Though its been a couple of years of India waking up to the Customer Management and associated priorities in business management, my initial interactions with aforesaid folks, reemphasized upon the state of affairs being still nascent and yet to grow, the statement of Campaign Management as a priority item in the scheme of things its quite a good evidence on the industry’s nascent stage.

I respect their views, however it is in need to widen their horizon and look beyond the obvious as determined by basic conventional CRM wisdom.

As the figure above suggests, to maintain and uphold the objective called “keeping the house tidy” is subjected to a few players playing their designated roles.

Its never a one man’s job and importantly claiming a slick broom would do the trick is futile claim as it is currently suggested by some myopic customer management (Campaign Management) consultants.

To give you an idea on the role players in Customer Management, the charts starts with the Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Finance Officer staying on top with CEO’ business objective alignment and product managers holding the second line. In addition, the analyst, campaign managers, segment managers and business and IT operational folks follow the suit – All these personas have a defined role that they must play in order to get the desired results.

The power of technology (or software application, if you will) to excel in their scheme of things should not only have campaign management but an entire set of applications and a orchestrating scheme to meet the business objectives .

The CEO/CMO and CFO needs to have a summarized and holistic picture of what is currently happening and how well its in alignment with the business strategy, they should be able to identify any discrepancies and deploy appropriate course measure to manage it effectively.

• IT specialist should be able to define policies on data management and securities related area and let this piece run in an auto-pilot mode, intervene and correct as appropriate.
• Basis the data sourced, the analyst should be able to identify product associations, customer affinity quotients by creating segments, perform analysis to identify potential cross/up-sell opportunities or proactively identify signs around customer management and keep these information consumable by management and operational business folks.
• The product management and the marketing teams should come together to ensure basis the gaps and additional revenue potential identified by analysts are acted upon.
• The product management team also should keep track of each activity where the customer is contacted through an outbound or inbound communication, if the performance is found to be unsatisfactory, make real-time course corrections hence increase the bar
• The Information Technology operational team should store the history of all the aforesaid activities for future references.

Now, as you can see the aspects mentioned above are to be used at various level of intensities (basis your business model) for effective customer management.

You may now agree, a one-size-does-not-fit-all and such one-sized approach may not be a very appropriate one in such scenarios involving various stakeholders.

Please exercise due caution when it comes to evaluating business software applications for customer management, ensure the solution that are being considered will (A) fit well in your environment and (B) covers the aspects mentioned above in one way or the other.

I am keen to know your views on this, please do leave a comment with your opinion or send me a message through the Contact page. Also, if you enjoyed reading this article and would like to be kept informed of any such new articles, you can subscribe below for an email notification.

Business Intelligence growing at a very high pace, knowing these a host of software professional comes together and mushroom out a myriad of software solutions in the market, in the process the poor evaluators and decisions makers at various enterprises go through the turmoil of getting stuck in the cobweb of information and struggle to make the right decisions. The idea behind this post is bounce of some ideas and approaches that are software solution agonistic but totally relevant from business perceptive.

Many folks I have dealt with have this common misconception about Business Intelligence, they think/believe ability to be able to report basis historical data in various forms such as drillable OLAP cubes, KPI driven dashboards, building a Pivot in excel are all business intelligence. As a starter, it ain’t really Business Intelligence! If you insist for a term for this, I would say ‘Historical Business Reporting’

The analogy I give to folk that believe the aforesaid definition is true is the following, “Running any business basis Business Intelligence that is believed to have a comprehensive set of capabilities to report on historical data, is like driving a car with a really huge rear view mirror and no (or keyhole) size windshield to look ahead”

If you believe (request you should, we practitioners are ready to help you) in the value that a true Business Intelligence can bring to your business, please do start with sketching out what are the Business Specific Values you would want to derive out of the Solution.

• In almost all the solutions’ case what goes in determines what gets out. So, if your data is not good enough, don’t expect anything good in return. This means, you might want to ensure the BI solution you are considering has the capability to manage Data Quality effectively.
• In addition to the cleansed data, we need to have access to behavioral analysis of underlying data and predicted future as well, for this we need the power of statistics – In absence of this approach, you will be driving the car (business) like the man in the illustration
• Basis the above two points, we are ready to represent the Information derived (from the cleansed and statistically analyzed data).
• Now, we must be able to present this data to aid various stakeholders make timely informed decisions. Basis their persona/profile, we need to decide how summarized or detailed the data should be.
• In the process of the presenting the data to end-users, we must ensure they are equipped with a through WHAT-IF capability to perform right kind of analysis in addition to accessing reports.

Business Intelligence solutions that has the aforesaid flow would assist you in not only meeting your short-term goals but the long-term objectives as well. Do talk to us, we are waiting to hear your perspectives..

However, the real question is, do you, as a marketer want to automate the entire process? You might ask, if it is a relevant question? Yes, it is!

Let me give an analogy in aviation industry. The role of technology in aviation space has increased so much; flying a passenger aircraft from Helsinki to Caracas is possible without having to have a Pilot on board. The engineers behind the scenes at Boeing, Air Bus, Embraer et al is well aware, the instinct of the Pilots on board is something that can, by no means be automated. And, this very instinct is one of the critical factors for sustenance of safe flights.

What can we understand from this analogy? Though, it is possible to automate the marketing, particularly campaign management function much as you want to, it is essential to keep the human touch intact in whatever way you can. Sooner or Later you will realize, this decision has paid-off handsomely in managing customers effectively, i.e. either in managing marketing costs or increasing the returns you get from various marketing programs.

Please do not fall prey to sales-talks from vendors who make automation process look like result of a magic wand swing, do exercise adequate caution before registering what is being told to you.

However, when it comes to solutions that are designed to address marketing requirements, it’s essential to look at them through a high-caliber magnifying glass. Why? Technology is relatively a new entrant to the marketing world and thus the solutions that are available in the market are not really matured, except for a couple of them.

In the last decade or so, a whole lot of software players mushroomed creating software solution for marketing management area. Needless to say, a few of these players have indeed good point-solutions, but the limitation is, most of them are a bit myopic in their offering.

To illustrate this in an example, one of the Campaign Management vendors in the world, got rather a decent solution for Campaign Management function, however, it does not have anything around Campaign Management Function to make it effective – A plain vanilla campaign management solution is nothing but a glorified SQL black-box that abstracts the raw code to the user, nevertheless, does nothing more than what an SQL query is expected to deliver. Any enterprise that is considering to invest in a technology solution would want to know the ROI it can bring to the table over a period of time, a plain vanilla solution would sooner or later fail the ROI litmus test.

As an enterprise when it comes to investing in a Marketing Management Solution, please do exercise some caution. Data Management, Customer Analytics, Channel Integration and Marketing Reporting are a few of the core ingredients of marketing function. You might want to consider investing in point-solution if you have existing investments in these areas.

But… Even if you do have existing investments, ensure you do not have any licensing and hardware sizing limitations to use the existing Data Management and Reporting area for marketing management function. In my experience, in most of the cases there is always a challenge to address around these areas. So, I would think its wiser for enterprises that are considering investing into a Marketing Management solution to evaluate the solution basis its width and depth of offering and not get awed by a few screens that resembles the wand of Ron Weasley.

Some enterprises consider going for a full-fledged best-of-breed approach to address marketing management requirements. Sure. But do note the following few words when you consider offerings from multiple vendors – Integration, Security, Metadata Management, User Management, Upgrades, Updates, Scalability… These factors will spring up when you look at multiple solution integration and will make you grow old, real fast.

If you liked this article and want to know on how to look at a marketing management solution, I urge you to visit Transcentis to know more. I would really appreciate if you can either send your comment for this article or contact to let me know your views/feedback.

Yet another case to add 55% of failed CRM cases. As a result of the failure, he is prone not to recommend anything pertaining to Customer Management to his official and social peers in an open way. Well, what is the idea behind this post?

The gentleman in the aforesaid story must have been one of those who must have fallen prey for one of the Campaign Management vendors that would impressed him and his team on user friendliness and ease-of-use of their software application. As a result to their sales discussion, they have forced him to get convinced on their offering as the end-of-all solution all challenges pertaining to customer management – Result? Substantial failure and another company helped the soaring CRM failures.

It is important to hold back for a moment and think….. Think what?

Please! Please! Please! Do not see Customer Management as an area in isolation, but as a part of the overall organization’ fabric and importantly part of the enterprise’ culture.

And, it is essential to look at Customer Management in totality NOT as one omnipotent software application. Please ensure the data that are to be managed from Customer Management perspective can be handled by the solution you are evaluating, it includes cleansing (if applicable) as well. Ensure, the constraint/limitation you have on storage does not have impact the Customer Management initiative. Ensure, in addition to accessibility to data, you have statistical analytical capabilities to be able to derive meaning out of all possible you may have. Ensure a campaign management application that is functionally rich and truly usable. Ensure, anything pertaining to Customer Management can be thoroughly report to various individual as various levels in the enterprise.

If you are one of those thinking of Customer Management, please do drop in a line-here with your thoughts.

I decided to know whats in store and encouraged the call for a bit, as expected my information has been culled out from my Cards account and the Bank is proposing a well-tailored Personal Loan offering. As an offer, its a good one. Most likely I will grab it in the next few days.

The reason why I would go for a fairly low-value Personal Loan is to settle my card bill, which I have been revolving for over six months now.

What do you get from this story?

Yes, the Bank is going out of their way to help me pay less, thus reduce their revenue. Now, you think their Management would approve this?

This is an outcome of

1. Siloed Departments and their Priorities
2. Completely disconnected Marketing team working towards their own goal, which isn’t alinghed with the Organization.

This can be easily circumvented. Question is, are you interested?

In a nutshell, the aforesaid Article unearths some interesting facts around IT and Business Strategy alignment basis a research done Bain & Co. As you must have read, Organizations that have gone ahead with an accelerated IT focus have been proven to be performing better than those who are waiting for the D-Day for IT and Business Alignment – These are the folks who keep thinking its a perfect world, I really hope the statistics shown in the article rings the alarm.

Though the facts presented are interesting and rings a wake-up call for Enterprises that are hell-bent on alignment, it is important NOT to forget about the flexibility of the IT organization.

The industry that I work on i.e., Enterprise Marketing Management, solutions that are less than a decade old in age pose a huge threat on the Flexibility - To cite an example, there are a few Solutions available in the market that addresses ONLY the Campaign Management aspect of Marketing Automation. Campaign Management Solution in real-sense should be able to take Customer/Marketing Related data by means of accessing disparate systems and via through Web Services(to ensure its future ready) and be able to provide the output to relevant Communication Channels for engaging in dialogues with Customers and pull each communication’ response back for Analysis and Business Intelligence.

What I have presented above is just a Plain-Vanilla Campaign Management Solution, not the one you want to consider if you are ROI/Top-Line and Bottom-Line focused. If you are, give the deserved Importance to the Analytics aspect of Campaign Management.

Though this equation looks quite Commonsensical, a few enterprises have gone ahead and invested in such Plain-Vanilla solution as the Look ‘N Feel of the solution blown the Naïve Business Users away – Investments that are essentially made around the “WOW” factor of the User Interface alone, these investments are neither fruitful on a Long-term basis nor Flexible to accommodate future requirements/other Organizational needs.

Acknowledge the fact too-much-of-analysis-will-lead-to-paralysis and wisely accelerate your IT organization by keeping flexibility aspect intact and the solutions that you are investing in ready for future requirements.

If you get under the hoods of such success stories, determining the logic behind arriving at single-digit converstion rate is a no-brainer. Due to the indequacies in choosing right customers, marketers invariably decide on a larger carpet size and attack them with offer bombs. This results in substantially lower conversion rates (the genesis of 2%) and the number seem to never grow beyond single digit. A corollary to such stories is invariably, if I do not leverage the allocated marketing budget, the impact it has on subsequent year or quarter is quite high on budget allocation.

In many occasions, I have spoken with marketers to increase the number of campaigns or the offers and ensure the budget spend remains intact without compromising on the quality of work or aim towards higher conversation rates, importantly real business value. Not only the marketers are reluctant to such proposals, they are a bit cynical as any such changes to them is equivalent to moving out of a one’s religion.

I sincerly recommend and hope marketers (at least those that use some automation techniques in Direct Marketing) read and consider embracing the value of Mathematical Optimization techniques in Marketing. Marketing Optimization (AKA MO) translates business and marketing constraints to mathematical equations and by using statistical algorithms maps customers with campaigns and offers scientifically. Some of the end results of an such endeavor are the following,

A) Substantial Reduction of Carpet Bombing thus reduced marketing cost
B) The saved funds are available for other targeted marketing programmes, which can yield higher results
C) Highly Targeted and important Relevant Campaigns and Offers to Customers
D) Balanced and meaningful utilization of Communication Channels
E) Direct Contributor towards reducing the size of DND Database growth
F) Last but not the least, upholding Customer Communication Governance Policies

The recent buzz word in marketing, i.e., Customer Governance can be meticulously dealt with marketing programmes that embraces optimization techqniques and results are undoubtedly substantial.

There are real-life cases from Retailers, Banks and Telecom Operators where Optimization Techniques have aided in improving Campaign response rates by over 20%. In addition, targeted selection of customers, effective Channel Utilization and importantly Customer Satisfaction have proven to be highly profitable. So, its upto the Marketer to decide to stay with the old proverb of 2% conversation rates or decide to move on in life with new paradigm of 20%.

Your Comments?

I have recently been constantly in touch with one of the Banks on strategizing their Customer Value Management plans through an Analytical Customer Management solutions. The recipients of my recommendations and authorized individuals who where to whet the blueprint have spent considerable time listening to everything that was discussed, however as they are venturing into a new territory, they were a bit unsophisticated. I am not using the term unsophisticated in a demeaning fashion, but a state that is inevitable when we venture into a new area.

In my discussions, I have constantly tried to help the bank to look beyond what is obvious and ensure such areas can be handled by the investments they would be making, though they were able to understand the point, they went ahead with another solution in the market basis the user friendliness that was offered by the other solution.

[THE IMAGE THAT YOU SEE BELOW IS NOT JUST A NICE LOOKING CASTLE]

I love Simplicity and Usability of enterprise applications, an element that is rather difficult to build as the fabric of an enterprise has multiple characteristics and personas to it. Having been in the industry for sometime, I know there are solutions in the market that are “Ergonomically Good“, but it is not to be understood as a “Highly Usable Solution“. Organization that get carried away by a slick looking interface alone would lead to severe disappointment on enterprise large investments over a period of time, as the unsophisticated state of the user is bound to change and when they turn sophisticated, they would real things. Moral is, Do not let cushion and size of the seats alone determine your decision to purchase a sedan, even if you are first time buyer.

Let me assist you asking some imporant questions to your vendor, particular in Marketing Management arena. Getting a list of queries executed via a user-friendly campaign management tool is no big-deal, what the campaign managment tool does is as good using a tool to generate an HTML document (I am sure all of you know Word itself can be used for such requirements). Ok! Here is the Question. in a day of a campaign manager, he constantly figure customers who satisify all the criteria for multiple offerers in a same marketing campaign, and obviously you would not want to contact him with multiple offers and want a scientifical way to move him to the most-meaningful offer? How does the campaign management tool that you are evaluating would handle such a requirement? First, the Customer receiving multiple offers is bound to get Confused. Importantly, the question becomes very important, if you have or planning to have Communication Governance Policies in your Marketing Organization. Trust me, this is one of the basic things you would be looking a few months down-the-line of real usage of campaign management solutions.

Please be aware, the question I had tabled above is just a teaser. There are a whole lot of important questions that needs to be answered for you to make an informed decision to procure a simple solution like Campaign Management Application.

I know personally many organizations have got carried away by Vendor Advocated Simplicity And Usability without diving into the hood. Microsoft Excel is one of the best applications I have ever seen, however, if Microsoft Corp., decides (which I am sure they will not) to position it as an enterprise analytical tool, the buyers should not get allured by a such statement. I know a host of analytical applications in the market that are just as good as Microsoft Excel or a rung above, but positioned as Enterprise Analytical Customer Management Solutions, which will be found to be untrue probably a year down the line of procuring the license.

Though my theoritical knowledge would permit me to write in general for enterprise application, its rather wise for me to stay confined within my area of interest – While evaluating Analytical blended Customer Management Solution, please do remember the short-listed solutions should considers various aspects of your enterprise such as

• Data Management and Manipulation Capabilies
• Storage
• Analytical Capabilities
• Operational Capabilities
• Scalability
• Inteoperability
• Intergration aspects (Do not forget SOA)
• Norm Compliance such as SOX, Auditing et al
• Openess of the solution for future but unknown needs
• Importantly knowledgeable Consultants who know the Solution Architecture well in your local geography

Get your guards up NOT TO believe claims from new kids in town, such as Common But Optimized Approach To Query Multiple Databases With Ease. Believing such things are as good as believing any watch as Rolex just becuase the seller claims so. Please be aware, claims like above has fineprints that would run into pages.

Let me give you an example, and try to help you see between the lines of such claims, EDWs usually follows highly NORMALIZED approach in storing data, for example customer demographics information (which is very crucial for marketing programmes) will be stored in multiple tables such as individual tables for Name, Telephone Numbers, Mobile Number, Postal Address, E-Mail Address so on an so forth. All these tables are connected by a common primary key, fetching the data from such an environment frequently is considered to be usually slow compared to a DENORMALIZED environment. However, these elements are key for you run effective marketing programmes, which is a high-frequent, day-to-day activity.

Being aware Time to Market is going to determine what and how soon you would like to strengthen relationship with your customers towards being able to increase the value accrued to and by the customer, you would most likely would not want to wait for a day-long query response time, would you? Assuming your answer is NO, can I request you to kindly let me know how such a false-claim on the data management in the paragraph before last is something one can find alluring?

Make No Mistake! Enterprise applications are not Desktop tools where F1 and F7 come handy. Do not let a greedy vendor leverage your “temporary ignorance” and get the sale done by just saying how easy it is to move mount fuji.

Your Comments?

A couple of days ago, I realized new password for my net banking account is invalid hence had to walk down to the branch to deposit some funds to my friend’s and sister’s account. Both my sister and a friend hold an account in the same bank as mine but in different cities.

Banking in the counter is a terror for me, I rather trust some algorithms written to handle a set of processes than a few idiots who sit behind the “teller” counter. The sad part of today’s banking (not all the banks, but a copule of them) is despite of all technology advancements and innovations, many officers at the counter have just refused to grow (change) and stuck up with their old-timed fashion of doing business.

I walked to the ATM, withdrawn the monies (fairly a large sum, close to what my maximum withdrawal limit per day) and walked into the counter, filled up all the stupid forms to hear that cash deposit to other account is not possible! And, the dyslexic banker had no reason to give but blaming bank’s policies.

I was a bit agitated by the counter man’s response, but without losing cool asked him to provide me with reasons as to why he cannot accept cash deposit and if it is a mandate by the central bank – No answer, felt like giving him a tight-slap on his dirty stubble cheek or punch his droopy eyes.

I am ready to accept the policy, even it is Bank specific. The point is, I deserve an acceptable answer and he was testing my patience. Lost my cool, gave him piece of my mind which surely would have embarrassed him during the peak business hour. He had requested me to deposit the fund back into my account and asked me to give two cheques to my sister’s and friend’s account and promised to transfer the funds immediately.

So, the logical possibility behind the policy is to keep track of who is depositing to which account. And, in case of any issues in the future, the Bank should be able to track-back and catch hold of the person liable for any crisis – To be honest, I like it. This, is my commonsensical inference and I could very well be right, having seen the drama. Question is, why the idiot who is hired to serve me not told/informed about this.

The bank I have been referring to is one of the largest Banks in India, an institution that supposedly understands everyone’s the world! Holy Cow! What a crap! Their own house is not in order and they are able to understand other’s world.

The sad part is, this institution had invested considerable amount of sum (which is being funded by your and my account) in introducing various technology advancements and innovations. But, if you continue to have duds on board, what is point is going for any technology advancement?

My dear bank, it is very important to remember any investments on technology or innovation will go down the drain if people behind are a bunch of morons. You have two choices to make – Either pull up the socks and service your customers well thus retain them. Or, don’t waste your money and just be an equivalent of a government run institution.