Can you handle CRM?

Components for success

Eyeing the midmarket as the sweet spot, Read has an idea how to get there. First up is identifying the target customers for PeopleSoft's CRM suite. For PeopleSoft, the ideal customer falls into one of four categories--telecommunications providers, banking, financial services and high-technology concerns. This is not to say that the products are unsuitable for other industries or markets, it's just that the majority of the existing CRM customer base falls into one of these categories.

Next up is the way he can provide a product that will appeal to the "masses"--the right set of modules and functionality. For the Accelerated CRM solution, PeopleSoft bundles the Sales, Support, HelpDesk and Marketing modules. According to the company, these are the core components of any successful CRM solution, encompassing every customer-facing business process. Each is the full-blown version of PeopleSoft's CRM modules, but the company realises that not every customer needs the other modules, such as Interaction Management, Field Service or Analytics.

While the customers are identified and the product features and functions are ready, Read is well aware that it's only half the battle. The company continues to look for implementation partners, especially in the midmarket arena. "There's no way that one vendor can do it all by themselves," he admits, adding, "I'm constantly looking for partners and new opportunities."

Well aware of implementations that have gone sour, the company is continually looking to ease the way in which product is delivered to customers. Developing partnerships is one mechanism, but PeopleSoft isn't stopping there. For instance, the company is developing new certification requirements for its PeopleTools development environment, which it expects to roll out later this summer.

In addition to using PeopleSoft's 33 integration labs across the country, where partners and their customers can set up a system in a controlled environment, it's extremely important to set the expectations of the customer. PeopleSoft calls this scoping the project and claims to have the experience of more than a thousand implementations locked up in the scoping process. In addition to detailing the core functionality of the product, the scoping process details the integration, workflow and any customisations necessary for the implementation to succeed. Read maintains that this is a key differentiator for the company.

Simon Walls of PeopleSoft's Global Consulting Services maintains that ERP "used to be an IT-driven opportunity. Now it's business-driven, which is a very different beast." Walls observes that the change is driving more "well-thought-out" implementations.

To capture the success factors present in such engagements, PeopleSoft has developed Compass, a Web-based project management framework that can be used as the starting point for any implementation of the company's products.

Compass contains process and project flowcharts, sample work documents, checklists and best- practices recommendations--just about everything needed for a systems integrator to get going and add their specific domain expertise, whether it be cost accounting, or, in this case, customer relationship management. Walls sees Compass as providing a proven methodology that can be used, over and over, "to bring implementations in on time and on budget, with the functionality promised."

Although not a part of the Accelerated CRM suite bundle, PeopleSoft is very excited about its CRM Analytics package. Besides calculating customer profitability, the package provides the tools necessary for some fairly sophisticated behavior modeling, useful for determining cross-selling opportunities, future products and target demographics.

PeopleSoft has been developing the analytics package for upwards of three years, using the activity-based cost-management methodology first espoused by Robin Cooper and Robert Kaplan in the late 1980s. Greg Wynne of PeopleSoft's Enterprise Performance Management group claims that the capabilities of the product are "a year ahead of Oracle and SAP."

All that remains is the choice of where the application will be hosted. As it is accessed via the Internet and all of the processing is server-based, a PeopleSoft 8 application is relatively distance-insensitive. The customer can host the application itself, or let PeopleSoft or one of its partners host it at a remote data centre. It all depends upon the customer's set of priorities and relative comfort levels with allowing data outside of the enterprise.

Can you handle CRM?

1.   Intro      2.   One size doesn't fit all      3.   Open arms across the bay      4.   Components for success      5.   Customer relief management

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