Best Practices in CRM
Maintaining Customer Intelligence
By Dr. Nancy Rauseo

Customer intelligence is the application of customer knowledge. It is a company’s ability to effectively utilize what it continuously learns about a customer. A company must first identify and then capture customer intelligence. Once your company has done so, the next step is to establish best practices for maintaining the customer information you have worked so hard to identify and capture. In this month’s article, we will explore strategies to maintain your customer intelligence accurate, valid and measurable.

In my experience with CRM projects, I have found that customer information becomes obsolete very rapidly, sometimes as soon as it is captured! Consider that in the U.S., about 45 million people change their home addresses each year. Change is a constant in our business world today – job titles change, phone numbers change, products change -- and more importantly, customers’ needs and expectations change. Your Intelligence Blueprint contains the location (department, function and processes) of the required information and the method for capturing it. We will now expand this blueprint to define the following for each information requirement:

• CRM metrics
• Data integrity
• Intelligence ownership
• Rewards and incentives for performance management

CRM Metrics

An important component of shifting from a product focus to a customer-centric focus is a change in your measures of performance. New business metrics and supporting analyses are required to continuously monitor the customer dimension of your business. You’ve identified your company’s CRM objectives, but now how do you know whether you are achieving them or not?

CRM metrics help us set and gauge the progress and level of success in meeting our CRM objectives. They also aid in establishing performance baselines and standards as well as monitoring customer experiences at all relevant touch points. Metrics are also used to the change the way employee performance is measured and compensated. As CRM objectives change over time, so must the CRM metrics.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say that last year, one of your CRM objectives was to retain existing customers. You chose retention rate as your CRM metric and your target performance was 25%. This year, one of your key competitors has begun a campaign to ‘take away’ business from you. Your retention rate target has now been changed to 50%. Your job is to make certain that you are maintaining the data used to calculate this retention rate and ensure their accuracy and validity. You need to go back to your information requirements and blueprint documents and update them as a result of changes to CRM objectives and consequently metrics.

Data Integrity

In order for data to remain useful and create value, customer databases must be kept up-to-date. Be sure to work with your CRM technology provider, information technology staff and process owners to:

• Ensure that new customer information is immediately updated in the CRM database.
• When possible, get customers to update their own records.
• Track the level of usage for each data field in your CRM system and question the usefulness if below a certain usage level, which your company will need to determine.
• Purge customer records that have remained inactive for a certain time period.
• Conduct a regular audit for a subset of the files each year.
• Change the business rules (or metadata which is also called ‘data about data’) as required through the use of proper software.
• Make sure the updated information is disseminated to the rest of company, particularly to the customer-facing employees.

Intelligence Ownership

Last month, we discussed the importance of assigning an owner to each business process, whether customer-facing or analytical. The same holds true for categories or portfolios of customer intelligence. A person(s) or process owner(s) within the company must be responsible and accountable for facilitating the data maintenance process. If this ownership is not established, things will fall through the cracks result in poor decision-making.

Many companies create a formal or informal matrix structure, particularly when similar business processes (rather than functional areas) are used for different customer portfolios. A matrix organization chart can have process managers on one side and customer managers on the other side. This works well when the intelligence captured is done within the business processes. Some companies have taken it a step further and defined customer intelligence teams or committees to monitor intelligence quality for specific customer groups.

Rewards and Incentives for Performance Management

One of the challenges in maintaining customer intelligence is figuring out how to motivate and compensate employees for keeping information up-to-date. Employee performance is driven by the criteria used to measure results. If a sales rep’s success is measured by new revenues from new customers, will he or she focus any attention on retaining existing customers? The reality is that sales compensation programs usually go against the customer retention or loyalty philosophy. Compensation programs for operational areas normally focus on productivity increases rather than customer value. If customer retention and profitability are key CRM objectives for your company, then you must establish CRM metrics and compensation and incentive programs that reinforce the new intelligence capturing and maintenance behaviors.

Best practice companies have incorporated reward and incentive programs into the performance appraisal process by:

• Modifying job descriptions to include the specific behaviors and actions employees must display in order to achieve the CRM objectives.
• Training employees on the new CRM-focused activities.
• Working with HR to develop appropriate customer-based compensation and reward systems.
• Developing recognition programs for accuracy and validity of customer intelligence.
• Creating career progression programs focused on the achievement of customer-centered objectives.

Dr. Nancy Rauseo is on the faculty of Florida International University’s College of Business Administration where she teaches marketing. Nancy holds a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University and an M.B.A and Ph.D. from Nova Southeastern University. Prior to her teaching career, she held various senior management positions for over 20 years in the areas of sales, marketing and technology implementation. Dr. Rauseo is also Instructor for FIU’s Professional Certification Program in CRM. For more information, visit: http://business.fiu.edu/epe/crm.cfm

Empower Your HR Department - Reduce the Time & Cost of Compiling Information

How much time do you spend searching for information in employee file folders? How much time do you spend collating that information for management reports? Wouldn’t it be easier just to have all that information at your fingertips in HR Series Software – including scanned original documents?

Your HR department is a cost center. It’s in every one’s best interest to make this essential department as efficient as possible. The more time spent recruiting talent and supporting exiting employees, the more successful the HR department is. It isn’t efficient to have to go to a paper file anytime information is needed for an employee, or to check what benefits the employee is enrolled in or to check when their last review was filed, or to see if their certifications are current or if they’ve completed required training. With HR Series Software original documents can be scanned into the software, and accessed by employees with proper security rights. Using Custom Tabs, information can be tracked, such as required training or certifications and reports can be printed based on the criteria you require, such as a retake date, or an expiration date.

We haven’t even considered how much time is spent on the telephone answering the same question for each employee. By adding HR Self-Service, you can allow your employees to maintain their own personal information, enroll in employee benefits, see what benefits they are already enrolled in and how much time off they’ve earned and used. By adding PrintBoss Enterprise edition, and an FTP server, employees can even securely access a PDF of their directly deposited check and print it for their records.

What about that recruiting process? By adding Applicant Manger, you can streamline the hiring process and replace that bottom drawer full of resumes. It also allows an employer to keep a record of applicants and their skills in case a position opens up that would suit an applicant. Additionally, by using the Correspondence Wizard, standard reply letters can be used to reply to potential applicants all through the hiring process.

It’s hard to assess the true cost of the HR Department, but with HR Series software, you can reduce the cost of accessing information, preparing reports and disseminating information to employees which can increase the HR Department’s efficiency so they have more time to attend to the essential tasks of recruiting and supporting existing employees. If we can be of assistance, please contact us at info@axisintegratedsolutions.com.

Moving and Tracking Goods through Your Warehouse Using License Plates

How can goods be moved and tracked through the warehouse? Well, with WMS, logs are created automatically to provide after-the-fact reporting of movement and the Web Dispatch and handheld screens allow easy lookup of current stock locations. But what about handling larger groups of stock, or disparate items? This month’s article deals with grouping of inventory items for easier movement and tracking through the warehouse using license plates.

First, let’s define the terms as used in Sage Accpac WMS.

License Plate

A license plate is a unique number from 9-20 characters, which is associated with specific products in a specific bin. License plates provide an effective way of grouping together products, and identifying and tracking those products in the warehouse. License plates are created in Sage Accpac WMS with any process that adds stock into a bin, such as receiving, adjustments that add stock to the warehouse and moves within the warehouse from one bin into another bin. Once the license plate is created, you can add and remove products from the license plate, move and assign the license plate to new bin, pick the license plate to fulfill a sales order, etc.

Many warehousing functions can be performed as usual by the user, while the license plate information is preserved by Sage Accpac WMS, without the need for manual intervention.

Creating, Moving and Deleting License Plates

License plates can be created during receiving or while doing adjustments to inventory.

You can move products out of a license plate using the handheld Direct Move and Adjustment functions.

Deleting a license plate lets you reuse the license plate number.

Direct Move function can be used for a variety of operations that let you to manage license plates in the warehouse. Direct Move can be used to move an entire license plate from one bin to another. When you move a license plate to a different bin, the license plate is reassigned to the new bin and the license plate is no longer associated with the first bin location. The Direct Move function can also be used to add and remove products from existing license plates.

Picking an order with License plates

License plate picking is simplified and extremely effective – scan the license plate and then scan the shipping label—quantity, lots, serials, etc. are already known.
If the pick is not intended for a license plate, then regular picking is used. License plate and non-license plate picking can be freely mixed in an order.

In summary, license plates provide a simple yet efficient way to group goods and move them through the warehouse. For more information, contact our us at info@axisintegratedsolutions.com.

Resource Planner for Sage CRM

Product Features

Graphically manage and schedule your resources from a multiple weekly or monthly view. Users are color-coded for easy schedule viewing.

Easily view all scheduled activity in a weekly view.

Monthly View

Easily view all scheduled activity in a monthly view.

More Features:

• Drag and drop appointments or any scheduled activities quickly and easily.
• View all activity types, phone calls, meetings, demonstrations even custom types defined within your CRM system.
• Create your own icons to indicate custom activity, allowing for quick visual recognition of activities.
• Drag over empty areas within the calendar to schedule new activities and appointments using the standard SAGE CRM MME activity schedule.
• Customizable Tool tip style information on activities. See the key data fields you want just by moving the mouse over an activity.

  

• Filter your activities by multiple fields to allow you to quickly and easily find information.
• Assign your own colors to individual users, for easy grouping and sorting.
• Seamless integration with MME. No external applications,
• Monthly view and weekly view support, along with 5 day working or 7 day week views.
• Easy point and click installation on your web server.
• No local client installation or configuration.
• Multiple user calendar, view up to as many users’ calendars as you require.

For more information please e-mail us at info@axisintegratedsolutions.com.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q – How can I print the total Accounts Payable invoice amount for a certain vendor or the total Accounts Receivable invoice amount for a certain customer in the last fiscal period?

A – Beginning with Accpac version 5.3, a From Year/Period field was added to the Accounts Payable Vendor Transaction and Accounts Receivable Customer Transaction Reports. You can now print a list of any transaction by a fiscal period range.

Q – When setting up my Contract Pricing in Inventory Control, can I enter the specific starting and ending dates for the customer contract?

A – Previously, you have only been able to designate an ending date. Beginning with Sage Accpac ERP version 5.3, a start date field is available when setting up contract pricing as seen below. For example, you may set up the contract pricing right away even if the contract does not start until the beginning of next month.

Q - We have set up Key Attributes, which have been linked to an Outbound Call list in order to collect additional data and would like to be able to view data collected.

However, the reporting feature in Sage CRM cannot display the information related to the Outbound Call and the custom Key Attribute data collected.

A - Because the standard report 'Source View' does not contain views that pull Outbound call list information, you will need to create a new database view and make it available for reporting.

If you are interested, please contact your AXIS Solution Provider or see your CRM administrator for further information.

Q – Is there a way to allow all users from different Territory levels to view all Meeting Room bookings?

A - Meeting rooms are setup in CRM in the Users area as “Resource” user. Resource users do not consume a license and therefore, they cannot be logged into the system like a regular user can.

This function involves the setup of a new Team and Territory so that all users from different Territories are able to view the meeting room bookings under the Team CRM area.

For this example, a Team called “Resource” is created as well as Territory called “ResourceTerr” is created.

The “Resource” Team is assigned to users who should see the meeting room bookings in order to be able to select Team: Resource from the Team CRM area. This is setup under the Display Team.

Territory

In order for other people from different Territories to see the Meeting room bookings, users need to be given rights to see Communication records that are setup under the “ResourceTerr” territory.

This permission can be setup to each User individually or to a Profile.

Setting Permission for Individual Users to see ‘ResourceTerr’ territory:

1. Go to Administration > Users > Security

2. Under the Territory Policies Tab, make sure the Allow users direct rights in territories is set to “YES”

3. Under the User rights Tab, select ‘ResourceTerr’ Territory from the User Right for: drop-down box

4. Click on the Add User.

5. Click on the User’s link who you want to provide access and give him/her right the Communication entity.

Setting Permission for a Profile to see ‘ResourceTerr’ territory:

1. Go to Administration > Users > Security.

2. Select the Territory Profiles tab, select the Profile that you like to add the permission to.

3. Click on the Add Territory to Profile icon to add the “ResourceTerr” territory.

4. Give this profile rights to view the Communication records set under the “ResourceTerr” territory.

This setting will allow users to see bookings that may have been created in the system whether the user is the assigned user or not the assigned user and whether they are or not in the same Territory.

When booking the meeting room using this setup, keep in mind that other users will be able to see the details of your appointment. This being said, if there are details about this booking that you do not want to share with other Users, it is suggested that you record the confidential details under a different appointment where other Users will not be able to see the details.

When booking a meeting room, make sure the following are selected:

1. The Territory is ‘ResourceTerr’.

2. The Team is “Resource”.

3. The User is the Meeting room and/ or other Users.

To view all meeting room bookings, go to Team CRM > Calendar/Task tab, and select “Resource” from the Team CRM for: drop-down box.

Q - Why is the performance of Accpac Pro so slow when logging on?

A- After entering the login ID and password, it may take an unusually long time to launch the program, but this issue does not occur when attempting the same process in another network environment.

When Sage Pro is launched, it will access the Printer folder of the machine accessing it to determine if a PDF driver is installed. This allows the PDF option to appear when printing in Sage Pro. If there is an obsolete or corrupt network printer driver in the Printer folder, the operating system may attempt to search the network for a connection that does not exist. This will cause the delay when updating Sage Pro.

Removing the problem printer driver may resolve the issue.

Q - What is the message “Error 55: Memory variable file is invalid" that appears when opening a transaction screen?

This error is caused by corruption in the FLDARY memo field for a record in the SYCPATH table.
This field contains memory variables (arrays) to quickly load screens into Sage Pro ERP.

To resolve the issue, identify the record containing corrupted data in SYCPATH.Fldary and clear the contents in the field. Clearing the contents in this field for all records could be a quicker resolution. It will be repopulated with the correct memory variables (arrays) when the transaction screen is reopened.

Note: Data edits should only be done by an Accpac Certified Consultant or Business Partner. Create a full and verified backup before proceeding. This should first be attempted in a test installation and the results should be fully verified before implementing in a live system.

Q - What is the purpose of SOHSHP and SODSHP Tables in Order Entry?

A - The SOHSHP and SODSHP tables are used to track shipments that have been deferred for invoicing. When the period is closed, all records from these tables are cleared. If there are records in these tables that have not been invoiced, a dialog box appears upon closing that warns of uninvoiced shipments and allows the option to continue with the close or cancel. If the period close is continued, all invoiced and uninvoiced records are cleared.

Note: Although these records are cleared from these tables, they may still be invoiced in Accounts Receivable through Invoice SO Shipments.

Q - How do I let my supervisors view their direct report’s information?

A - First of all, you have to designate supervisors in HR. To do that, you need to designate an employee as a Supervisor; you can do it from the Job tab. Click Setup Supervisors to access this window.

This window shows a list of all employees in your company. As you highlight each name, choose Yes or No at the bottom of the window. The Supervisor column will show the results.

There is also the number of immediate subordinates for the highlighted name showing below the Supervisor selection section. This number will change as you change the highlighted name.

You can also print a list of the subordinates of each supervisor by clicking Print Subordinate List.. The list will print for the highlighted name. Click OK when you have finished designating the supervisors.

After designating supervisors, create a role in Setup Manager, Security and License using one of the two supervisor roles:

Then determine what areas you’d like the supervisor to access. This is especially useful for performance reviews and documenting conversations with employees.

TOOL OF THE MONTH

Printers: The Right One For Your Needs

In this first of a two-week series, we're going to give you the scoop on laser printers, how to buy one, what to look for, and why HP is over-charging you. When shopping for a laser printer, your first criteria is obviously price. Generally, a $700 laser printer will always perform better and/or include more features than a $300 model, so you'll want to ensure you purchase the most feature/performance-packed printer you can afford. How do you tell what you need? Here's a cheatsheet:

• "Pages Per Minute, or ppm " -- Print Speed: Unlike inkjet printers, the ppm rating of laser printers is usually accurate to within 10% of what you get in the real-world. For a home-based business where only one or two people print, a printer that ranges from 20ppm-25ppm will do the job. For small businesses of 5 to 20 employees, look for a model in the 35ppm range. Those with more than 20 employees all using the same printer should opt for a model that exceeds 45ppm.
• "First Page Out, or fpo " -- Time Needed for Printer to Awake and Print: This is an underrated factor that is very important only if the printer is not under constant use. If it is, you can ignore this criteria because yours will always be in "awake" mode. However, if you print less frequently, your printer will go to "sleep" and will need to awake when the next print command comes along. This spec indicates the amount of time the printer needs to wake up from sleep mode and make a printout.
• "Print Resolution, or dpi " -- Image Sharpness Quality: On laser printers, a low dpi rating will still produce text that is superior to almost any inkjet printer because of the way laser technology works. Having said that, if plan on using your laser printer solely for text printing or for graphics where superior quality if not necessary, even the lowest dpi rated lasers, typically 600dpi, will more than suffice. If you are planning on printing graphics that need to look professional, go for 1200dpi or better.
• Networking, Duplexing, Trays, & Finishers -- Add-Ons: Extras are usually identified in a printer's model name by adding a "d", "n", etc. to the end. A network-capable printer is essential for a company with more than one person printing to the same unit. Just connect it to your network and anybody on the network can print to that printer. Duplexing is the ability for a printer to print to both sides of a page automatically. A "t" designation generally means the printer includes an additional paper tray for high-demand needs. A "finisher" adds capabilities like auto-stapling, folding, and/or, sorting. So for example, the Lexmark C920dtn includes duplexing, network-capability, and an extra tray. If it was called the C920dtnf, it would also include a finisher.

Both HP and Lexmark, among others use the designations at the end of a model name to indicate its add-on capabilities. But how do Lexmark and HP differ? Mainly in price, and by a large margin. Take for example the HP 4600n color laser printer. At $1564 it includes 17ppm color/black, 600dpi resolution, a 400MHz CPU, and 96MB memory. But look a Lexmark's competing printer, the C762n, and you get 25ppm color/black, 1200dpi resolution, a 600MHz CPU, and 128MB memory...for over $200 less (priced at $1339)! We don't play favorites here, we just tell it like it is.