Lack of CRM?... Even worse...

Some time ago, not so far to be honest, I was commenting the CRM consultancy scenario, underlying how poor this approach to services is among the stakeholders involved in a COTS application development and deployment.
Actually, too many times the implementation of a CRM platform is entrusted to people that, in the best cases, are technically skilled in the specific platform, but know not so much regarding the reason of CRM as a strategy that should involve all the organization levels. And, believe me, I am on the side of these technical experts (I am an IT engineer, in the end), because at least they know what they are talking about and they will surely explain you what is reasonable to be done with your brand new Package, or what is really absurd to implement. I would have much more to say regarding the so called "strategy experts", that often have never challenged themselves with concrete problems and the daily routine tasks that a lot of employees have to execute every working day.
But this consideration cannot bring me to accept what is happening in the IT scenario in relation to off-shore consultancy. Cheaper? ok; Practical? Perfect; efficient? Great... but if we arrive at the point that our European consultancy skills are evaluated by thousands of kilometers distant technical consultants.. well, no, now there's something that does not work properly.
Apart from the total lack of a European identity and, above all, the pride of belonging to the most ancient history and prestigious culture, what surprises me is some organizations' perspective.
Is it possible that a European client selects external consultancy entrusting off-shore companies that make selections evaluating European skilled consultants? Yes.. and it has already happened.
So what about quality? what about CRM? what about the ability to offer services that imply not only the specific platform knowledge, but also a good awareness of the market, of the culture, of the hidden needs that always an organization implicitly have?

At the beginning of this year I was already doing some considerations about Packaged Applications (PAs) - such as Siebel or SAP, and the relation to off-shore development. From my point of view, the raise of this kind of "development" witnesses the defeat of the PAs concept: a ready-to-be-used application that can be easily customized and that enables the internally retention of the business processes knowledge. This is the concept that have made Siebel's fortune at the end of the 90's, for example.
Then everybody has understood that all those gold promises, apart from being good marketing, had not so solid basis... Ok, it's straightforward that every organization wants to implement its own strategy, its own processes, and cannot accept to rely on the 80% of the off-the-shelf functionalities; otherwise how one company could be better than another??
But the answer cannot be now applying the old pattern of the custom development! We are returning to the old, pure, development model!
The fact that PAs have disappointed its customers, does not mean that the original idea was bad or wrong! It simply demonstrates that customization, even if not development (as Siebel initially stated), cannot abstract from a good Business Analysis, a Design Methodology or IT Engineering, otherwise who customizes the application cannot be totally aware of the original requirements!
So what has happened? That we are returning to the origins, and now a PA is treated just like a custom Java application! And that's even worse..

Personally I will continue investing in applied research, in an approach to modeling, designing and customizing, that enables my clients to walk by their own in their CRM journey, with the certainty that they base their application management on a solid methodology and that, when change happens, they can always refer to me or my methodology aware colleagues.
This has been the aim of my Ph.D. thesis and this will be my effort in the consultancy offer, together with the new approach and possibilites offered by tools like TIBCO Business Studio or the Oracle BPA suite.
Our aim must be correcting the errors and lacks of the first and second PAs generation, not overstaying on a wrong but trendy and third-parties remunerative model.

CRM 360° chooses Microsoft Dynamics CRM

There is one big contradiction in the consultancy area related to the CRM scenario. When a company, acting in whatever industry field, requests some kind of support to a consultancy company for the implementation of their own CRM strategy and the related Packaged Application, it expects something that goes beyond the possibilities it has internally.
Apart from the mere expertise on the customization of the platform (being Oracle Siebel, SAP CRM, Microsoft Dynamics or others), the consultancy should postulate a professional expertise in the business context that the application supports, that is the Customer Relationship Management as a general integrated approach to identify, acquire and retain customers.
Have you ever asked your provider which platform do they use internally to support the services they are offering to you, as a client?

Our point of view is that last five years and hundreds of unsatisfactory implementations around the globe should have taught that CRM is not just deploying a more or less customized Packaged Application in a company. We know, there's never time to do a complete analysis of the business and an optimization/adaptation of the processes, once we decide we have to implement something that helps us in the daily interaction with our customers. But this, moreover, underlines the importance of a qualified and business aware consultancy. Once delimeted the business sector, and (why not) the immediate low level requirements for a CRM implementation (salesmen need a concrete support? Contact Center operators should have access to the history of a client to provide better quality services?) a good consultancy should indicate the best solution for you and, above all, how to implement it not to throw your money in something you will never use or, on the contrary, bribing you with easy, light and simple solutions that will cost you in time, facing integration problems and an unrealistic view of your customers.

The real question we asked ourselves is: "how can I really sell myself as a CRM implementation expert and seriously offer my services to my clients, if I don't apply CRM both strategically and technically in my own organization?". Well, it's not so obvious, and daily experiences in many international projects show how poor the strategy in the relationship among the different stakeholders is. No, look, think about it: in consultancy often we are still just on the ERP processes matter, above all on the billing side...

We are aware that, if we don't live the same approach, no real professional support on the delivery of a complete and coeherent CRM infrastructure can be offered.
Let's face the truth: a company that wants to be customer oriented and consequently puts care in the relationship with its customers, doesn't receive the same kind of quality level from the consultancy it receives. This does matter!

Following this concept, based on an analysis of our current business, we have done a coeherent analysis and a consequent software selection, finally deiciding to implement Microsoft CRM (for the moment).

The reasons of this coiche rely on a clear knowledge and awareness of our business and our action scope, together with the functional and technical experience in different platforms.
Microsoft Dynamics is undoubtedly one of the lighter and general purpose CRM solutions. In comparison with other PAs it currently lacks of specific ad-hoc verticalizations, and we cannot exactly talk of functional flows that reproduce business processes in the navigation of the application. Even technologically, above all on the Contact Center side, there are limitations.
Microsoft CRM has the advantage of a full integration with the spreaded Office Automation tools (shall we discuss about the main analysis tool of many sales people, even if the organization has a main BI Tool?).
In any case, the main CRM Domains are there, and a good Model of the main CRM components can be available directly on your Outlook client and that of your colleagues and employees.
After some days of installation I would personally have something to say regarding the platform and component requirements, as well as of the lack of some notes that should be included in the official documentation, but let's keep this for another post...
In the meantime, think about this, and feel free to share with us your opinion. Your impression does matter!