Order Management – General introduction

Among the other Oracle Siebel CRM modules, Order Management is one of the most used and requested. This is due to its employment in the sales process, across quote and order management processes. The advantages offered by Siebel CRM are the integration with back-office applications (for products, availability, orders, credit check, taxation, etc.) and automation (through various customizable workflows), as well as flexible support throughout the sales process.
Before getting to use it in the Sales process, it is important to prepare the grounds for Order Management usage. As a first step, it is necessary to set up a series of elements and their characteristics (not all of the following are mandatory): Accounts and Contacts, Salespeople, Products, Pricing and Catalogs, Shipping Information, Tax Calculations, Payment Terms, Inventory Locations, Order Types, Order Statuses, Product Selection Favorites, Activity Plan Tempaltes, Availability to Promise, Asset-Based Ordering.

There are also several changes to perform in the application such as Activating Workflows, customizing the Sales, Quote and Order processes, customizing the List of Values, etc.
Integrations with the Back-Office applications could be necessary as well, depending on the infrastructure. Among them:

• Quote and Order process integration assures correct quote/order status and communication among front and back-office departments;
• Product Availability - information is retrieved from third party applications;
• Credit-Check – indicates if the customer has enough credit for purchasing the product ;
• Taxation – facilitates tax calculation based on organization and customer location (taxation legislations).

Creating and managing the catalog establishes the structure of products and services in order to facilitate access definition and navigation. It employs Catalog, Category, Subcategory and Product elements to establish hierarchies.

Presentations can be adapted by customizing the Display Templates and attribute search can be implemented to facilitate finding of products based on their characteristics.
For facilitated products up and cross-selling, the Product Recommendations need to be set in place. Messages are created and related to products in order to indicate to the salesperson possible up-sell and cross-sell products. A score is used for categorizing recommendations based on their importance in comparison with other recommendations, facilitating viewing and decision of what recommendation to make.
One of the competitive characteristics of a company is its approach to the sales process. Oracle Siebel CRM supports variations in the quotes and order processes facilitating flexible adaptation thus the creation of competitive advantages. As part of the Order Management implementation process it is necessary to define and map such processes in order to construct the best application support. In this step it is also very important to take into consideration the company strategy, the difference between it and the “real” selling process carried on by the employees, and decide the best way to suit both, assuring change management and user-acceptance.

A special type of approach to ordering is the asset-based ordering process. It allows companies to create assets from client’s orders, to create quotes for new products and services based on existing assets, create quotes to modify existing products and services, modify existing open orders, manage an existing service and gain visibility into the asset life cycle.
Order Management is a complex Oracle Siebel CRM module.

Dear friend, communicating means responsibility

Hi all, for the second time I am posting about a non-CRM related argument. Yes, because at the end some principles are universal and involve everything, CRM as well.
I am just going to put a comment I made on a video by Anthony Robbins, a guru in so called "inspirational life coaching" ( http://tonyrobbinstraining.com/46/tiny-changes-mean-huge-results) and a person that in any case I admire for the results he achieved and still helps the others achieving.
He's trying to raise up the spirit of people in this moment of crisis. The intention is good and at the beginning I even appreaciated it, but maybe for the first time, thanks to the crisis itself, I am realizing how dangerous certain approaches can be if they are not correclty driven. By a matter of fact, my comment to the video has been "censored". Fortunately we live in an almost free world, so I decided to post it here...

Hi Tony,
this time I wanna play the devil's advocate. Why? Because I am afraid the situation requires different models (whatever the field) and critic analysis about past 20 years. Moreover because we need to challenge ourselves and this requires not always saying "yes!".
First example: in the golf game case, few millimeters do the difference if you're putting a lot of energy in your shot, as the target is far away. But what about if you give a soft shot as you're close to the hole? Surely the difference is smaller, as your shot is not amplified by the long distance. For sure if you hit softer you are more precise, right? well, paradoxically, it could be that a player making soft shots arrives
first to the target than another one hitting the ball like a mad, considering they have the same low preciseness, no? Same rules, “strange” winner.
Why there's the need, above all for the first shots, to strike hard?
Because the golf game rules tell you that if you arrive before you win. Well,
what if the rules were different?
Second example: it's true, few millimeters make the difference between a beautiful and an ugly face, but.. did I say beautiful and ugly? what am I basing on to state this? on commonly accepted parameters.

What if these parameters were different? And, above all, should I put all this attention to these few millimeters doing the difference for the commonly accepted CURRENT trend?
I got where you wanna point but please understand my argument. Little daily applied changes and "corrections" make the life trip go in the direction we pursue, yes. But it depends on HOW you do it, on some FUNDAMENTALS you should have and on the MODELS the society is basing on.
Many financial and economic crashes have been driven by people that certainly applied strong believes, strong self-motivation, auto-determination and focus. Much focus.
But on what? And on which basis? I think too much on pure “success”, money and with very weak basis. What I am saying it’s that maybe it’s no more time for such kind of approaches if not driven by a good method, strong fundamentals and new models.

Maybe people are unmotivated and with the “head down” for good reasons, because they don’t like what they see and how they live, or the society tells them they have to live if they want to be “accepted” or be cool. Maybe it’s some society rules that should change and not people keep smiling and pushing on things, whatever it takes and, above all, driven by the same hidden interests?
There’s so much responsibility in communicating.

Doing some analysis, all this is probably true also for what CRM is facing as a corporate initiative, in this crisis situation.

Siebel 8 Territory management

This morning a reader contacted me to ask me what exactly Territory Management is in Siebel and the difference, for example, with Assignment Manager. Unfortunately I could not answer immediately as I was on the phone with a prospect, so I am going to explain Territory Management in this post, for him and whoever might be interested. I am going to describe Territory Management as it is in the last Siebel version 8, because new features have been introduced and so I want this post to be useful also for the people that already know assignment manager rules in previuos Siebel versions.

In this first post I will limit the scope to the administration process flow and the setting up of the environment. If anyone was interested in seeing in detail some specific parts, just leave a comment and I will be glad to go deeper in that direction.

Well, first of all let me introduce some order: Territory Management is the set of Siebel functionalities to manage sales and service territories, while the assignment manager is the engine that, based on defined rules, assigns Sales Reps to account, contact or opportunity teams (in a SFA case) or assign ownership of assets to field service engineers (in a field services case).

Technically speaking, assignment manager is a Siebel Server component group dedicated to the execution of the assignment rules defined by assignment criteria.

The territory management functionality is mainly offered in order to avoid requiring developers for the modification or creation of workflow/batch assignments, while giving administrators a platform to create assignment rules (supposing that all the necessary fields to construct the filter are available).

This is quite clear if you observe the figure 1, the model 2 diagram representing a classic process flow: allmost all the activities are delegated to the Administrator. Unfortunately I had to split the image in two for dimensions reasons, but consider the second part as the continuation of the first (horizontal oriented swimlane).

Figure 1. Process Flow for territory management.

In relation to the configuration setup I am going to use, on the contrary, example diagrams belonging to the first model of the Crm-Up methodology (CRM Use Case Analysis). There are specific reasons behind this choice that are in any case out of this posts' scope and more related to the Crm-Up methodology. It's just to say that probably some UML purist could look with suspect our use case modeling approach, but this is part of the innovation in Crm-up methodology and our aim is usability and high adoption by all the stakeholders of a CRM implementation project, business users included.

Anyway, in the Figure 2 you can find a description of the first step in the configuration setup, that is the enablement of the component groups.

Figure 2. Setup - first step: enable component groups

In figure 3 you can find the third territory management setup step, that is the enablement of all the necessary Workflows.

Figure 3. Setup - second step: enable workflows

Last but not least, in figure 4 the third setup is represented, that is the load splitter configuration.

Figure 4. Setup - last step: load Splitter configuration

Well, that's pretty much all for this first post; as I said, if anyone is interested in the details of any of the described steps, feel free to contact me and I will be glad to describe them.

Think about it ;)

This is the 3rd world war

Yes, I know, apparently the current economic crisis (just to use an euphemism) has nothing to do with this blog, but who can ignore its impacts now? The panic is spreading and melting with the entire economy, once left the golden financial world. And now what? what should we expect, why there is such a collapse in such a short time frame?
Well, as I like challenges, I recently specialized myself also on trading, following some courses by Forbes, even because my consultancy role and my professional attitude push me to excellence and trying to master all the possible industrial or economic fields that CRM and associated Business Analysis can involve.
This was last summer, when the economy was not in any case at its best and we all waited for a raising; even if the market was very nervous, I succeeded in making good investments and good suggestions for friends and clients.
Then, suddenly, an unimaginable collapse, and all theories and studies have become just a theory for kids. My belief? That all this has been planned and forecasted by few entities that will take a new control back to their hands.
Unfortunately masses usually follow the wind imposed by few, and lots of people have lost most of their savings. Nothing new really, as the common understanding of things is not so critical, but follow, for example, the mood established by the newspapers, almost all of which are controlled.
Do you really believe that the entire economy is going to collapse? I firmly believe that U.S. know what is doing, more than we expect and for sure more than Europe has understood. This is a contemporary global war, where old assets and columns are going to change; at some extents, this was also necessary.
Everyone has already forgotten what Russia did in Georgia and how the climate was returning to a cold war one kind? Now what has been demonstrated? that this kind of approach is old-fashioned and that their power show was not only despicable, as the common opinion already stated, but above all not useful at all (not intelligent?). Look where Russia is now: it's financial structure is collapsing more than other countries and they hope themselves that U.S. will defeat this crisis. Where are the tanks now?
Other important reference point are moving and new strategies coming with them, and it's not important if many people completely burn their savings, because things have to change for someone.
First of all in one month time U.S. will face a new election. While just a couple of weeks ago McCain and Obama were incredibly at the same popularity level (what? Who talked about McCain before? Wasn’t it just the Obama election?), now Obama has again more points versus his competitor. Personally I am not taking any part in this, above all because the only certain thing is that, despite recent comments by intellectual people, the most important and influent country are and will be the United States of America. And whoever smiling face you put on it, the real powerful institutions behind it are more or less the same… included their goals.
U.S. are showing the world that, if they go down, they will bring all the world with them, included great new emerging economies that seemed to preoccupy and revolutionize the entire world asset.
I understand the fact that many investors from China, Russia and Middle East are investing in US bonds, but this does not mean that these countries will take the control, but on the contrary that U.S. needs new friends across their boarders, and the result will be on the contrary an expansion of U.S. commerce and way of thinking around the globe.. without any military war. In this picture, for sure great U.S. speculators are not useful to anyone anymore, even to U.S. itself, so they have basically been "fired".
The funny thing is that, as in a war, the alliances emerge, together with the will or not to collaborate together. The result is that Europe has shown its pure abstraction, with each country acting separately and with personal local interests.
And please, let's not define the different coordinated rate cuts as an harmonious action of European States. First of all because also other countries such as Japan etc. have shown their support on the same direction, second because the consequences on European different markets is visible to everyone: DAX, CAC, MIB - all markets have closed today negative with more than 6% loss.
Who is going to benefit from this, together with the Paulson plan? Yes, you know it, and let's wait this evening for Wally... for the moment it is losing much less than Europe and Japan and let's see how it will close. I would not be surprised to see some + (really? How can it be??), except going down to the end, trying to make us europeans go down the day after.
Do you want other confirmations? The value of U.S. dollar has increased versus the euro after a long time where the American dollar was losing steps every week in an uncontrolled way. Maybe it's just a coincidence that soon the amero will see its birth?
This morning Toyota, big Japanese automotive competitor for U.S. companies, has been declassed by Nikko Citi, an American Bank, indicating the target price from 6.340 to 3.520 yen...
Do we have to talk then about the oil price? Did you think that the answer about global warming would have been immediate change of direction, both from Republicans or Democratics? The main concern for U.S. has always been the dependency from foreign oil. Now, with the incredible price fall, U.S. is also saying to the international foreign oil powers: "hey, if we go down, you can burn your oil just for your fun, man. So let's talk differently in the future, ok?"
What will save us really? Apart from the correct re-dimension of the money cost (for many this is becoming unbearable) the answer is just one: Quality.
And here we arrive at the point I was targeting for our usual scope: the current situation is surely preoccupying, but I believe as well it is somehow the beginning of a new phase. I believe the entire CRM sector will be affected by this crisis too and I think it will be somehow justified, as too many wastes have involved CRM Projects implementations. There is too much speculation around this business, the recruitment part just to start mentioning some. The quality level of the consultancy as well is absolutely not at the level that is requested by the market, not only on the freelance market, but also on the Big consultancy names. What I am working on is based on Quality, included the management of the LinkedIn group CRM Project Managers: as this crisis is doing, we have to extirpate once forever the weeds from our glorious CRM field, if we want to progress, maintain a high credibility and come to the market in a productive way, with good implemented ideas and not the usual old services.
In this sense the idea of an open community can help CRM: but in a controlled and severe way, as it will have to be for the new trading rules.
Together with some partners I am also working on a new tool and a new methodology that will be presented to the public soon to the CRM community. Many of you already contacted me to ask for the new Crm-Up methodology and the new tool: I am sorry for the delay, but I am working in order to make it real and available for the end of this year, crisis permitting :). With this tool and methodology we are aiming at stopping all the wastes around the CRM implementations projects as well as poor consultancy without any added value.

Ah, If you want to invest money? well, if you still have some but you want to be sure, just wait for the new president election. If you want to risk in these days, doing some speculation, then it's quite easy: on the European market buy good titles (with good news) around 11-12 AM and sell at 14AM. If you are in the U.S., then buy in the middle of the day and sell before the end. Now it’s almost 6:00PM CET and DJ is down of 2 points.. let’s see the closure, I am curious...
In the next days, in any case, it will be better.
Are you looking for patterns? ;)

Siebel 8.0 Web Marketing – Web Services

This is the third part of a series of posts about Siebel marketing 8.0.
Flowing the wave of web services, Siebel 8.0 includes new pre-build web-services across the application in order to assist with system integration and reduce configuration effort. As usual, these are based on Web Services Description Language (WSDL), XML and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP).
The marketing web-services are meant to facilitate integration of marketing functionality (Siebel Web Marketing and Siebel eEvents) in custom web applications dedicated to customer interfacing.
The organization gains the liberty of choosing the web development tool and of creating a web site that satisfies its requirements in terms of customer experience, interaction and style, while incorporating content from its Siebel Marketing.
The WEBMARKETING service provides customer centered personalization as it tailors the HTML offer content and presents it directly in the web portal. In this way, it helps the user review a new product offering and decide which is the best fitting offer. From the interaction with the customer – entered information, indicated preferences, etc., responses are automatically created.
It is also an important automation point for subscription management, as it retrieves the list of all active subscription lists and presents the customer the available ones. Moreover, it can retrieve the subscription lists for the specific contact/prospect, indicating which lists were already subscribed by the user. Under direct user request, it alo subscribes/unsubscribes her/him from the indicated list.

The EVENTMANAGEMENT web-service provides automation for the event management activities in an organization. It retrieves the list of events, based on search specifications, and it presents them (and their details, retrieved separately). Session based search specifications (thus personalization) is another available option. As in the case of subscription lists, the web service can retrieve the list of events in which the user is registered as well as automate the event registration.

The possibility of using web services for marketing is important because of the automation it involves. Lets assume that a physician, "customer" (in the pharma business, above all for the prescription business, we could not really talk of customers!) of a pharma organization, receives an email with news about the organization’s product novelties and discoveries. As she is interested in the information, she decides to learn more about the organization’s newsletters and clicks the corresponding link. After having the user authenticated, the web service is asked to retrieve the list of active newsletters and the list of already subscribed newsletters corresponding to the particular user. As the organization has set in place several newsletters based on the products typology it offers (Heart, Diabetes, Skin, Veterinary medicine, etc.), there are several titles that might interest the customer. The user is presented the lists, so she can chose which one to subscribe or un-subscribe. Her requirements are passed to the web service again so that it refreshes the information available about the user in the CRM system. (see figure 1)

Figure 1. A Siebel Marketing Web Service Example for newsletter subscription.

Web services unleash lots of possibilities for organizations that desire to improve (or even revolutionize) their interaction and services towards the end customers. The marketing web services are just some of the available web services in Siebel. For web portals facing customers, some other web services might be interesting such as Product Configuration and Product Recommendation (in this case a new area, that of Partner Relationship Management -PRM-, could be open... maybe next post).

Marketing Resource Management in Siebel 8.0

This is the second post about Siebel 8.0 Marketing, focused on marketing resource management. Our first post introduced the structural differences between Siebel 8.0 and previous versions (7.7 and 7.8). The use cases presented in this post are part of our CRM UP methodology.

Figure 1. Changes in Siebel 8.0 Marketing Resource Management

Siebel 8.0 introduces Marketing Funds as internal marketing budgets controlled by the single marketing departments of a company and not just by the central department. Siebel 8.0 provides independent managing of budgets for each department, so that your company has more flexibility in its organization. For example, a hotel chain organization can allow each hotel to have its own budgets and activities, or can decide to have budgets for each location and manage them at this level, instead of having just a centralized marketing department.
Prior versions of Siebel (7.7 – 7.8) already incorporated Marketing Funds as part of the general Marketing Plan. In fact, available funds were linked to marketing plans and there was also the possibility of assigning budgets to marketing activities. This helped the organization in planning and monitoring marketing budgets at a general level.

Figure 2. Use Case (based on the CRM UP methodology) presenting an overview of prior Siebel versions of Marketing Funds

In the Partner Relationship Management (PRM) application, Marketing Development Funds (MDF) were available for managing partner shared marketing activities such as joint funding, requests for funding or tracking the expenses. Actually there was a difference between the CRM and PRM options, as the second one provided more detailed overviews and monitoring of marketing funds.

This has changed with version 8.0, as this flexibility has been extended also to the CRM application.
The new version allows:

• Establishing budgets for each marketing department or cost center – based on the internal time line;
• Withdrawing money in order to pay for the marketing tactics;
• Transferring funds from one budget to another and monitoring current amounts for initial, allocated, committed and spent budgets.

Figure 3. Improvements of Marketing Funds in Siebel version 8.0 (based on CRM UP methodology)

By this, the enhanced functionality offers more details on funds and budgets (as the way they are spent) and analysis of all the activities and costs in the marketing departments.
The benefits of this approach are clear:

• Assign the budget and provide for the right level of spending authority while maintaining a consistent process and system record;
• Immediate overview over real-time financial situation for marketing tactics;
• And improved visibility facilitating fine tuning when conditions change.

In complex organizational environments, especially for global companies, it is often hard to monitor marketing funds and their usages not only because of the intricate organization but also because of the lack of a common information point over all the money and activities involved. Siebel 8.0, through the improved functionality, assures cross-organization visibility over the fund balance in a single place and with a single consistent process. In this way the company has control over the money and spending, together with a better understanding of its financial position, granting more flexibility to change by supervising the planning, approvals, commitments and actual spending.

Budget Requests were enhanced in Siebel version 8.0 so that several budget owners can contribute to the same marketing tactic and spread the money from an approved budget request across multiple tactics. These measures provide for a greater flexibility for marketing management and impact the budget request process.

It can happen that a marketing activity proposal of a local hotel marketing department corresponds with an action desired by the corporate marketing management. The two departments could decide to sponsor the activity together creating a joint campaign. The Budget Request enhancements now assure that this can be transparently supported by Siebel 8.0, as each department can contribute to the cost of the campaign.
Moreover, if a hotel receives an approved budget for the annually proposed marketing actions but, during the year, there are changes in the market affecting the plan, it can still spread the budget over the tactics, including a new promotion campaign. Figure 4 exemplifies the management of a fund by spreading the budget across a three tactics: a win-back campaign, an e-mail presentation campaign and a promotion marketing program.

Figure 4. A brief example of improvements in Budget Request in Siebel Version 8.0 (based on the CRM UP methodology).

Siebel 8.0 has also modifications for Purchase Ordering. Purchase Orders (POs) are approved purchase request with a defined amount and linked with a marketing purpose. Usually they are generated and managed in a procurement system. Nevertheless, organizations found it difficult to track the POs in relationship with the planned marketing activity. Siebel 8.0 steps in for covering this lack by proposing a way of approving and generating POs in a separate procurement system. There are two types of purchase orders:

• Blanket / recurring;
• One-time.
  

They both can be tracked and related with budget requests and marketing tactics (programs, campaigns and events). In this way the organization has an overview of the committed and planned expenses at any point in time.

Apart from enhancements involving Marketing Funds Management, Budget Requests and Purchase Order Management, Siebel 8.0 Marketing Resource Management brings two novelties: Marketing Initiatives and Collateral and Asset Management.
Marketing Initiatives are the Siebel concept corresponding to organizational marketing general objectives and strategies. They indicate the purposes that guide marketing activities and determine their focus.
The Marketing Initiatives features facilitate the definition and sharing of company and organization wide marketing priorities. It also allows associations between initiatives and budget (marketing funds) as well as marketing tactics in general (programs, campaigns, events).
A tourism and leisure enterprise can decide to define such initiatives related to seasonal activity evolution each quarter of the year or just once per year. It could define the objective of being the number one booking entity for summer offers in Toscana, Italy. This initiative has to be supported by an adequate budgeting, marketing plan and tactics. In this sense Siebel 8.0 allows associations between Marketing Initiatives and funds (budget), plans and various marketing actions – programs, campaigns, events – with 1:M relationship (1 Initiative :M funds/plans/tactics).

Figure 5. Marketing Initiatives in Siebel Version 8.0 (based on CRM UP methodology)

A new view, under the Marketing Plans screen, is available for managing Initiatives and creating relationships with other key-marketing concepts. Which are the benefits of this new concept?
Well, one point it's that it's easier for your internal departments and actors to collaborate and be informed as they have access to one unique point of information for a general overview over the organization wide marketing strategies. Moreover, the visibility between high-level themes and day-to-day details is improved.
It is also a better way for communicating and modeling corporate priorities in the marketing department and over all the other departments involved.
At a more detailed perspective, Marketing Initiatives are useful for keeping track of the marketing activities corresponding to each formulated objective or strategy, understanding the funding, comparing initiatives’ importance and priority with the allocated budget and effort, as well as analysis of met or failed objectives.
Siebel 8.0 also promises that the return on marketing investments (ROMI) is increased through the introduction of Initiatives because of all stated above, as it is easier to focus on the right priorities and to follow them up.

Collateral Asset Management is the second concept introduced in the Siebel 8.0 release in the category of Marketing Resource Management. In medium and large organizations, there are usually a lot of objects linked with the marketing activity used in the various marketing events – they can be gadgets for internal and external promotions, flyers, brochures, etc. Several departments as well as partners can make use of these objects to support their marketing efforts. Collateral Asset Management was created in order to facilitate the tracking of the physical inventory of marketing collaterals, monitoring the inventory and submitting request to replenish. The application not only provides a running inventory of each item, but it also includes proactive indicators when collateral or assets need to be replenished.

Figure 6. Collateral Asset Management in Siebel Version 8.0 (based on CRM UP methodology)

By using this new functionality it is easier to monitor inventory level and identify restock needs. It also allows securing better prices on production and fulfillment jobs as it facilitates planning ahead, so that the entire distribution process is more efficient. In fact, new objects or copies can be requested directly online, including location information for shipping and supplementary instructions.
Also the fulfillment process is supported by the possibility of tracking vendors as well as having multiple bids for each request: by this the lower price supplier can be easily chosen.

In our perspective, all these modifications that Oracle has performed and is presenting in the Siebel 8.0 version are improving the Marketing functionality and are transforming it towards a better support for (Marketing) Project Management. Think about the new possibilities of tracking each marketing step, actors and resources, as well as financial aspects and analyses of relationships among the important elements. Can we expect a new CRM from an improved PM standpoint?

The client experience: where's CRM ?!?

The more I am involved in this sector, the funnier is observing the absurd lack of customer relationship management processes in many organizations in our daily life experience.
Actually these considerations are funny until you are not one of the unfortunate customers who has to face all the hassles originated by bad services and bad practices.
After almost 6 years of trusted service, few days ago I decided that it’s time for my good Toshiba Satellite S-5100-503 to retire for a more relaxed living way than the one I have forced it to have until today.
So I have decided to go for a new laptop and chose one that can represent a valid heir of my good Toshi, with the clear idea of not going for cheap solutions (after all, my Toshi cost a lot but granted me a long and fruitful Return of Investment).
My preference was for a 13.3” wide screen for portability reasons (I travel a lot and 3 and more kg of my Toshi are good for workout but too much to carry always around with me) but without any compromise in terms of power, efficiency and functionalities.
For this reason my final decision has been the SONY VAIO VGN-SZ71VN/X: 4 GB RAM, 2.5 Ghz Dual processor, 3G connectivity, etc.
Ok so, with little hesitating for the important disbursement, yesterday evening I finally connected to the SonyStyle site to make this important step.
I choose the series, the model, I opt for the express delivery (I want it soon!!) and finally I enter my credit card information and I press Ok… 10 sec, 20 sec (ok, the site advised the process requires some seconds, let’s wait patiently, don’t always think bad), 30 sec… 1 min.. Ok, there’s something wrong… no! the infamous IE error page.. damn! I knew it!
Relax Manuel, relax… let’s have a look at the e-mail.. no, nothing, no confirmation, ok.. probably no transition has been accepted..
Let’s redo the process: select the SZ series, the model, bla bla… no, I don’t believe it.. again?! No way I cannot stress like that for this, I mean, it should be a happy moment… I am buying my new laptop, my new fellowship for new projects… ok, it must work, come on…
Let’s redo it… YES! Validation page correctly shown and mail sent. Oh.. Finally..
What is this link? Oh, enter my account to follow the order.. bah, let’s have a look… What the F***?! Another order has passed without any confirmation? Great, simply great. Ok, I send an e-mail to inform Sony that an order should be cancelled then I go to bed and fight with this question again tomorrow: it will be Monday and maybe someone has noticed something is wrong with the site.
So Today I turned-on my Toshi (sorry that I am substituting you, I am already regretting it…) and looked at my e-mail… no answer. Well, let’s call the Call Center, today is Monday and should be opened from 9:00. Yes, good morning, I am experiencing this and that.. what? Which is the order number? Ok, the one that has been confirmed is this and the other for which I did not receive any confirmation is this other, but on the site, under my account, is in status open as the other one.
While I am talking with this guy, I am thinking… but he’s not asking me who I am or my SonyStyle ID… Just the number of the order? Boh…
Ok, it seems it’s normal because the system keeps track of all the orders, also the not good ones… well, I guess it’s normal for an operator terminal but not for a customer: in the status I would like to see “invalid” and not open, if it’s really a not good one; otherwise how can I differentiate it form the good one?
So I go out perplexed but finally satisfied from the closed deal. When I come back at home I am curious to see the status of my order… maybe they have sent the package!
What? Cancelled?? Ok, let’s synchronize my e-mail…oh, of course, someone else has read my yesterday evening e-mail, has not understood the situation, and to be sure he/she has cancelled also the good order. I was expecting this, actually, but for sure this is not a good integration of the different CRM customer communication channels, no? The operator I called this morning (ah, the number, of course, it’s not free of charge…) should have took care of my case and managed it entirely to grant me the service I am paying for. Could it be related to the fact that this guy did not ask me my name or any ID, so that no cases are associated? If you remember he just asked me for the order number, because my name is associated to the order, not vice versa… fantastic, I am just the orders I do… and actually I feel like that, because if an order fails I am a no one for Sony…
Ok, let’s call the call center again and try to explain all the situation, supposing that the next operator will believe me.
“Good morning, I have made these orders… and this one, that was good and accepted, has been cancelled lately… sorry? Ah, you are telling me that if it has not been accepted probably it’s because of the Credit Card? Oh, you cannot help me further because your SAP system is down… I should redo the order because the site has been updated? ok, thanks”.
Ah, ah a SAP system? I would not be surprised seeing these agents using directly the ERP system to answer the calls.. at the end they just treat orders!
Ok, maybe this time the order will work, if the site has been really updated… maybe this has been the cause for the failures?
Actually when I click on products I have a pop-up window and I am not re-directed to a new one as yesterday.. so I redo the entire process.. perfect! All clean and confirmation mail. Excellent… until I don’t check again the order on my Account and I find it.. CANCELLED! What the hell? It’s a nightmare here!
Let’s call again the Call Center… yes, the order is this, my credit card is this… oh, American Express is not validating the transaction and you cannot help me further because you cannot see what is happening on the AMEX side. Ok, thank you, but first, as I am using a patient tone (given the situation), I would expect at least the same, second I am not a stupid final user as I know something about this processes and IT systems… but I keep this for me, there’s no point in discussing with this guy… he’s frustrated as me in using a unmanageable system collecting data from a full of bugs website.
But my customer experience is “Why? Why do I have to spend all this time and money to buy my expensive new laptop!?”… Now I have to call American Express (again, not free of charge number) to ask what’s going on.. wait, yes, ok… I am Manuel Breschi, card number… etc, etc…, at least they do the controls to grant my identity… So, between yesterday evening and today this and that happened… Ok, I wait for the correct department… what? A transaction has passed 10 minutes ago? Ok, thanks, I will follow your suggestion and not do other orders. American Express is protecting my own interest as a high-ranked customer (yeah, I have the gold card but honestly I don’t use it so much…) blocking transactions because the site used to make the order seemed not as secure as expected? No, the site really sucks, believe me… ok thanks I will call again the Sony Call Center.
So I hang up and I think… ok, they are protecting me, but why I have to call them on a not free of charge number and, on the contrary, they don’t call me to check what’s going on and what do I really want to pass as a transaction and what should be cancelled? I mean, I pay for the card, I pay for the call, you are retiring my money from my bank account I pay for!... come on, this is not serious!
So, call again the Sony Call Center, listen to the music… what I am going to tell to the new guy this time? Oh, it’s this morning one, great… hey look, all the orders have been cancelled but it seems a transaction has passed, what’s going on? From your system all the orders are cancelled and you cannot help me further. Nothing will be sent. Great.
American Express… look you have to tell me what to do, otherwise for me you can close all the transactions… what? Yes I wait… AH! Not only a transaction has been accepted this morning but also one last night?! Holy ****! Ok so now as I am this great high level customer I am expecting some suggestions from your side… Ok I will write an e-mail to Sony telling them that on your side 2 transactions have been accepted and that not charge-off has been communicated to American Express by Sony Europe, differently from what has been stated on the phone and described under my account.
An e-mail, yes ok, it’s free of charge and actually if I have to call all these times the operators to get this service, I prefer to maintain the distance… ok, to do the things correctly, can you provide me with an e-mail so that I can put you in CC of what I am going to write to Sony? You don’t know? Ok, I wait… ok, American Express has no e-mail for this kind of things… I will keep it and send it to you by fax if I have to challenge the second payment; which is the number? Ok, you will communicate it to me in case it is necessary…

COME ON! And then I have to hear that CRM projects have failed? But what are we talking about? As a customer I would say that CRM is just an onomatopoeic sound I do when I have to interact with these people that should serve me as a customer.. What the F***! ARGHH!! GRRR! CRM!

Now an order that was cancelled, together with other 6, has been re-opened and put in “elaborating” status… yes, elaborate it, and think about the customer satisfaction you’re creating around.
I have just to hope that Sony will charge-off one order and finalize the other one, as for the moment I just got a blank e-mail as an answer to my mail…
Ah… of course I also hope, if I will ever get my brand new laptop, that it’s quality is far better than the services they are providing… Good CRM to everyone.

Dreamforce Europe 08: Post-keynote Q&A conference

After the general opening session, Marc Benioff has exposed himself to the questions of the press and analysts. I succeded on posing 2 questions, among the more than 30 that I prepared... probably I exagerated... In any case some of the questions coming from my colleagues were very interesting and covered many aspects I was interested in as well.
In this exclusive video you can follow the interaction with Marc Benioff and his answers to the press. The first touched arguments have been cloud computing and the Salesforce.com position on this, difference in audience between the US and the European events, China's future CRM evolution, Force.com objectives and performance, etc.
One example of interesting question has been about the competition between Salesforce.com and Google, although the answer was quite short.

My first question was based on the observation that the new level of IT possibilities offered by the on-demand concept, the cloud computing architecture and the AppExchange community, offers a tremendous availability of software functionalities to all the customers. This broadening of new IT features is also the trend of every CRM software vendor that, based on years of projects implementations (and failures as well), includes new functionalities on their software often basing on custom solutions that the customers implemented themselves in order to overcome the functional limitations of the chosen package. If this is fair or not, I think it's a matter of the customers, after the millions of euros or dollars spent on these.
Salesforce in any case is bringing this concept to the extreme, giving it also a new foundation, a precise identity on which basing an entire new trend. In this way the entire movement is justified, as potentially accesible and available to everyone.
So I started from the idea that CRM is an acronym that was created by Tom Siebel, but slowly moved into a more "business" oriented movement, into a "Journey".
Is it all then? it's IT just the supporting application of the CRM processes and it cannot make anymore the difference in terms of solutions in the competition among organizations for the acquisition and retainance of customers?

My second question was more focused on the future of Salesforce.com: born as a CRM software solution provider (even if on-demand, as a SaaS), has now moved to the Platform as a Service concept, opening its Force.com platform to its customers for the development of new applications. Is so Saleforce.com still interested in developing solutions of its own, or it's more interested now in the platform and looking at what the clients and partners are going to implement with their framework?
Benioff explained that a lot of applications on the AppExchange servers are by Salesforce.com, but nothing was mentioned about some new brand ideas for a new killer application.
My sensation is that the IT market is somehow saturating and the public is not yet aware of the difference between a classic software and its programming languages and their meta layers, the meta-langauges.
The possibilites offered by salesforce.com in fact rely on a higher conceptual definition, enabling users to customize their applications in a simpler way. Without a definition of an M2 level (referring to the 3 layer OMG framework in relation to the UML), this would not have been possible. The Apex code works at this level... more about this will be published on a new post.

Dreamforce Europe 08: The introduction

London, 7 May 2008 - Salesforce.com, for the first time since its foundation in 1999, has organized its Dreamforce event in Europe. Around 2000 customers, partners and developers have joined this event, representing the largest Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) conference.
Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in SaaS and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).
The Force.com PaaS provides a comprehensive Cloud Computing architecture aiming at revoltionizing application creation and delivery.
Provided completely as a service via the Internet, the Force.com Platform provides the necessary building blocks to enable business apllication creation and delivery, without the need for software and client-server infrstructure.

My travel and partecipation to the event has been organized by LEWIS Communications, specifically by Simonetta Radice from the Italian site and Alicia Gonzales from UK: thanks to them for all their efforts to make my permanence and transportation as comfortable as possible. Considering this was the first event organized in Europe by Salesforce.com, well, we can say that it has all gone quite well, maybe also thanks to an incredibly sunny weather for London.
In this first video we see the huge amount of people that has taken part at the event at the Barbican centre.
At the VIPs' lunch I was lucky to meet Chris Townsend, a researcher from Forrester and to have an interesting chat on the economical and cultural challenges and differences between US and Europe. In any case, a good fellow to spend some time with.
Ok, enough, just have a look at the video and at the fascinating first presentation about the computing evolution. In this video you can find the entire concept of Salesforce.com: introducing a new level of abstraction to permit a new development generation, without the hassles of software installation and application deployment.
In the following posts I will upload some tremendous videos of Keynotes and press meetings where the most influent speakers of Salesforce.com present the new concepts and answer to our questions. In this Journey you will understand what I was referring before with a new level of abstraction, or meta-level, for the purists ;). In fact, even if Salesforce.com is seen as the leader of the SaaS and On-Demand concepts, I think few customers and prospects have really understood that Salesforce (and now the entire Force.com platform) is not a "classic" CRM software: as analyst, I can say that now Salesforce.com, after the opening of the Apex code to configure the application behaviour, is the only REAL Packaged Application in the market. For sure, it's the only vendor that has understood and really exploited the benefits of software components reusal and customization, in comparsion with green-field development. To understand the root of this idea you can refer to the post I wrote 1 year and a half ago about my Ph.D. work, behind the UML in CRM concept. By the way, we are working on these Ideas to come up with a brand new methodology for CRM project implementations: with our new framework every on-premises relying customer will be able to achieve all the SaaS benefits without renouncing to their existing architecture.

Following you can find part of the introduction done by Marc Benioff for the opening general session. It's not complete, but you can find it at the Salesforce.com offical site. Stay tuned for the real juicy material!!

Siebel BA: why adding too many fields everywhere in the application is not a good idea.

In the context of CRM applications analysis, it's usual to receive requirements from the business users asking to add some more information regarding business entities on some views and screens and, to some extent, this is normal.
Issues arise when this concept is brought to the extremes and the users would like to have detailed information about specific entities (e.g. Accounts - Customers) in completely extraneous business contexts.
Apart from the impact that such an approach can have on the performances of your application, it’s also a bad way to establish a good relationship between the users and their perception of the CRM software.
The lack of an analytical tool in an organization, in fact, should not force the design of the transactional software: what has been created to help sales people or agents to follow their CRM activities and store customer information, should not be deformed to permit data extraction for forecasting analysis or sales pipeline.

As this was not enough, there is an aspect that very few people realize, even among the development or business analysis team: the fact that the information you have brought on a total extraneous business context might not be as updated as the original one.
Let’s take an example:
Let’s presume that the Account information on a Sales application includes a hierarchy level, represented by a list of values.

The Opportunities represent potential revenue sources for your company and are so consequently associated to an Account, being this a customer or a prospect.
In the case this Account is a customer, than most probably your company has sold it some products, thanks to a happy finalization of some opportunity (by a good sales rep. :)).
Adapting a Siebel application, it’s possible to visualize all the opportunities that are associated to a specific product. In this way you are able to make a generic analysis of your products’ trend.

If you have followed until now, you understand that we are going exactly to the kind of requirements that try to extrapolate analysis views out of the transactional application. Anyway, until now, without additional requests, the deal is feasible, or at least it seems. In fact, there are potential drawbacks on offering such standpoints, because now it will be normal for the user to ask more and more information also on the Opportunities List Applet at the bottom of the view.
If, for example, you will have to put the name of the account at the opportunity level, it won’t be a problem, because this is a normal attribute of an opportunity and so the information will be stored at its level.

But if the user will also ask for additional Account level information (the appetite comes eating…), as the hierarchy level information we mentioned earlier, and you are going to satisfy such a requirement, then you will be responsible of fake analysis done by the organization (if the employees will base on such a view).
Why? Because any account information that is stored at the opportunity level (brought by joins from the S_ORG_EXT table) will be the picture that has been taken at the Opportunity creation moment and not the current one!
In this sense, it could happen that a user will look at the Products > Opportunities View and realize that the hierarchy information of an Account related to an opportunity is not the "real" one, or at least is not the same as shown at the Account view level. Most probably, since the creation of the opportunity, for some business reasons the hierarchy level information has been changed (probably the account has changed its position in an industry chain), but of course no one, neither the application itself, has updated this info at the opportunity level!
The fact is that you are currently on the Products screen and so all the business information is driven by this and you should expect to see updated data only in relation to Products or directly linked entities (in this case the Opportunities, visualized on the second applet in the view).
In fact, how could information be updated over 3 or more different levels, if not launching a query on all the main tables (included Accounts, in this case)? Could you imagine the performance downgrade on such an approach? Have you ever wondered why Siebel, since the 7.7 version, has quite completely eliminated the multiple child applets from the Standard Views?
Everything is technically possible, but for sure we should not expect updated information with such a design (basically using just 2 applets and so 1 link).
If this is not realized and properly understood, then some developer will try to correct this false defect in the application and the most incredible things could happen.
Next time, if you are required to do such tings, maybe it’s better to explain the user that is not a good idea and offering on the contrary the possibility of a drilldown on the name of the opportunity. By doing this, at least he/she will be able to follow the related information, properly updated. Ok, you won’t be able to see everything in one shot, but let’s leave the analysis to the proper Tools…

Avanade: dal custom al pacchettizzato con Microsoft Dynamics

Andiamo alla scoperta di AVANADE, azienda dinamica in ambito Microsoft Dynamics e non solo. La nostra guida è Roberto Nocera che ci ha resi partecipi della sua visione marcata del passaggio dal mondo delle applicazioni custom all’ambito dei sistemi a pacchetto. Roberto lavora in ambito CRM da oltre 3 anni, e la sua esperienza ricopre sia l’ambito tecnico che quello dei processi.

1. Potresti presentarti ai lettori di Computer Programming ed introdurre Avanade?
Sono Roberto Nocera e lavoro come senior consultant in ambito CRM. Avanade è una join venture tra Accenture e Microsoft, per cui ha alle spalle due colossi in termini di consulenza e capacità tecnologica. Proponiamo soluzioni sulla piattaforma Microsoft che abbracciano più o meno tutte le aree: abbiamo un’area più tecnologica dedicata alla consulenza vera e propria, e un’aria dedicata alle soluzioni già pronte che si possono mettere in campo, abbracciando a 360° tutto quello che è la tecnologia Microsoft. Avanade è presente in 22 paesi ed ha poco più di 7000 dipendenti: il nostro punto forte è rappresentato dalle capacità collaborative perché spingiamo molto sul condividere le esperienze dei vari paesi e questo ci avvantaggia nel proporre soluzioni, riuscendo a riempire uno spettro più ampio. Come azienda abbiamo una visione per la quale tutti i nostri consulenti sono certificati Microsoft, per cui facciamo della conoscenza tecnica e della conoscenza business il nostro cavallo di battaglia.

2. Le certificazioni sono in ambito Dynamics o anche su altri prodotti?
Sono generali; abbiamo delle forti competenze su tutti i prodotti ed abbiamo certificazioni sia sulla piattaforma CRM e Navision, che su Windows Server, SQL Server, Share Point, etc. Abbiamo una conoscenza a 360° e per questo riusciamo a proporre soluzioni legate non ad un solo prodotto ma che comprendano più prodotti insieme: riusciamo ad offrire soluzioni a più ampio spettro perché abbiamo conoscenze diffuse.

3. Visto il tuo background di sviluppatore custom ed il passaggio al dominio CRM, potresti spiegare ai lettori cosa vuol dire lavorare in Avanade e soprattutto passare da piattaforme custom a piattaforme precostruite, come Micorsoft Dynamics? Qual è la differenza fra lo sviluppo custom e lo sviluppo sulla piattaforma Microsoft Dynamics?
Il passaggio da uno sviluppo custom puro all’utilizzo di una piattaforma CRM viene di solito visto con un po’ di sospetto perchè inizialmente i prodotti che potevano essere utilizzati come piattaforme erano molto verticali, legati a linguaggi proprietari, a situazioni specifiche del prodotto, quindi significava in qualche modo passare dal conoscere linguaggi e metodologie, a conoscere esclusivamente il prodotto come competenza basilare. In realtà le nuove tecnologie presenti sulla piattaforma .Net hanno reso più semplice questo passaggio; adesso, con la piattaforma Dynamics, si utilizza quello che si è gia imparato. Ad esempio io mi sono convertito da sviluppatore custom .Net e adesso posso utilizzare le esperienze di sviluppo web e .NET all’interno della piattaforma. Il vantaggio nell’utilizzare la piattaforma, invece di sviluppare da zero, è la possibilità di utilizzare i singoli componenti che ci servono per sviluppare applicazioni business.
Microsoft negli anni ha creato piattaforme sempre più all’avanguardia dal punto di vista tecnologico, facilitando la personalizzazione e l’estensione nell’ottica di realizzare quello che mancava tra i tool di sviluppo veri e propri e tra le applicazioni di più alto livello. Dynamics ci consente di realizzare applicazioni particolarmente verticali, molto specifiche per i singoli ambiti, utilizzando strumenti generici ed alla portata di tutti. Nell’ambito CRM gli skill necessari sono la conoscenza del web .Net, e dei linguaggi propri del framework, assieme ad un po’ di conoscenze di business degli ambiti.
Cosa significa applicare questo in una grande realtà come Avanade? In comparazione con le aziende piccole il vantaggio che Avanade offre è quello di poter collaborare e di avere una struttura di base che investe nella tecnologia. Per questo ci ritroviamo molto nella tecnologia Microsoft; personalmente ho visto lo sforzo di Microsoft nell’offrire questi pacchetti, soluzioni, applicativi orientati alla capacità di utilizzo e flessibilità. Avanade è un buon partner in ambito Microsoft per cui ne è riconosciuta la competenza e l’impegno.
Quindi lavorare in Avanade significa essere presenti in più paesi, questo ci permette di confrontarci con realtà diverse, cercare di vedere il futuro guardando agli altri paesi e cercare di sfruttare le nostre esperienze tramite la collaborazione.

4. Per curiosità, in ambito Dynamics, si parla sempre di customizzazione del prodotto o si predilige parlare in termini di sviluppo?
Dipende dalla realtà in cui è il cliente, ed anche un po’ dalla sua scelta. Noi proponiamo soluzioni già pronte ma molte volte può essere che il software debba essere personalizzato ulteriormente oppure che sia necessario utilizzare o proporre una piattaforma come ambiente di sviluppo vero e proprio, per andarci poi a creare applicazioni verticali. Dipende dal contesto del cliente, da cosa desidera. Anche se siamo molto tecnologici cerchiamo di proporre una soluzione che possa essere comunque utilizzata: non deve essere necessariamente l’ultima tecnologia, ma deve essere utile per il business, perché è la via più breve per far sì che le soluzioni crescano ed abbraccino anche altri ambiti.

5. Abbiamo visto che su Internet si parla molto dei vantaggi di MS CRM in comparazione con gli ambienti di sviluppo .NET “from scratch”, anche se il termine di paragone più immediato dovrebbero essere le altre applicazioni a pacchetto CRM più diffuse, quali Siebel, SAP CRM o SalesForce nell’On-Demand. Tutte queste piattaforme offrono i vantaggi di un meta-livello business e di un’interfaccia utente già definite. Quali sono, a tuo avviso, i vantaggi portati dall’uso di Dynamics in comparazione con altre applicazioni a pacchetto, escludendo appunto il maggiore time-to-market, la semplificazione al cambiamento delle funzionalità o la manutenzione dell’applicazione?
Con Dynamics CRM 4 Microsoft è riuscita a proporre un prodotto agli stessi livelli di SAP o Siebel, per i volumi che vengano supportati. Dal mio punto di vista la filosofia di base di queste applicazioni è diversa: l’approccio alla tematica del CRM è diverso perché i processi che definiscono il CRM non sono sempre bene definiti, cioè sono definiti in alcuni ambiti ma lasciano spazio anche alla personalizzazione. Quindi l’approccio che proponiamo ai clienti è quello di avere una piattaforma flessibile anche in termini di processo che non debba richiedere un adattamento troppo definito da parte del cliente ma possa in qualche modo entrare in azienda con un utilizzo più basso e lineare che si può estendere in futuro: ad esempio utilizzarla per piccoli ambiti ed estenderla dopo.
Inoltre l’interfaccia è molto simile ai pacchetti Office e a tutto l’ambito Microsoft, sicuramente più intuitiva e più facile da utilizzare rispetto ad altri prodotti perchè prodotta da Microsoft. Consente anche un’integrazione con Office e sfruttarne a pieno le sue funzionalità, cosa che altri prodotti devono ricreare all’interno dell’applicazione: per questo è un CRM più agile, più snello e richiede anche meno risorse in azienda in confronto con altri applicativi.
Anche a livello di rete Dynamics CRM ha bisogno di alcuni requisiti lato server, però non richiede uno stravolgimento della rete interna e non richiede nemmeno risorse hardware troppo elevate per essere messo in campo, sfruttando in questo la tecnologia .Net in termini di scalabilità.
Il particolare vantaggio penso che sia l’agilità che questo prodotto ha, rendendosi molto versatile anche per fare altre cose non solo nell’ambito CRM, ma comunque simili.
Quello che SalesForce ha fatto, come soluzione on-demand, cercando di estremizzare una piattaforma di sviluppo, in questo momento Microsoft lo sta facendo con CRM 4, proponendo una soluzione on-premise piuttosto che una soluzione on-demand.

6. Questa visone è interessante perché come sai le applicazioni a pacchetto in ambito CRM hanno avuto un boom alla fine degli anni 90. Una delle best practices promossa da diversi vendor era di aderire per almeno 75% alla funzionalità out off the box. Microsoft invece punta sulla possibilità di personalizzare. Per il futuro penso che questa strategia pagherà perché i clienti si sono mostrati sempre più insofferenti ai limiti di adattamento delle applicazioni a pacchetto, per loro stessa natura. Pensi che la strategia di Microsoft cambierà, vedendo come potenziali clienti anche aziende che oggi utilizzano altre applicazioni CRM, magari più pesanti o con architetture più grandi, oppure farà come per la versione 3 che si è concentrata sulle PMI?
Io penso che i limiti di mercato imposte dalla versione 3 erano più che altro limiti tecnici nel senso che sui grandi volumi il prodotto aveva delle problematiche per cui non poteva essere comparato con altri applicativi tipo SAP e Siebel.
Adesso, tecnicamente, il prodotto non sembra di mostrare queste problematiche. Microsoft ha puntato sull’evoluzione di questo prodotto per raggiungere e poi superare altri prodotti proprio puntando su una maggiore versatilità; cosa che viene pagata sul lato CRM analitico dove altri prodotti forniscono delle funzioni di Business Intelligence già pronte, mentre Microsoft sta lavorando per verticalizzare anche queste soluzioni. Secondo me si evolverà per andare da una parte verso le piattaforme di sviluppo, quindi più vicino a SalesForce anche come on-demand, ed allo stesso tempo avvicinarsi di più alle grandi applicazioni come Siebel, anche in ambito customer care dove il CRM 3 ha un po’ faticato. Penso che la spinta del CRM 4 sarà notevole anche perché è basata su tecnologia all’avanguardia in termini del core dell’applicativo.

7. Condividi che le applicazioni in ambito CRM sono sempre di più basati su workflow e automation, quindi Microsoft con la sua Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation può adesso lottare ad armi pari con i maggiori competitor?
Io ritengo che i processi siano la base del CRM. Senza processi, senza la cultura aziendale, senza appunto i workflow non si può pensare di fare CRM, e non è tanto un problema tecnico quanto di più alto livello. Quello che era lo schema tecnico del 3 era l’integrazione con la tecnologia Windows Workflow. Per noi sviluppatori è servito per allinearci non solo lato CRM, perché possiamo utilizzarlo in tantissimi altri ambiti. Avere un motore di workflow funzionante, estendibile, standard (almeno in ambito Microsoft) è fondamentale perché consente di proporre e realizzare delle soluzioni che possono essere utilizzabili all’infinito: non dobbiamo più studiare un codice custom per fare un workflow, bensì utilizzare quello che ho già imparato magari utilizzando uno share point o con il framework di Windows Workflow, creando un’applicazione custom.
Adesso il motore è molto più potente, molto più gestibile, perche basato su codice standard e poi esistono anche soluzioni in ambito workflow che permettono di fare applicazioni molto veloci. Sto pensando a K2, nostro partner per le soluzioni workflow, che permette di realizzare workflow grafici tramite un designer, workflow che possano essere direttamente deployable. Le soluzioni possono essere molteplici: già oggi abbiamo gli strumenti utilizzabili per cui è verosimile che in un futuro si possa pensare a poter disegnare nell’ambito CRM un workflow in maniera grafica che poi si risolvi con un aggancio alla piattaforma tecnologica.

8. Andando verso quello che sono le service oriented architectures?
Si esatto, per realizzare soluzioni in qualche modo gestibili, facili da estendere e allo stesso tempo funzionanti. Ritengo che già ci siano delle anteprime di questi prodotti che possono essere una preview di quello che poi saranno i prodotti in futuro, ossia disegnare processi senza che ci preoccupiamo più di quale sia la tecnologia, di come viene realizzato il workflow, bensì concentrandosi sul processo, l’identificazione delle fasi.

9. Fatta l’eccezione dell’indiscussa facilità e familiarità che la forza vendita può avere nell’uso di Dynamics, dovuta anche all’utilizzo di Outlook, rispetto ad altri pacchetti la versione 3 non offriva funzionalità per la parte di servizi e marketing. La nuova versione contiene dei miglioramenti sulla parte dei servizi, l’integrazione del call center, il campaign management, etc., ci sono soluzioni precostruite?
In questo momento Microsoft ha adottato la strategia di consentire ai partner di sviluppare delle soluzioni verticali da poter agganciare, in particolare relativamente all’aggancio con CTI, con centralini evoluti. Al momento, infatti, anche se prevista, non c’è una soluzione verticale Microsoft, per cui ci basiamo su software da terze parti sviluppati ad-hoc che facilitano l’integrazione nel confronto dei centralini. Effettivamente per la parte di service abbiamo la possibilità di gestire il supporto, in senso generico: le schedulazioni, lo smistamento delle richieste di supporto tramite e-mail, telefonate, tutto sulla parte servizi nel CRM. In più abbiamo la possibilità di integrarci al confronto dei centralini piuttosto dei dispositivi per l’invio di sms, recezione fax, piena capacità di aggancio verso tutte le piattaforme hardware perche comunque abbiamo la possibilità usufruire di prodotti da molti partner.

10. Esiste una piattaforma privilegiata in termini di integrazione o prettamente di partnership in ambito CTI, con soluzioni quali Genesis o altri?
Abbiamo già realizzato una soluzione con Genesis, per un cliente in un altro paese. In quel momento il cliente adottava tale piattaforma per cui dovevamo adeguarci alle sue necessità ed abbiamo dovuto sviluppare la soluzione. Nel mercato si trovano però integrazioni con tutte le marche e non c’è difficoltà a trovare il connettore anche perché in alcuni è abbastanza semplice svilupparselo, per cui si tratta solo di investire il tempo per fare la cosa.
Microsoft in questo momento ci ha dato visione del fatto che si vuole avvicinare a questo mondo. Per competere con prodotti come Siebel, molto forte in ambito customer care, è però necessario che ci sia effettivamente un interesse di sviluppare un’applicazione quanto meno basilare. Nel frattempo possiamo comunque utilizzare prodotti di terze parti integrabili al 100% sia sul lato CRM che sul lato tecnologico di piattaforma architetturale.
In ambito Dynamics CRM abbiamo la possibilità di gestire le campagne di comunicazione, andare a segmentare clienti o prospect, poter inviare le comunicazioni legate anche ai prodotti, poter monitorare le vendite dei prodotti in base anche alle comunicazioni inviate. Sono stati rivisti nell’ottica dell’uscita del nuovo prodotto delle soluzioni verticali da appoggiare al CRM per gestire la reportistica, proponendo una visione completa di tutto quello che è una campagna di marketing, andare a verificare e importare la campagna che magari ha un esito specifico, quindi poter agganciare la comunicazione al cliente con un link promozionale che permette di chiudere il cerchio utilizzando lo stesso strumento: monitorare l’applicazione dello sconto direttamente in fase di vendita. Sul lato campagne di marketing noi abbiamo sviluppato una soluzione che ci consente una distribuzione multi-cannale, quindi di raccogliere il target della campagna, inviarla in modo multicanale e poi dare le risposte direttamente al sistema CRM. È possibile poter utilizzare un add-on esterno al CRM per sfruttare anche multicanalità complessa, come per esempio sondaggi e link diretti alle pagine specifiche, consentendo un monitoraggio maggiore rispetto a quello che offre il CRM con il concetto del marketing, anche manuale.

11. Queste sono tutte soluzioni sviluppate da AVANADE e suggerite in fase di analisi ai nuovi clienti: esistono delle forme pacchettizzate di funzionalità di questo tipo che possono essere suggerite a nuovi clienti oppure si parte sempre dal requisito specifico e si sviluppa per il cliente?
Sicuramente l’approccio è quello di personalizzare le soluzioni già pronte. Alcune soluzioni nascono proprio con questa ottica e quindi ci mettiamo a lavoro per realizzare un pacchetto completo, altre nascono da un’esperienza più diffusa nei confronti di una realtà specifica od un cliente specifico. Riusciamo a capitalizzare la nostra esperienza per cui riusciamo a creare una soluzione pronta che può essere sia installata out of the box che ulteriormente personalizzata. Generalmente cerchiamo di anticipare le richieste realizzando degli strumenti per quello che definiamo come mancanze del prodotto, lasciando spazio alla personalizzazione. In un caso, il cliente richiedeva un connettore versus Lotus Domino, quindi l’abbiamo creato da zero per permettere di installare Dynamics CRM 3 su Lotus Domino – un server di posta generalmente non supportato. Forti di questa esperienza, abbiamo fatto una vera e propria soluzione pacchettizzata che proponevamo ai nostri clienti.

12. Parliamo della parte analitica del mondo Microsoft CRM. Per scelta o necessità, Microsoft non ha introdotto una specifica piattaforma; qual è l’offerta: si sfrutta esclusivamente l’integrazione con Excel o anche con altri strumenti di data warehousing? Esiste anche in questo caso una piattaforma privilegiata?
Generalmente per la parte analitica ci sono due livelli derivati dall’utilizzo di Excel o Reporting services del prodotto piuttosto che la realizzazione del data warehouse, utilizzabile con prodotti esterni. Per la parte analitica noi suggeriamo gli strumenti standard per la reportistica, ma per il data mining le Analysis Services che rientrano nel pacchetto di SQL server.
Noi abbiamo avuto anche l’esperienza dell’integrazione con SAS. Dipende da quello che ha bisogno il cliente: la maggior parte delle volte ha bisogno di una reportistica e monitoraggio base, altre volte ha anche bisogno di fare analisi del dato. Abbiamo avuto esperienze di Analyis Services, piuttosto che di integrazione di sistemi dove appunto mettevamo a disposizione la nostra conoscenza dell’applicativo per integrare poi con altre applicazioni. Sicuramente è il campo del CRM dove ci deve essere uno sforzo maggiore.

14. Ci puoi parlare brevemente di Avanade “Productivity Platform for Dynamics CRM e di Avanade Federated Architecture?
Per quanto riguarda la Productivity Platform, questa è la visione che ha Avanade sulla possibilità di utilizzare la piattaforma Dynamics CRM come piattaforma di sviluppo, andando a evidenziare i vantaggi sia dal punto di vista del business: un costo minore, uno sviluppo più veloce, investimenti minori, affiancato agli aspetti tecnici della piattaforma - riutilizzare gli skill del .Net framework, utilizzare strumenti di sviluppo all’avanguardia quindi offrire una soluzione tecnologicamente avanzata con costo globale minore, non solo nell’ambito CRM strettamente detto ma anche in altri. Sfrutta un po’ tutta quella che è la soluzione che aveva Microsoft per poter creare applicazioni business custom.
Per quanto riguarda invece la Federated Architecture, avendo Avanade un ampio spettro di conoscenza in Microsoft propone un ambiente federato, quindi la possibilità di avere un’autenticazione più globale anche nei confronti di altri applicativi. Ad esempio, poter sfruttare la piattaforma tecnologica Micorsoft per autenticare gli utenti, per gestirne anche gli aspetti di sicurezza ecc.

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Product development with IdeaExchange

The search for the perfect solution that can incorporate marketing research, product innovation requests, product personalization and customer involvement seems to have come to an end with the launch of SalesForce.com's IdeaExchange.

Although as simple as a forum, what is extraordinary is the idea behind this tool: customers can interact with the organization and among themselves in order to establish priorities for product development. Customers can log to this forum in order to request new features or indicate improvements needed, but also to evaluate and comment on other proposal. Moreover, the means for interacting not only with SalesForce.com but also with other customers are provided.

The popular ideas (with the higher number of votes) are implemented in the following releases of the application (based also on other criteria, of course). SalesForce keeps track of the next implementations for user information under the IdeaExchange site, closing up the loop of product-request and customer communication. As ideas can come not only from customers but also from employees, two such ideas forums have been implemented, each oriented to the specific sector.

This is such a simple and effective way of building a product development process that one might ask: why haven't I thought about it?

Although already used internally in SalesForce itself, IdeaExchange was launched as part of their offer in Winter 08. Among the customers that have tested it (with a successful implementation, one should say) is Dell (see its implementation IdeaStorm: http://www.dellideastorm.com/ ). A well-known result of IdeaStorm is the PC and Laptops offer powered by open-source Ubuntu OS (http://www.ubuntu.com/).

More information about IdeaExchange can be found at:

Dreamforce 08 Europe

The latest in a series of events (the first one took place in 2003), London's Dreamforce 08 promises to be the largest ondemand event in Europe until now. As usual, it will include detailed educational sessions and inventive partner displays with the objective of inspiring clients and end users, encouraging to make innovative uses of the application. Networking events are also planned, aiming at strengthening the salesforce.com community and promoting discussions about latest developments.
SalesForce has prepared several tracks and sessions (over 40) organized by job role or interest (Sales Executives, Marketing Executives, Customer Service Executive, Administrators, IT Strategy & Innovation, Force.com for Developers, Going Beyond CRM) in order to facilitate the attendees' organization and variate the offer. 50 certified partners are also participating, providing demonstrations of their own solutions.
Official sponsors have announced themselves, in search of the next important innovation to invest on (official sponsors: http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforceeurope/expo/sponsors).

What sounds very interesting in this extended program? The Appexchange test drives and Google University session; we won't miss them!

The Dreamforce 08 European event celebrates a new approach in the philanthropic policy of SalesForce: until now, SalesForce dedicated 1% of its employees' time, 1% of its equity and 1% of its profits to charity. The news is that now it also dedicates resources to the environment, as a proof Dreamforce is organized in respect to environmental policies.

See you there!

For more information:
http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforceeurope/aboutdreamforce

Why UML in CRM? A problem solving perspective

As my basis remains cognitive psychology (I.A. Codoban is the author of this post), it is quite common for me to think about psychological aspects of my IT work and the general IT and CRM domains. One such analogy sprouted out of the reports about failure rates in CRM projects (just see what Gartner and other research groups have to say about this) and problem solving (and decision making, implicitly) theory.
So, this post was born to show a psychological perspective on why using UML for CRM is important.

Problem solving research was born from the need of understanding how people take decisions and which are the risks involved. Economy was and still is one of the fields where such knowledge is applied, but interest domains are expanding. In fact, Herber A. Simon won a Nobel prize for the research and theory about human decision making.
Problem solving is the process of getting from the current to the desired state, with the help of operators that allow to modify things so that we can move from one state to another. It is what happens when the PM calls the team and says: our application needs to be adapted to end-user requirements. We have an initial state of things: the current application, processes, etc. and a desired one, defined abstractly by end-users’ desires and needs. It is also necessary to have the tools and the knowledge needed to modify the application and context, thus to pass from the initial state to another one, and finally to the desired one.
Probably you noticed that in real life things are not always easy - problem solving is not always straight forward ;)
On one side, there is the complexity of the environment that comes with uncertainty, inconsistency, and incomplete information. On the other, there is the human nature expressed in what is called limited rationality. This last concept indicates that there are specific pitfalls for the human mind during the decision and problem solving process.

“ … (the) limits are imposed by the complexity of the world in which we live, the incompleteness and inadequacy of human knowledge, the inconsistencies of individual preference and belief, the conflicts of value among people and groups of people, and the inadequacy of the computations we can carry out, even with the aid of the most powerful computers. The real world of human decisions is not a world of ideal gases, frictionless planes, or vacuums. To bring it within the scope of human thinking powers, we must simplify our problem formulations drastically, even leaving out much or most of what is potentially relevant.” (H.A. Simon and Associates – 1986)

The most common errors have been researched thoroughly, nevertheless it is still difficult to prevent them in applied settings. Just think that there are situations in which people assess the frequency of a class by the ease with which instances can be brought to mind. If you are asked how frequent are names that contain an “R”, research has shown that the answer depends on the number of names that we can recall having that letter.
However, the human mind has managed to “construct” strategies for problem solving that have assured our supremacy as a species, thus it can not be that we mistake to often :) Our mind relies on heuristics and experience in order to facilitate the difficult process and help us reach the goals.
Research has found out the way the process is carried out:

“… problem solving generally proceeds by selective search through large sets of possibilities, using rules of thumb (heuristics) to guide the search. Because the possibilities in realistic problem situations are generally multitudinous, trial-and-error search would simply not work; the search must be highly selective. Chess grandmasters seldom examine more than a hundred of the vast number of possible scenarios that confront them, and similar small numbers of searches are observed in other kinds of problem-solving search.” (H.A. Simon and Associates – 1986)

Expertise comes from experience as the person learns problems, contexts and methods to apply. The famous intuition is due to this knowledge and experience and when it fails it lets the expert with the option of applying the common analysis and inference processes.

“A chess master must be able to recognize about 50,000 different configurations of chess pieces that occur frequently in the course of chess games. A medical diagnostician must be able to recognize tens of thousands of configurations of symptoms; a botanist or zoologist specializing in taxonomy, tens or hundreds of thousands of features of specimens that define their species. For comparison, college graduates typically have vocabularies in their native languages of 50,000 to 200,000 words. (However, these numbers are very small in comparison with the real-world situations the expert faces: there are perhaps 10120 branches in the game tree of chess, a game played with only six kinds of pieces on an 8 x 8 board.)” (H.A. Simon and Associates – 1986)

Real situations are even more complex as they usually refer to complex and ill defined (structured) problems. Classical research examples are the ones of design and engineering domains, where the final desired state is not always clear from the beginning. (It is thus clear that IT is not really in a good position ;)…)
Also, aspects such as setting the agenda and representing the problem, critical issues for problem solving, are still in search of answers and support in applied settings. It can be argued that agenda setting, at least in IT projects, falls under the general Project Management discipline, and thus has achieved certain help through best practices. It should be also said that many CRM projects fail on these aspects as little or no Project Management is involved, and no CRM specific project management methodology exists (at least to our knowledge, please let us know if you are familiar with one).
But let us analyze the representation issue in more detail as we are kicking here a cornerstone for our discourse about UML and CRM.

“The way in which problems are represented has much to do with the quality of the solutions that are found.” (H.A. Simon and Associates – 1986)

Many authors have argued that problem solving is not an entirely mental process but need and relies on real manipulations as well. (This reminds me of my math teacher that desperately tried to construct 3D models of geometrical problems in order to facilitate understanding.) The physical interaction process is important for constructing knowledge as it allows trial-and-error behavior with direct feedback and assures that the mistakes are never afterwards repeated. It seems obvious that our mind is prone to learn better from direct experience than just mental fantasy… (Langley and Rogers argue in this sense, but there are numerous other authors that agree).
Using models (simplified representations of reality) helps our mind in its tasks, as it reduces the information to the most relevant one (if the model is constructed well) but also allows certain manipulations without the problems of real situations, such as dead-ends (if we use supports for our models, of course, and not just our fantasy).

Here is the right moment to ask: why are we talking about UML in CRM? Or, rather, why are we adepts of UML in CRM?
Well, one point of viewing a CRM IT project is that of a problem-solving process, and as such it is prone to certain errors and needs certain supports in order to reach de desired objective (in the desired way). In fact, it is linked with the general decision making process present in our everyday lives. This is a complex setting for problem-solving with various actors involved, strategic and tactical hidden processes, and complex unstructured problems at different levels.
UML (Unified Modeling Language) is and important basis for creating models especially for the IT environment and it also supports the software creation process from requirements gathering to testing and deployment. UML is a standardized general-purpose modeling language that includes a graphical notation used to create an abstract model of a system. UML is an easy and graphical way of representing all that is needed in a software project with specific support for different phases or concepts. Moreover, UML is a methodology itself, guiding and helping the practitioner.
UML use cases are a good example for requirements gathering and analysis, and many business analysis books indicate them as the best solution to form a base for the project. The strength of UML lies not only in the easy graphical representation, but also in his semantics and extension possibilities.

The usage of UML in CRM projects can bring a lot of benefits, not only from a technical point of view, but also from a cognitive one. Although not extensive, here are some points about the usefulness of UML for CRM projects problem solving, related to the above introduction.
First of all, UML allows the representation of the problem and of its space. As a special modeling language for IT environments, UML is particularly suited for modeling and supporting the development process. Use cases are usually involved in requirements gathering and analysis, as they are visual representation of end-user requirements and easily understandable by all the involved actors. The fact that everybody can grasp their meaning makes use cases a suited support for negotiating changes and functionalities in the application. They can also be used for explaining to the end-users and non-technical stakeholders, reasons for certain prioritizations and planning. In this way, everybody understands the decisions taken and forms correct expectations of the future evolution.
But also the application can be modeled with UML: by this the team can rely on a common documented vision of how the system is and how it works. It also facilitates the conceptualization and analysis of new requirements as it provides for a frame in which they need to be integrated.
Thus, on the one hand, with the help of UML we can define the current situation (at least in terms of the application) and sketch the desired state based on requirements.
We have mentioned before that one important characteristics of an expert is her experience in the field. Nevertheless, experts are quite hard to find and not easy to retain. (Moreover, the problem domain definition might even change from one project to the other, based on the customizations implemented and the organizational policies and processes, thus the definition of an expert is project-related). By documenting the application, the requirements and subsequent evolutions in a visual way, UML assures that the correct and absolutely needed knowledge is created and maintained. It will then be easier for all the members of the team to take decisions being informed about the application.
The UML documentation of requirements and solutions act as a best practices repository that offers a background for future problems and solutions in terms not only of end products but also processes (how the solution was reached). This is also an expert-level type of support, as it is no longer needed to be present in a project from the beginning in order not to repeat the same errors. It is enough to go over the simple documentation and understand the essays already made and the solutions finally implemented. The repository is available (and accessible in terms of knowledge) to all the stakeholders enabling the creation of shared knowledge (and its documentation) and facilitating decision making process. Also, the complex group decision situation is enhanced through a common understanding of the problem at hand.
With the right models available, estimating the time needed for implementing the requirements is more straightforward, thus helping agenda creation and priority lists.
One of the best aspects is, though, the possibility of experimenting in the model world during the problem-solving process. Above, we introduced the importance of making changes to the problem and its context not only mentally. UML modeling allows externalization and manipulation while still not having an impact on the final application, nevertheless allowing evaluation and analysis.
All these cognitive advantages can come as a help during a CRM project, and hinder its failures.

Although there is a lot to be said about problem solving (as well as UML in CRM), this post is just an introduction meant to enlarge the perspective of the reader, and not a comprehensive theory. In order to facilitate the usage of UML in the particular CRM context, we have developed an extension of the classical concepts for modeling that cover also the CRM field, as well as models of specific CRM applications (more information). These last developments can be very useful in analyzing customized applications and understanding the changes that have been implemented in order to identify possible problems and improvement possibilities.
There are several other reasons for why UML is important in CRM, but this post is already long enough :)
We are going to go into more details about UML in CRM and about our ideas regarding CRM project management methodologies in future posts.

For further information and UML-CRM related services contact us at: manuelbreschi@bluebottle.com