Is your CRM Normal?

Warning:  This Article is not for tech guys!

When it comes to your CRM, being “Normal” is a fabulously good thing.  Most  CRM contain over 30% of duplicate data. Not only is that ugly, but  it causes problems for your sales team and costs your company revenue.

In simple terms, I’m talking about Clean CRM Data.  If you asked your tech guy, he would call it “Data Normalization”.  If you are a tech guy, we covered this…come up, stop reading!

Understanding the problem

Nearly every CRM company and internal corporate IT department has taken a stab at solving the problem of data normalization.  Unfortunately, no one has done it right!  Why?  Think about it: when you buy a CRM it is usually empty.  If you import dirty data from an old CRM, the new CRM will be dirty.
Normalization cannot be dictated at the vendor level

CRM systems are not designed to normalize data.  Why?  A good CRM must deliver flexibility to each client implementation;  normalization cannot be dictated at the vendor level.  Therefore, it is left to each individual customer and each individual user to enter and import data in the way that they see fit.   For the CRM vendor it is a lose-lose scenario. If they dictate a data format, whichever format they choose, be it verbose or abbreviated, someone will not be happy.

Massive duplicates and miskeyed data does not become a problem until after you start to use a CRM.   About a year after the CRM is implemented is typically when the buyer realizes there is a huge problem with the information.  Without some systematic way to start with and keep information clean, duplicates will be introduced and someone has an opportunity to make more $$ on professional services.

Dirty data is a profit center.

While dirty data can lose you revenue, it is  good for service providers; you store more due to duplicates and eventually someone will need to clean that data.

An unending cycle

You recently made the investment and spent the money to have your data cleaned. Now what?  Unless you have an enforceable, real-time strategy to keep your data clean, the cycle will continue.  Six months to a year after “cleaning” your data, it will go from pristine to ugly again and the cycle will continue. Efficiency, revenue and opportunity will be diminished.

How does data get dirty? Who is responsible?

There are 3 ways information enters a CRM.

Hand entered. This is a common method that takes place literally every day.  Did you know there are over 20 ways of writing the company name “The Container Company Corporation”?   Some people are verbose and will type out the entire company name, other will take shortcuts or just mis-key the information.  We are all unique, and unfortunately for your CRM, that can lead to 20 instances or more of the same company in your CRM.

Product Imported. Many Software products have the capability to directly imported data into a CRM.  What rules do those products obey?  Do the rules that they use match your company rules?  Do you even have a set of rules that your company follows? What happens when a duplicate is encountered?  Unfortunately, most of these questions are never asked.  The result: more ugly data.

Mass Imported. While Product imports are done external to the CRM, Mass imports are done within the CRM.  Mass imports are typically done by the IT department or your CRM vendor.  Guess what?  Mass imports can be the worst offenders.  In some cases, the person charged with doing the import is exceptional and it is done correctly, however, this is typically the exception.   In most cases, vendors doing imports and data migration don’t  have the proper tool sets to get the job done.  Even more importantly, they have not coached their clients or asked the proper questions to assure success.

I contend that most imports that are generally considered successful would get a flat “D” on my score card.  If you think your process was good, read on.

Establishing a lasting solution

Solve a problem at its source and you solve it for good.  The best way to get control of your CRM is to create and enforce a Data-Plan.  This is not a minor undertaking, however, for any sales team more than a few people it is critical.  The quiz below is dual-purpose, it will teach you what you need to do and give you a score-card of where are now.
Is your company at Risk?  Take the Broadlook “Are you Normal”  QUIZ:

So, where does your company is rank in terms of the sources and impacts of duplicate data?  Take a moment to take the quiz below.  Good luck.  Be honest!

The Dirty Data Quiz: Is Your CRM at Risk?

Data Plan. 15 points. Does your company have a standard format for CRM data?  If you don’t, this is where you start the entire process.  To comply with best practices, your Data-Plan should be centrally stored, accessible by anyone who enters data into your CRM.  In essence, the Data-Plan acts as a single-point-of-truth for your company and how it treats data.  Your points: ______

Staff Training. 5 points. Has your staff has been trained on your Data-Plan and it is easily accessible?  While this is a great step, it is not as important as making the CRM enforce your data plan automatically.  If your CRM does offer a feature like this, the training is most important for your IT department who can circumvent the constraints put on the average user.  Your points: ______

CRM Cleaned. 5 points. Has your CRM gone through a full Normalization and de-duplication process?  Once you have your Data-Plan developed, you need to ensure that the data you have meets the plan.  Why only 5 points?  A one-time cleaning does not solve the long term problem.  Don’t pat yourself on the back for this,  if this is all you do, you will have one month per year of clean data.  Your points: ______

CRM Enforcement. 20 points. Is your data plan enforced by your CRM?  This is tremendously important. The reality is that not one CRM provider (that I have seen) has a detailed data normalizer that can enforce your data plan like like Broadlook’s CRMShield™.  If your provider does not have this feature, it means you must either build or find an add-on to your CRM.  An even better option is to would be to provide all users to the CRM a tool like Broadlook’s Contact Capture to enter contacts into your CRM.  Contact Capture is FREE (not trying to sell anything here).  Your points: ______

Product/Integration Enforcement. 10 points. Do other products that bring information into your CRM adhere to your Data-Plan?  Beware of products that dump data to a Excel or CSV file.  Sometimes it is unavoidable, however, direct exporting systems that comply with your Data-Plan and do de-duplication in real-time are always a superior choice.  Your points: ______

Vendor Enforcement. 10 Points. Do vendors that provide you with list data deliver it in compliance with your Data-Plan?  Some vendors may push back at first; however, it has been my experience that the entire process will go smoother if the vendor complies to the Data-Plan.  Hold your ground and remember that list providers want your business.  Show them the format that you want your data …and don’t compromise. Your points: ______

Import Enforcement, by culture. 5 points. Does the IT staff buy-in to following the Data-Plan?  The best way to make this happen is include the IT department in the development of the Data-Plan.  Your points: ______

Import Enforcement, by technology.  15 points. Is your IT staff prevented from circumventing a Data-Plan by rights management?  Everyone must obey the Data-Plan. If your IT staff can circumvent best practices established by management, problems will arise.  It the IT staff disagrees with a Data-Plan, best practice dictates that the Data-Plan reviewed, discussed and potentially revised. Again, this maintains the single point of truth and enforceability to make your Data Plan work.  Your points: ______

URL Enforcement. 20 points. Do you have a URL (website) field for each company in your CRM.? The URL of a company is more important than a DUNS number, location or anything else.  It is the single best piece of company-centric information that can be used to update the CRM over time.  The URL can be used to update and add contacts to your CRM with tools like Broadlook’s Profiler.  Your points: ______

How did you do? I want to hear from you! Send how you did to Donato Diorio (ddiorio@broadlook.com).

Understand how your data and your processes rank is paramount.  Dirty CRM data is a huge problem with sales force efficiency.  You may think that cleaning your CRM data on a regular cycle is a good thing.  Don’t pat yourself on the back just yet;  cleaning CRM data on a cycle is treating a symptom.  Just like good physical health,  the best solution to eradicate dirty CRM data is prevention.  Prevent dirty data from getting into your CRM and your CRM be clean and health.  You may even enjoy using it again.

After thought:

Broadlook has just completed developing a new, revolutionary tool to empower the CRM experts, consultants and the users that they support.  It is called CRMShield™.  CRMShield solves a serious issue faced by every business that uses a CRM; data duplication. One piece of the CRMShield technology,  “The Normalizer” will be shipped in June and is included free in every Broadlook product that works with contact information.  I thought I would share some of my excitement about it.

It is hard for me to look at a “what are you thinking” box in a social network and not write something.  A few minutes ago, I got sucked in to google buzz.  This is where this post came from and what inspired it.  I’m convinced I’m right.

I’m getting social network apathy.  How many can I join, watch, etc? I have to guess that I am a few years ahead of the average person in terms of connectivity.  What will happen when the thick middle says “enough is enough”?  There will be a backlash.  There will be/must be business models that will give control back to people.  My gut tells me that the solution has to do with preference…and carrying that preference with you. All social networks (which is a very limited term) will have to interact with you based on preferences that you set in ONE PLACE.  Basically, a single-point-of-truth for how you require the world to interact with you.  I don’t want to set my preferences on myspace, facebook, linkedIN, etc etc.  Social networks, airport signs, your car, all should obey your rules.  I can see a flood of preference requests coming that I don’t want to answer.  Multiply social networks of today by 50, this is what we are in for.  Instead of social networks, I’ll group them all together as “intelligent systems”

With this being said, one of my new side projects is defining single-point-of-truth preferences.

Some axioms that I am playing with

“You own and control your preferences.”
“If a intelligent system does not obey your preferences, it gets cut off”

I believe that if I develop axioms first, the rest will be natural.  If anyone wants to brainstorm with me on this one, I’m game.

Writing in a hand held device is constraining. I’m pecking now with a single finger in the dark. House asleep, new baby Rhea sleeping. Makes me choose words much more carefully, no slower. Thoughts: iPhone apps that should be:
1. Skype for children. 2 buttons and 2 buttons only. (1) call mommy (2) call daddy. Parents set it up and it is locked down so my 2 year old could use it with safety. My 6 year old has an iPod touch and wake up parents who don’t undersytand that these devices are pocket computers.

2. Net nanny for iPhone, with a twist. Every single web site content filter I have reviewed has holes in it. Violence, hate, porn and everything a child should not be exposed to can slip through the filters. This is the problem. Why not make the parent responsible? With ubiquitous mobile tech, I could receive a “push” notification each time my child wanted to access a new website. A click of a button would allow or deny. Simple.

Now take it to the next level. Dad, Mom, Grandma, Uncle, Aunt; a real social network. Using a trusted social network to help approve content is more reasonable than interrupting Dad at work during a sales call.

Final level. Trusted social networks that are disparate can interact on a limited basis. Network A says sesamestreet.org is 99% rated G. That is input, but not gospel unless the rules of your network allow it to be. An eBay type rating system could give clue over what social networks are to be trusted.

This is a business model that parents would not think twice about sinking $$ into. I’m one if them.

Why give away ideas? I firmly believe that if you don’t empty your head of what is on your mind, the ideas stop.

All this typed with one thumb

The Stage

The Apple AppStore has over 100,000 iPhone applications.  Verizon’s Droid is a a few months old and Google just launched the Nexus One.  Microsoft has Windows Mobile and the Palm has the hot new Palm Pre.  The current king of Mobile Business is the Blackberry (RIM),  but it is losing ground fast.  Apple, Microsoft, Google, Palm, Verizon & RIM all going   after the same market and that makes for great headlines.

The Hype

Articles are starting to appear talking about the mobile replacing desktop as a work environment.  For the most part, this is bunk; A symptom of someone looking for a headline, but not thinking.  When I see an interesting article about a controversial topic, I like to first look at the last 2-3 headlines by that author.  If last week they were talking about global warming, the week before about cyber-crime and this week about mobile technology replacing the desktop; I classify them as “reporter”.  Reporter does not equal expert.  While reporters are absolutely essential to get a pulse on minor variations on trends,  I prefer to seek the experts to get a deep understanding of a new technology.   Even better is to immerse yourself and get first-hand experience.  Most of the buzz today is reporter, not expert created.

Definitions

To better understand if/when/why mobile will or will not replace the desktop, definitions are in order:  Desktop refers to the hardware, be it PC, Mac, Linux, either desktop or laptop.  This desktop can be running any form of software including installed, Client-Server, SaaS and browser based.  Mobile is the generally understood concept of a smart-phone like a Blackberry or iPhone.

Mobile vs. Desktop

So will “mobile” business application replace the “desktop”?  Yes and No.  The first Hurtle for Mobile to replace Desktop is CPU & Memory. Over the next decade, mobile form factor devices will have the processor and memory of today’s desktops.  So throw out processing power as a differentiator.  Mobile will catch up.  In fact, most applications today, especially SaaS applications only take up a small amount of CPU and memory on the desktop.

What else constitutes a desktop environment?   Input and output devices.  This is the big one.  I personally have both Mac and PC setups, each with a bunch of big monitors. Besides the large monitors, I use full size keyboards, and a laser mouse.

My Mac & PC workstations

Big ideas need big work spaces.  When I first realized that my iPhone was actually a mobile computer, I tested the limits.  Doing basic operations like reading email works fine.  What about spreadsheets I thought?

Designing a spreadsheet on a mobile device is possible, but very, very inefficient.  I tried it and it’s infuriating.  However, using an already designed spreadsheet on mobile device is realistic.  Reading email; easy.  Writing email; possible, but not as easy as using a full size keyboard.

This is where I had my epiphany that would steer the mobile strategy for Broadlook.

Mobile Technology is an extension of and not a replacement for PC-based business applications.

Why?  Desktop business applications have evolved over the years to take advantage of everything possible.  Case in point, at Broadlook, we switched to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  The default setup did not fit our selling model, so we modified Dynamics to fit our business process.  Dynamics is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) environment; a base of CRM functionality which each business can build on.  Our modifications to Dynamics CRM included data points that most companies don’t have access to (unless they are Broadlook customers).  Simply put, the average screen was too small to get all the data on it that we needed.  We could have created a system where everything was accessible in a drill-down fashion (click, click, click).  However, this included too many clicks to be efficient.  I can’t stand having to click 3-4 times to get to data that should be there.  The answer: bigger monitors.  Standard at Broadlook, we now have 24 inch monitors with 1920×1200 resolution.  The things that most people have to click 2-3 extra times to get to their CRM, we have on the first screen.  Simple things like having all the contact info points in the initial search grid.

Broadlook’s Leads Screen in MS Dynamics CRM on a 24 inch monitor.  All info points are available so a sales rep can take action from the first screen.  A typical implementation of SalesForce.com or MS CRM would require you to click 2-3 times to get at all the information on this screen.

As a side note.  These monitors are about $250.  Picking up 50 of these monitors was many many more times cheaper than wasting the time of a sales rep in click-click hell.  In addition developing with the large monitors in mind is much more forgiving than having limited screen real estate and making a design decision that makes 1/2 the people happy and 1/2 ticked off.

How would this business process, which depends on “big hardware” translate to a 4 inch mobile screen?

It won’t.

No way, no how. This is why we won’t see CRM for mobile replacing CRM on the desktop/laptop.  I’ve seen a few mobile “stand-alone” CRM’s on both the sales and recruiting sides.  They are a joke.  An absolute productivity waste.  What works with mobile CRM is when it is used to enhance the desktop experience.  Salesforce has done a good job of it, as have several others.  If your mobile can access your CRM, you can look up a contact, review notes, or line up a few calls for when you are on the road or after hours.  Mobile CRM as a value add to your CRM is an absolute must-have.

What about applications like social networking?  LinkedIN is a good example.  LinkedIN for iPhone is great, I’m looking forward to when LinkedIN or Facebook adds a practical proximity alert to your social network.  That would be something that the desktop or even laptop would not be practical for.   This leads me into the areas that mobile will dominate and why.

For those existing business applications that have evolved on the desktop, mobile will add additional value.  However, for the new frontiers, areas that were birthed in mobile, those will be the areas where mobile can stand alone. It is the same concept which allowed desktop applications to evolve.  You develop to the potential of the environment.  CPU, memory, screen size, input devices, always on (yes/no), network connectivity, battery life.  All of these are the factors that effect Darwinism on both the desktop and mobile device.

Today, most of the successful mobile applications are consumer-based.   As of this writing, none of the top 25 apps in the iPhone AppStore were business apps.  Blackberry pundits:  only 2 of the top 25 for Blackberry were business apps.

So where does this leave us?

• For business applications that evolved on larger form factor systems such as CRM and  Spreadsheets, mobile will be a value-add, but not a replacement.  If someone is promising CRM on your mobile to replace your desktop, run like hell or carry a 12 year old with tiny fingers to type for you everywhere you go.
• New and currently undiscovered business applications that are born and evolve on the mobile will rule the mobile.

2010 is going to be a fantastic year for mobile! I am excited and personally committed to developing on mobile.

Caveats:  (1) When mobile becomes a conduit to work with outside peripherals such as an wall screens and video goggles, then mobile could replace the desktop, however, what is really being accomplished here is emulating the functions of a full form factor desktop & monitor. (2) Seamless voice recognition can get around the problems with small form factor keyboards.  I have not seen voice recognition that is worth it’s salt.  I tell my car “Radio Off” and it says “Please say the name of the street you want to navigate to”.

Every venue of communication has a window of opportunity.   The window for generic holiday eCards has opened and shut.  Finis.  Done.   It has been taken over by the mob.  If you have clients and want to do a holiday outreach,  read on.

Why do I say this?  In my email inbox today, I had over 20 holiday eCards.  Their were some nice ones, but most, I think missed the mark.  No bah humbug intended, I love the holidays.  In the 20 days leading to Xmas, my whole family sings a holiday tune each night.  Each of my three children pick a song and put an ornament on a wall hanging xmas tree that grandma made for them.  A new tradition, with fun and meaning for a 2, 4 and 5 year old.  We put the time in.  Parenting, like a business relationship is about the time.  It would not matter what we did.  I could spend the time telling my 5 year old about the “big bang” and the origin of the universe (her favorite story).  It’s about putting in the time.

I’m not here to make a commentary on the spirit of the holidays, this is pure, good business advice.  I hope you read it in time.

First, a history lesson:  Holiday eCards emerged with the advent of email.  It was a natural fit. Easy to do and send.  You could reach out to clients that you may never go to the expense of mailing a card to.  On the receiving end, it was a new thing, unique and unexpected.

This is not the case today.  Today, if I wanted, I could send a generic holiday email to my 10,000+ linkedIN connections for less than $1.  I asked one of my engineers on the actual server time cost… it really is less than $1.  This is not taking into account the persons time to pick a holiday design, choose a generic, well wishing slogan, and click the send button.

This year, I initially thought about sending an eCard.  I’m a technology person and it seemed “logical”.  Thank you to April, Jenny & Mike from Broadlook for stopping me.  Broadlook sent out hand – signed cards this year.

The axiom that I’ve learned in this:

The impact of your holiday outreach is in direct proportion to the time and care you put in.

I like to classify things. From the cards that I got, I thought I would put together a continuum of impact.

Generic holiday eCard – These simply suck.  Stop sending them.  Few people care unless you are the only one sending them a card.    FAIL

Animated holiday eCard – These were cool and fun…3 years ago. Please stop sending these as well.  (Mom can you hear me?)  FAIL

Company branded holiday eCard - The same as Generic company eCard, except sporting a company logo on top of the usual snowflakes and mistletoe.  For the 3rd time…please stop sending these.  FAIL

Holiday Photo eCard - This is acceptable and hats off to the team at Entice Labs who sent out a great eCard. Why was it great?  It had a picture of their entire company.  For me, it was nice to see people I had met once a trade show and had talked to several times.  This passes my “time and caring” litmus test.  At some point, all business at the company had to stop so they could go outside and take a group photo. Nice touch.  PASS

Personalized eCard – When I say “personalized” I mean that someone took the time to write something.  Not a simple one liner, but a well thought out something.  One of the best cards I got this year was 3 pages from a family run business, who lost a husband and father to a tragic accident.  The card was a thank you, a year synopsis of how the business was faring and a heart felt holiday greeting.  Yes it was mass-mailed, but the content took several hours to write. They put the time in.  PASS

New Media eCards - Last year, this was cool, and for those who haven’t seen it yet, it can still be cool this year.  If you have no idea what I am talking about, see http://www.elfyourself.com.  If you wait until next year, it won’t be cool. PASS (this year)  FAIL (next year)

What did Broadlook send this year? We went with hand written cards.

Our card features our new company mascot, Captain Archer.  180 pounds of love and the chagrin to the cleaning company.  We lost Archer’s Mom & our 1st company mascot, Captain Janeway to cancer this year.  I miss her.

Igor & Janeway as a puppy in the 1st Broadlook office in 2002.  400 sq ft of fun!