Whitepaper CRM in ERP or specialised Customer Engagement Software?

HSO.COM

CRM in ERP or specialised

Customer Engagement Software? From Operational Excellence to Customer Intimacy

Excelling in Customer Intimacy

For a long time, it was possible to stand out through Operational Excellence. All it took to satisfy the customer was to deliver orders quickly, offer good-quality products and institute a reliable returns policy. The world has changed significantly. Streamlining your processes will no longer make you stand out. Actually, that’s the very least the customer expects of you. It’s no longer about meeting customer expectations, it’s about exceeding them.

Without excelling in customer intimacy, you will trail behind your competitors. What does this transition entail? How do you take the first steps in real terms? In this white paper you will learn about the latest developments, and you’ll find the tools you need to become the number one company that customers choose in your sector.You need to know your customers inside out. A range of technologies can help you with this. For instance, there’s social selling, which combines data from your traditional channels with social insights from social channels such as LinkedIn. While we’re talking about data: data analysis has an enormous potential for analysing and predicting customer behaviour.

Bottom line: there are opportunities aplenty. But how do you get started? That’s what you’ll read in this white paper.

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Excelling in the new world of Customer Intimacy 2

New developments make a difference 4

The impact of IT on your customer intimacy strategy 6

ERP versus Customer Engagement Software (CRM) 8

The user has his say: “We can help our customers more proactively” 10

Good integration is crucial for a 360-degree customer picture 12

How do you make the right choice? 15

Being relevant at the right moment 16

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New developments make a difference

Marketing automationYour first touchpoints with potential customers are frequent during the early sales process. CRM marketing automation now makes it possible to communicate easily during the early sales phase and decision making process. Automated nurture campaigns set up to run after the initial contact moment help you serve your customers and prospects more efficiently with limited effort.

Data analyticsYou collect growing volumes of data: customer data, product data, order data. The challenge is to translate this data into tangible insights and recommendations. Are customers more often pleased by char-acteristics? How closely are returns statistics related to customer satisfaction? By answering questions like these, based on data, you can make recommendations proactively, adjust your product or service, or get in touch with your customers. In doing so, you are taking that extra step in comparison to your competitors. Your field service oper-ation can also offer automatic recommendations for cross-selling and up-selling, based upon data analytics.

Social selling A steadily-growing share of the buying process now occurs online, making it invisible to your sales team. Social sell-ing already helps you to map out your prospects right back at this stage. With social media you can already reach your prospects in this pre-selection phase, by expanding your social network and sharing the right information at the right time. You can anticipate your target group’s interests and needs meticu-lously based on insights into them. This way you provoke your prospects’ curios-ity, planting online seeds in their minds. Then when you eventually do approach a prospect for an appointment, it no longer feels like ‘cold calling’.

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ChatbotsData provides enormous insights into the requirements of your (potential) customers. A growing trend is to prime chatbots with this data. The chatbots can help you to serve your contacts instantly. With smart algorithms and artificial intelligence, they learn what the best answers will be to frequently-asked questions. No longer is your customer dependent on the availability of your staff.

MobilityBeing truly mobile from home, office or whilst on the road is also a vital factor with customer intimacy. so much communication is being carried out on smartphones today. However, it’s also important to have continuous access to data and relevant documents, so that your teams can service your customers quickly and efficiently.

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Absolutely don’t forget your existing customers either. They have chosen you, and you want to reward this with a good follow-up strategy.

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Where should you begin if you want to take steps towards customer intimacy? “Many companies I visit have an ERP system for their operational processes. Multichannel innovations have been imple-mented and a huge amount of data is being collected. But what do you then do? The customer expects all the information on agreements and deliveries to be directly accessible, and that someone will always be ready to answer questions. That’s when you feel the limitations of your ERP system as an organisation. By introducing a CRM system alongside your ERP you gain far more options for serving your customers well. Both in terms of sales and marketing, and customer service.”

Ok, so CRM is the starting point?“It’s not as black-and-white as that. First

as an organisation you have to consider whether you do want to take that extra step, and if you are overlooking any opti-ons. Organisations with huge volumes or a focus on one or a few products often have a generic customer group. In that case you can sometimes get by absolutely fine with a properly-configured ERP system. But if your customer population is diverse, or you are dependent on just a few large custo-mers per year, a CRM system will give you just that extra boost you need. I do have to caution here however: I wouldn’t recom-mend an extra, isolated standalone service to anyone. That’s when you again have the problem that data from one system doesn’t match that from the other. But a CRM which is fully integrated with the ERP, straight out of the box, will certainly help you achieve customer intimacy.”

So what is the actual added value in practice? “On one hand it’s in the period prior to your customer seeking contact with you. By that stage the customer journey has already largely been covered. He has spent some time on your website, has called around, has scoured some of the comparison sites and so on. Based on a smart CRM system you can already help your potential custo-mers in this phase. For example, with nur-ture programmes where they automatically receive relevant information. Or through insight into the platforms they visit, so that you can seek out low-threshold contact. We also call this social selling. In this way you’re involved in the process a step earlier, and you have a much better idea of what the customer is seeking. But you absolutely shouldn’t forget your existing customers either. They have chosen you, and you want to reward this with a good follow-up. In CRM you can easily log any appointments which have been made, and you can plan your follow-up actions.

The impact of IT on the customer intimacy strategyConcepts are all well and good but putting them into practice is often easier said than done. On behalf of HSO, Arjan van Beek advises organisations daily on IT’s opportunities and possibilities for improving customer intimacy. We chatted to him to ask his advice on the practical implementation of a customer intimacy strategy.

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ERP versus Customer Engagement Software (CRM): the differences at a glance

You get your operational affairs in order through your ERP software. With Enterprise Resource Planning you get a handle on your financial and logistics processes. You know what’s happening: from ordering right through to invoicing.

Important KPI’s include delivery reliability, the number of returns, complaints, turnover or profit margins. Most ERP systems have the basic functionalities when it comes to sales and marketing. But the question is whether this is enough if you want to take steps towards improving the total customer experience. A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system may be able to help you to achieve a whole lot more. To the right you will find a convenient table showing the most significant differences between ERP and CRM in supporting supporting the customer journey*.

ERP CRM

Quote to cash -

Marketing lists

Case management

Outlook integration -

E-mail editor -

Integration with the website -

Marketing Automation (poss. with add-in)

-

Social Selling -

Workflows

Available mobile -

Available offline -

* Comparison is based on Microsoft technology

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What does CRM do for your staff?

Sales• Higher productivity • More independence• Opportunities for social selling

Marketing • Measurable results • Financial control• Automation

Customer service• Increased customer loyalty• Omnichannel engagement• Easy document management

Which way leads   to more business     and loyal customers?

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With Microsoft Dynamics CRM we can now see immediately which contacts are active and which are not. It’s now far easier to see the blank spots, and we get a genuine picture of the territories

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Complex stakeholder and project management “In our projects, as we manage our sales procedure and tenders, we deal with a huge range of different parties, which we have to process at increasingly different times,” explains Robert Dielemans, Manager Business Operations with Itho Daalderop. “We want to have a picture of this entire process, with insights into the contact moments, discussion transcripts, reports and planning from all our partners and contacts so that we can take focused action to influence the process.” Leo van den Hil, Manager Information and Communications Technology with Itho Daalderop: “We used our Dynamics AX ERP system more or less as a CRM system, but realised that it just wasn’t working for our sales and marketing team here. Based on criteria like user-friendliness,

integrations and flexibility, we ultimately decided to choose Dynamics CRM alongside our existing ERP system.”

Identifying the ‘blank spots’ Robert Dielemans: “Our Account Managers operate in territories, sometimes with up to a thousand contacts. With Microsoft Dynamics CRM we can now see directly which con-tacts are active and which are not. It’s now much easier to pick out the blank spots, and we now get a real picture of the territories. The system is undoubtedly user-friendly. Classification, opportunity management, quotations, interactions and agreements in Outlook, following-up on campaigns – we can manage everything easily and get an insight into it all. It certainly has led to us delivering a much-improved proactive service to cus-tomers and potential customers alike.

Itho Daalderop says:“We can help our customers more proactively”Itho Daalderop is a leading manufacturer and supplier of energy-efficient solutions for heating, ventilation and control technology. To capitalise fully on the market, they wanted access to a complete picture of all construction projects at any given moment. They chose Microsoft Dynamics CRM to raise its relationships and project management to a higher plain.

Motivation• Insufficient control over relation-

ships and projects • ERP system insufficient and

non-compliant for sales and marketing

Solution• Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Benefits• A complete picture of projects with

all the contacts concerned • Control over sales processes and

projects • Better contact and stakeholder

management • Clear guiding information

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Good integration is crucial for a 360-degree customer picture

Cloud technology vs on-premises: Many ERP systems don’t yet run in the cloud, while CRM solutions often do. How will you deal with linking the two systems? A hybrid form is often a possibility.

Direct integration vs Enterprise Service Bus: Direct ‘point-to-point’ integrations are a familiar way of integrating, where one solution is connected directly to another. For organisations with a com-plex IT landscape, an Enterprise Service Bus (a generic communications layer to which all IT applications are connected) is often a better solution.

Simple vs complex integration: By default, application suppliers generally offer a simple integration, where custo-mers and contact individuals are syn-chronised. However, for a real 360-degree customer picture, it’s often desirable to integrate order history, outstanding invoi-ces and complaints.

1-way integration vs 2-way integration: It’s generally sufficient that data created in the ERP system is copied to the CRM system. We refer to this as 1-way integration, because data is exchanged in one direction. In some cases a 2-way

When choosing specialised Customer Engagement software, there are several technical issues you should consider:

Many organisations with a customer intimacy strategy deliberately opt for specialised CRM software. When you decide on different applications, integration is a vital theme. After all, nothing is quite as irritating as having to duplicate data entry, while as a customer-oriented organisation you want to be able to serve your customers personally. A 360-degree picture, compiled across all your systems, is crucial for this.

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Contactaddressesand details

Contactsand accounts Call center

logs

Unstructureddocuments

Email text andsentiment

Social mediasentiment

Orderhistory

Supporthistory

Relationships

integration is desirable, where data is exchanged in two directions and the systems are kept constantly ‘in-synch’.

Standard connector vs tailor-made: Use standard connectors as far as possible, and integration platforms like Scribe. This lets you ‘configure’ the integration. These suppliers also ensure compatibi-lity with new versions. With tailor-made integrations, the supplier must modify the connector again with every upgrade of your environment.

Experienced integration partner: Finally, choose an implementation partner who has experience with the integration between both systems, and ask to see references.

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Out-of-the-box integrations from the supplier

Microsoft offers standard connectors to interconnect the various applications. On one hand that makes it easy to integrate your Microsoft ERP and CRM applications and facilitate data exchange, but it also offers benefits when it comes to other Microsoft applications. It makes it possible to include LinkedIn and Office 365 applications in your CRM as well. There is also an option to integrate Power BI as a data analysis application in your CRM.

Additional integrations with AX and SAP

Alongside the standard Microsoft integration options, HSO also has years of experience in integrations with alternative ERP suppliers. In addition to Dynamics AX, HSO also has a complete integration available for SAP users, for instance. This involves not just customer details, but also statistical details from your ERP. These special connectors guarantee the exchange of data, so that you won’t face any unex-pected surprises in your day-to-day use.

TIP : have a look at Scribe Software. HSO is a certified Scribe partner. Scribe offers not just integrations between Microsoft solutions, but also offers connectors for SAP, Oracle, Hubspot and Marketo.

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How do you make the right choice?

Would you like to give your customers an excellent experience??

Do you already have an ERP system?

Do you have a mixed customer target group?

Do you find it difficult to gain and record insights into your customers

and prospects?

You may be able to get by with your current systems. We will be happy to

advise you on optimum use.

Perhaps a CRM system will have added value for you. We will be happy

to advise you on the possibilities.

Enter into dialogue with your departments with customer contact.

NO

YES

YES

YES

NO

YES

NO

NO

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Being relevant at the right moment

When you want to get started on the transition to customer intimacy, ICT can play a facilitating role. Organisations often use an ERP system for operational processes. Alongside your ERP system, a CRM system can help with your focus on customer intimacy. The benefits are mainly apparent in improved customer insights, simplified workflows and unequivocal customer communication.

In opting for a CRM alongside your ERP, it’s important that you also consider how you are going to combine these solutions. Because nobody wants to have to perform duplicate data entry. There are several factors which play a role in integrating the two systems, like the type of installation, 1-way or 2-way

integrations, and whether you decide on standard connectors or tailor-made work.

Learn how Microsoft Dynamics CRM helps you focus on the right priorities, win faster and harness the power of your entire organisation.

Get in touch with HSO to discover the benefits that Microsoft Dynamics CRM will deliver to your company.

Contact us:

info-uk@hso.comt: +44 (0) 20 3128 7767

One thing is clear: you can no longer stand out purely through operational excellence. It’s vitally important that you know your customers inside out to be able to make the difference. Several trends play a significant role in your customer intimacy strategy, helping you to be relevant at exactly the right moment. Among these are social selling, data analytics, marketing automation and chatbots.

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www.hso.com

Who is HSO? HSO is a Microsoft Gold Partner with over 25 years of experience in implementing ERP solutions. We’ve been named a member of the Inner Circle for Microsoft Dynamics partners for eleven consecutive years.

About Microsoft Dynamics 365 Microsoft Dynamics 365 makes it easy to operate across multiple locations and countries by standardising processes, providing visibility across the organisation, and helping to simplify compliance. HSO has the specialist expertise to deliver industry-focused Microsoft Dynamics 365 implementations for customers in retail, distribution, and manufacturing. Learn more at www.hso.com

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