2. Zero2Ten White Paper
Executive Summary
This white paper aims to support the justification a business
may need when selecting a CRM solution (in the cloud or
on premise). When selecting a CRM solution, it is right for a
business to talk about return on investment (ROI) as it should
be about marketing, sales and service productivity, pipeline
creation and straight to revenue. In short, a CEO should not
pose the question about how much money CRM could save
but how much more money could be earned in relatively short
timescales.
So no surprise that over the past few years, including 2015,
CRM remains high on the C-Level agenda, when reported by
leading analyst groups, such as Gartner. In fact, not so long ago
a Forrester research paper stated that, on average, Microsoft
Dynamics CRM would deliver an ROI of 243%1
. A figure that
was substantiated at the 2014 Microsoft Convergence Europe,
where the audience added a further 1 percent!
For a CRM solution to deliver ROI, an organization needs to
consider the factors that reduce costs operationally against
those with the positive impact on increased pipeline and an
improvement in the sales cycle for existing business and new
customer acquisition. Consequently, ROI will be derived from
a combination of productivity gains, reduced costs, customer
retention and increased revenues from the primary customer-
facing departments of sales, marketing and service.
The basic tenet of a CRM solution is that visibility of prospective
and existing customer status will drive more meaningful
engagements to increase productivity of all departments and
sales revenue and deliver ROI.
For more information please contact us on:
zero2ten.comUS: (866) 420-7624 option 2
UK: (0203) 608 1445
Scope Your Intentions
Before you deploy a solution, park any ROI estimates you have.
Ignore that 243 percent or 244 percent.
You need to define the metrics to measure and validate your
calculations. For every organization this will be different. If you
have a commodity B2B product, then marketing and sales will
be working with high volume and in shorter selling cycles. If
your product is a high-value strategic acquisition for businesses,
then the marketing target will be highly defined and the sales
process more staged. Immediately, any ROI calculation needs
to be adjusted to reflect the average sales cycle and set to your
timeframe for an ROI.
Alternatively, plot your maturity as a company based upon how
integrated sales, marketing and service processes are and set
your ROI objectives against known operational targets. Not
everything will be broken. An established company may place
more stock on increasing customer retention, as maintenance,
services and cross-sell underpin a profitable P&L, while start-
ups may need to focus on building pipeline in order to secure a
viable forecast fast.
1. Based on an organisation of 2000 employees with an initial deployment of 50
users would see a 3-year, risk-adjusted Return on Investment of an incredible
243% over a payback period of less than 5 months.
3. Zero2Ten White Paper
So think about why these five areas may come into play for your
organization and how customer visibility and transparency of
relationship status within CRM will provide ROI advantage:
Pipeline Generation – No matter what type of business you
are, there will sometimes be quarters or trading periods when
the CEO will ask “why did we miss our number?” and the answer
will invariably start with poor pipeline. Pipeline generation has
to be a shared responsibility and a CRM solution will allow
marketing to manage campaigns, leads and events, while
business development teams can receive and qualify leads for
sales to convert to opportunity. This unified process will convey
the collective ownership to the business so pipeline creation
becomes a consistent and predictable contingency.
Productivity Gains – Visibility saves time throughout the
entire customer lifecycle. As a prospect, the automated call lists
for lead development teams provide a priority order for lead
qualification through to status and engagement scheduling that
ensures new business opportunities get focus and customers
stay ‘on-maintenance’ and retained.
The visibility provided by CRM allows all departments to
better schedule activities based upon status to ensure all
engagements are objective driven.
Heightened Customer Retention – Meaningful and timely
engagements from sales and service deliver so much more
value to customers. No customers enjoy ‘coffee and biscuit’
meetings but relish meetings with an agenda that aids
their cause. CRM allows customer-facing teams to follow an
engagement model that predicts behavior yet increases loyalty.
Understanding a buyer’s propensities and satisfaction status
brings efficiency to sales and service processes that will only
increase customer loyalty to your business.
Increased Sales Revenue – The sum of all of the above and
for management it will become the control of the sales forecast.
Again, CRM introduces greater predictability to your business
and no more so than in the visibility of the sales forecast,
which will allow management to be pre-armed and pre-warned
as to the peaks and troughs that every business encounters
and the benefit of pipeline transparency provides actionable
contingency for your business.
For more information please contact us on:
zero2ten.comUS: (866) 420-7624 option 2
UK: (0203) 608 1445
Reduced Administration Costs2
– Configured processes
and automated data collection will generate higher volumes
of meaningful decision support information. CRM, today, is
increasingly acquired in the cloud, as SaaS and sometimes PaaS
to remove many system administration duties and costs from
maintenance and upgrades.
“We’re using 50% less administrative
support staff than previously and believe
that will increase to 65% as our business
continues to scale and grow. That’s down
to the efficiencies gained in workflow
processes through development of the CRM
platform. It’s a major cost saving for us.”
Steve Cassell, President and CEO of Command Investigations
Once the CRM solution is in place, its automation tested (and
re-configured as necessary) then the customer can move to
an RFM3
model and commence measuring customer value.
RFM will allow organisations to move to a predictive model
of retention and recurring revenue as CRM will allow those
in sales and marketing to assess last transactions (Recency),
the Frequency they purchase with the Monetary value the
purchases are made.
Such a predictive model will also help in understanding
purchasing trends and how and when to engage with
customers. In an industry sector such as manufacturing, this
information, when shared with R&D, for example, will start
to shape new product introduction and timely end-of-life
strategies.
2. Companies may further reduce IT administration costs by choosing to deploy
their CRM solution in the cloud. This will certainly be true of hardware and
software costs but professional and implementation services may still apply.
3. Some organisations also overlay (EFM – Enterprise Feedback Management) to
CRM to provide a Business Intelligence and analytics layer.
4. Zero2Ten White Paper
Stop! Start Again!
Okay, so you have your basis for a solid business justification
working across the needs of the holy trinity of sales, marketing
and customer service. But stop and think again.
What remit have IT got to consumerize IT, increase the use of
mobile apps and cloud services and extend the reach of key
systems for staff?
It’s difficult to attach ROI to such initiatives but your choice of
CRM can enhance the end-user experience of this critical IT
system. Most solutions are available in the cloud or SaaS but
not always with a user interface that is instantly recognizable
and with familiar attachment to commonly used tools, such as
Outlook and Sharepoint. Then look for HTML5 compatibility,
as this will deliver a responsive mobile app that will heighten
productivity of any team anywhere and at any time.
Good end-user experience of IT is seen as a major contributor
to staff retention therefore reducing the costs associated with
new employees.
For more information please contact us on:
zero2ten.comUS: (866) 420-7624 option 2
UK: (0203) 608 1445
Let’s Get Busy
Before an organization enjoys the benefits of the RFM model
that CRM will deliver, the immediate impact will be the day-to-
day productivity gains experienced across marketing, sales and
service.
CRM is a consolidation of relevant prospect and customer
information, and solutions are delivered today to provide
visibility of status, opportunity (pipeline) and revenues.
Customer-facing departments and management will quickly
move to a proactive engagement-driven strategy.
Let’s take marketing, for example. CRM will allow a clear view
on lead quality and its contribution to pipeline and customer
initiatives. The transparency marketing will have enables them
to fine-tune their output and become far more concentrated on
customer outcomes. It will:
1. Ensure campaigns are structured to address lead
requirements for pipeline
2. Ensure campaign themes are tested and are relevant to the
target audience
3. Generate leads qualified for budget, authority, need and
timescales, rather than masses of unwanted contact data
4. Deliver pipeline generation support activities and contribute
to opportunity conversion
5. Provide a lead-flow calibrated to new business and customer
retention
5. Zero2Ten White Paper
For more information please contact us on:
zero2ten.comUS: (866) 420-7624 option 2
UK: (0203) 608 1445
In sales, the modelling of RFM data will allow for increased new
business acquisition and existing account penetration, as CRM
provides the productivity tools required to build out a logical
engagement plan that is non-intrusive, qualified and predictive.
The final productivity advantage to anyone in a customer-facing
role is ensuring those in customer service view status and act
in a timely supportive manner. Never underestimate service,
as their inclusion within CRM will flag at-risk customers, as well
highlight customers that can be referenced for, and in support
of, further new business acquisition.
Automating the processes that connect sales, marketing and
service will streamline many action points, especially how sales
are alerted to real changes in customer status by service.
In short, your CRM solution should allow you to discover new
customers, sell more to existing customers and move to a
higher retention rate.
Data Is The Difference
Your ROI calculations could be compromised from day one if
the database is just a mass of raw data. Don’t let data be the
constraint of your CRM project, as it’s already the dependency
for success. If anything, data without any touch-point should
reside in your Marketing Automation (MA) tool.
For example, if there are a lot of one-time web visitors, you
should exclude these from your lead-generation activities and
place them in a marketing nurture stream. These suspect/
prospects will overstate the impact marketing has on lead
generation and ultimately slow pipeline activities. This is also
true in reverse. If you have masses of frequent flyers you need
to suppress their activities to avoid duplicates that pollute
databases.
Scoring should be done quickly and nurturing within MA will
ensure data in your CRM remains clean and a redundancy
process for removal back to the MA system for ageing leads
will further guarantee the only data held in your CRM system is
relevant and actionable.
And good and relevant data saves time and brings efficiencies
to pipeline-generation activities. Lead Demand Representatives
do not waste time chasing low-touch suspects. Complete data
moves prospects quickly through qualification to opportunity
conversion.
Top Tip: Many CRM solutions also provide integration with
profiling tools that enhance prospect data with corporate
information. This is another way to focus on the correct targets
for your business and accelerate pipeline.
6. Zero2Ten White Paper
The CRM Bottom Line
By definition, a CRM solution should generate a high ROI when
associated with a sales organization, as the visibility provided
gives a 360⁰ view of each customer and every prospect.
Such a statement is not always true of every solution class.
Often the efficiencies gained simply lead to a greater demand
for the services being provided and only increase the use of
the solution. However, CRM is often the exception and ROI
calculations will often yield a positive value in a relatively short
time due to its ability to positively consolidate and improve
cross-functional processes and success factors.
For more information please contact us on:
zero2ten.comUS: (866) 420-7624 option 2
UK: (0203) 608 1445
At O’Neal Steel Microsoft Dynamics CRM improved customer
information flow and increased sales activity. This has
resulted in some district offices showing a 6% increase in
annual revenues - that is an increase of $1.38 million!
O’Neal Steel - A real world example...
7. Zero2Ten White Paper
In short, many of the leading solutions can build-out to provide
the basis of a complete business platform. The Dynamics
platform, for example, allows a manufacturing company to
integrate with AX for full ERP support and management has
decision support that places greater accuracy when planning
resources in development and production through to having
the right products to sell to customers at exactly the right time
that they need them, as a result of the predictability provided
by CRM.
A platform, centered on CRM, integrated with other business
systems, puts you in control of what you supply to those in-
demand. Think agile business!
With so many positive variables in play, it’s never a question
of will you achieve ROI from your CRM investment, it’s when.
The surprise for most companies will be in trying to predict
where ROI will be derived first because it will undoubtedly be a
combination of efficiencies in sales, marketing and service. And
once you add-in that 360⁰ view, then one single event in the
business that is captured and profitably leveraged will change
everything.
For more information please contact us on:
zero2ten.comUS: (866) 420-7624 option 2
UK: (0203) 608 1445
About Zero2Ten
Zero2Ten has shown hundreds of companies that CRM
doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive. We are the only
Microsoft Dynamics CRM firm that combines deployment
and a proactive user adoption road map into a single
100% fixed-fee program. Zero2Ten has implemented
more Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online solutions than
any other Microsoft provider worldwide. We continually
fine-tune our process and user-adoption programs to
give you the maximum return on your CRM investment.
This commitment to stay with you throughout your CRM
journey has earned Zero2Ten the highest CRM customer
retention rate in the business.
To find out more about how Zero2Ten can
help you to build your business call us now on:
(866) 420-7624 option 2 (0203) 608 1445
EMEA:US:
Sources
1. Gartner – Top 10 CIO Predictions 2015
2. Forrester - The Total Economic Impact Of Microsoft Dynamics CRM
