Digital has engendered a fundamental shift in the way we behave, think and perform business. One of the most essential transformations for today’s organisations is to adapt to how the customer has changed. This obviously has a massive impact on the salesforce and its methods. The Customer Journey has changed dramatically, becoming far more digitized and needs consistent use of many tools, technologies and methods to effectively reach the target audience.

1. Exec Summary
Intro
Digital has engendered a fundamental shift in the way we behave, think and perform
business. One of the most essential transformations for today’s organisations is to adapt to
how the customer has changed. This obviously has a massive impact on the salesforce and
its methods. The Customer Journey has changed dramatically, becoming far more digitized
and needs consistent use of many tools, technologies and methods to effectively reach the
target audience. Yet, so many -–especially those coming from mass retail B2C organisations
– still rely heavily on traditional CRM (Customer Relationship Management) SFA (Salesforce
Automation) approaches and tooling for support. Effective as these solutions may be – if
correctly used – in this age of customer empowerment, they will no longer suffice on their
own. An integrated customer-enabling approach is the way forward to more cost-effective
selling. This document focuses specifically on the renewed role of CRM in the context of
adapting to the new Journey standards.
The Customer rules
Traditionally companies used the AIDA (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action) approach to
convince the customer to buy into their offering. This was based on a push of information
and products to the potential customers. With today’s digital reality a major shift has
happened where the customer now is
empowered to pursue most of his buying
journey all by himself. About 70% of this
journey today is completely in the hands of the
customer, where companies merely can
influence, rather than manage or control the
customer.
The move from “I have a product” to “I can
fulfil a customer’s need”
Traditional sales is strongly product focused in
line with product development’s objectives
linked to product based P&L kpi’s. Modern
organisation should move into a Customer
centric model, trying to answer customers’
needs, and organise processes based on customer experience optimization and solution
delivery, meanwhile improving Customers Segments’ profits.
To support customer centric based engagement, traditional Siloed Sales supporting tools,
should integrate in the full digital context and channel platforms, allowing to share and
effectively act upon customer interaction information and triggers. Such hybrid eco systems
should stimulate the customer to choose for the company’s solutions and products.

2. Selecting your CRM system
The criteria for selecting CRM systems have been shifted away from purely sales related
Features and Functions to capacities in eco-system integration, KPI Reporting, mobility,
implementation and total cost optimization.
Platform Single view
An Enterprise-wide Single Customer view is a core platform component. The discussion
typically pops-up whether it should be part of and build in your CRM Salesforce tool or be
set-up as a platform integrated functionality. We have seen that in most cases a separate
open component will deliver far more added value (and reusability) than a CRM build-in
360° view.
Out-of-the-box functionality
From experience, the most promising approach is to start implementing CRM based on an
out-of-the-box configuration with a minimum level of reporting customization. This
approach leads to faster implementation, agile delivery, improved user adoption and a
lower overall cost
This document is a summary of the full B&D whitepaper which can be downloaded from
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