-ins to extend the portal was also a key consideration. E-Clip plug-ins are Hummingbird Portal components that integrate dynamic information such as e-mail inboxes or sales reports, as well as interactive services such as threaded conversation, online procurement, an employee directory or data from enterprise applications and business systems into the centralized web-based workspace of the portal.
A&B is working closely with Hummingbird partner AMH Communications, a consulting firm specializing in portal, document management and knowledge management solutions for the legal vertical, to develop new customized e-Clip plug-ins.
New Control Over Documents
Implementing the portal has allowed the firm to give its clients more power over documents that are used in their legal matters. For example, clients supply A&B with templates for legal documents that require updating on a regular basis. In the past these templates were e-mailed to a clerk at A&B who copied them online to be updated. Now, customers can come through the portal using a custom e-Clip, designed by AMH Communications, to directly edit and update their own templates. “They have the security to replace any template, putting the control along with tight security right into the client’s hands,” said Knapp. “We’re definitely meeting with positive comments from our clients. There is no more confusion as to which template is the latest and did the correct one get updated. This uncertainty was cause for significant time to double-check to ensure accuracy in the documents that is simply no longer an issue. Our clerks know that they are working with the latest versions when they pull it out of the portal.”
The firm has also integrated its pre-existing Hummingbird document management system into Hummingbird Portal. Employees who need to access the firm’s documents from remote locations go through the portal, accessing a Hummingbird DM e-Clip. This approach eliminates the need to install Hummingbird DM on each computer, saving money and IT resources. The firm is currently in the process of placing all of its documents into a centralized library that can be accessed from any location by authorized users. This technology allows lawyers, staff and clients have quick and easy access to all documents whether they are in the office or on the road or at their home office.
In the near future A&B is planning to plug in a Microsoft Exchange 2000 e-Clip to allow users access to their e-mail from the same interface they use to access their documents. In addition, A&B plans to integrate Citrix into Hummingbird Portal to provide remote access to specific desktop applications. It would be most effective to have remote access to custom litigation software from a laptop in the courtroom rather than bringing boxes and boxes of evidence, opinions and testimony into the courtroom.
Coupled with a strong search engine, this technology would allow the attorney to quickly call up relevant documents and print them out in the courtroom as required during the course of litigation.
Knapp has a message to other firms about to make such a decision. “Get off the fence. Firms that are not moving forward with software tools (like Hummingbird Portal) are quickly going to discover that they cannot remain competitive in the current and future marketplace.”
Hummingbird is a global enterprise software company employing 1300 people in nearly 40 offices around the world. Hummingbird Enterprise™ creates a 360° view of content with products that are both modular and interoperable, including Business Intelligence, Data Integration, Portal, and Document Management. Please visit: Hummingbird Ltd.