A Study on Social Collaboration and their Relevance to CRM Solutions

Project Report(A Report Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Post Graduate

Diploma in Business Management in University of Hyderabad)

Submitted by

Mr. Garnepudi Madhu KrishnaEnrollment No: 24BM00780-11 PGDBM: 2011-12 (Feb 2012)

CERTIFICATE OF THE GUIDE

This is to certify that the Project Work titled “A study on social collaboration and their relevance to CRM solutions” is a bonafide work of Mr. Garnepudi Madhu Krishna, Enroll No. 24BM00780-11 carried out in Qontext Inc, (a business unit of Pramati Technologies Pvt Ltd) Hyderabad in partial fulfillment for the award of Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management (PGDBM) in University of Hyderabad under my guidance. This project work is original and not submitted earlier for the award of any degree or diploma or associate ship of any other University/Institution.

Signature of the Guide

Rajiv Shivane VP Engineering

Qontext Inc. Auriga 6th Floor,

Ascendas IT Park, Madhapur

Hyderabad

Place:Date:

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DECLARATION

I, Mr. Garnepudi Madhu Krishna hereby declare that the project work titled “A study on Social Collaboration and their relevance to CRM solutions” is the original work done by me and submitted to the University of Hyderabad in partial fulfillment of requirements for the award of Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management (PGDBM) in Marketing is a record of original work done by me under the supervision of Sri Rajiv Shivane, VP Engineering, Qontext Inc (a Business Unit of Pramati Technologies Pvt Ltd), Hyderabad.

Enroll No. 24BM00780-11Date:

Signature of Student

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Abstract

From Wikipedia, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a widely implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. Even though traditional Spread Sheet software like Microsoft Excel is used for maintaining customers, contacts and account information; now there are sophisticated products in the market that automate multiple use cases like converting leads into customers and managing accounts information, providing us knowledge and tools that help us in sustaining and growing business. Most Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have this CRM component Eg: Microsoft CRM, Oracle Siebel, SAP CRM

With the prevalent usage of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc., customers are now sharing their thoughts, experiences and reviews to wider audience. As this may lead to loosing existing opportunities, extra care has to be taken in reading the customers pulse all the time. As Customers inputs are translated to end products and services, the key element is the communication of these customer requirements at appropriate levels at all levels in the products/services planning to development to delivery. Now the focus is shifting from timely delivery and customer satisfaction to customer involvement in the overall communication channel that connects all stake holders internal and external to the organization. Here evolved Enterprise Social Software (Enterprise 2.0), comprises social software as used in "enterprise" (business/commercial) contexts, addressing great collaborative environment to keep everyone in the same page.

The CRM software systems are now evolving to address this missing need of social collaboration. There are intermediate software systems like Qontext to bridge the gap between existing software systems to construct the collaboration platform. The Enterprise Application Integration platform connects information where as this collaboration platform is over and above it, connecting the people involved.

The scope of this project is limited to studying the typical CRM use cases using popular software: SugarCRM and Salesforce. Then proceed to collaboration use cases using Qontext Social collaboration software.

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Table of Contents

The Motivation: Typical Challenges in CRM World

Importance of CRM Software

Technology Trends

The Social Collaboration

CRM Social Collaboration Use Cases

Recommendations and Conclusion

Appendix A: Qontext Enterprise Collaboration SoftwareAppendix B: Qontext Collaboration inside SugarCRMAppendix C: SalesForce using Chatter

References

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The Motivation: Typical Challenges in CRM world

o Challenge: Can I have single source of marketing and sales information along with internal engagement discussion information any time on demand?Reason: Most of the marketing and sales related discussions within the customer and internal teams flow into EMail and some into phone calls. Tracking Emails and Voice calls is difficult to get the entire information on demand. Traditional CRM software only keeps the structured information not the discussions happened with multiple people involved in the overall engagement. When the engaging marketing employee leaves the company, the problem is worse as all this information is lost and becomes difficult to new marketing staff to take over from where it was left.

o Challenge: Can I collaborate with customers and internal staff effectively on all Sales Orders, Purchase Orders, Issues etc?Reason: The sales order is the result of multiple iterations on end product/service delivery involving hard negotiations. Also the required information to make this decision has been taken from multiple people with in the organization. Can I’ve all this un-structured information has to be tied together for each sales order level and purchase order level.

o Challenge: Internal Project Management needs Customer inputs and is this collaboration possible and transparent?Reason: Most of project management systems are tied to process workflows. Support only structured information and flat files for information exchange. They basically emit state changes as events as emails. They don’t help you to discover interested content nor have rich experience to share among employee networks. A new user joins the project, he has to be added to all required tickets he may work on. How good it would be if there is software that can push all tickets he may work on joining the team?

o Challenge: How to broad cast information to organization wide and department wide or in fact to a specific interested group effortlessly?Reason: Traditionally this is achieved as sending mails either using mailing lists in organization or with contact groups in email client like Microsoft Outlook. Maintaining contact groups by each individual is difficult and need modifications frequently as time passes by. If any new individual joins

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the group, then he has no chance of knowing what happened earlier. How good if everyone in the organization has access to these contact groups and send messages effortlessly and Contact groups keep updating themselves over time

Importance of CRM Software Solution

Many organizations follow the motto “Customer is King”. This is essential for organization success in the market. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software helps in maintaining all the customer related information and helps managing customers servicing as well as sales and marketing processes.

Benefits of CRM system implementation includeo Better Customer Knowledge – maintain all customer information that is

required together for easy processing including contact information, opportunities, leads, sales orders, accounts etc

o Better Marketing efforts – leads and prospects comes at various stages and they are to be converted into customers. Also let targeted customers informed about new products/services by campaigns and surveys.

o Customer Acquisitions and Retentions – attract new customers and close deals quickly through efficient responses; cross selling where possible to existing customers by understanding needs and building loyalty.

o Market Segmentation and Targeting – helps bigger marketing and sales teams to target markets that may be segmented geographically, small medium enterprises, industries (like retail, healthcare, insurance etc)

o Customer analysis – customer data from sales order history and contacts can be mined to arrive at better sales and market projections

o Better Customer Service – Customers are better informed and a platform for them to submit orders and track delivery, raise issues, request support.

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o Cost Reduction – As customers can access latest information, reduces phone and personal contacts expenditure to organization.

CRM software helps maintain all the customer information:o Leads: A Lead is not a customer yet but a person or organization or

company that may be interested in our organization products and/or services. A lead can be generated from internally by our sales team or customer approached directly.

o Prospects: A qualified lead is a prospect where in this lead has been evaluated and found interested in procuring our products/services.

o Customers: The recipient who bought our product/services.

o Opportunities: An opportunity is a potential revenue-generating event. It can be from existing customers or leads or prospects. There can be multiple opportunities from same lead/customer.

o Accounts: An account is an individual or organization that has established relationship with our organization. Includes Customers, Competitors, and Partners.

o Contacts: An individual or influencer associated with an account or lead. Capture phone, email and address information.

o Campaigns: A campaign is an outbound marketing project that has to be planned and managed. It can include email, direct mail, print advertisement etc. Leads, prospects, opportunities and accounts that resulted out of the campaign are linked.

o Contracts: A written agreement between two or more parties

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o Support Cases: A case is a detailed capturing of customer’s problems or feedback or questions.

Some CRM software help you to mine this customer information to produceo Sales Forecastso Reports – aggregate summaries on volumes of leads, opportunities etco Analytics – analyze marketing team performance across different market

segments, geographies, time, and revenue growth.

Typical Use Cases to be addressed through CRM Software

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Technology Trends

The CRM Software applications evolved our time. It is still interesting for us to see from where we started and we are heading to:

1. Typical office software served as Sales and Marketing tools. Spread Sheets were used to manage (and also analyze) all customer information and Word Processors to run campaigns. The problems include customer information sharing across team members and across teams. Eg: Microsoft Office

2. Custom CRM applications built in-house as per the sales and marketing processes. This gave transparency and reliable storage/availability/restricted access across entire organization to sensitive customer information.

3. Then ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems evolved integrating CRM processes into sales order management, inventory management, supply chain management and financial management processes. These gave 360 degree view of how a customer has been served. But these are very complex software that need customization for every deployment and very expensive, suitable to larger organizations only. Eg: SAP, Oracle Siebel

4. The latest are SaaS (Software as a Service) CRM offerings. These offer lower cost of ownership following “pay as you go” model, ideal for small to medium organizations. These offerings continuously evolve and provide integrations. Eg: SalesForce, SugarCRM, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, NetSuite.

Benefits of Software as a Service (SaaS) CRM solution

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5. The latest buzz is Social CRM – CRM software that has features of offering social media services, techniques and technology to enable organizations to engage with their customers. This is also called Social Media Monitoring with technology to watch services like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for relevant mentions of their product and brand and react accordingly. Eg: Radian 6. These may also support customer communities managed by the organization themselves. Eg: Sugar CRM with Qontext; SalesForce with Chatter.

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Evaluating CRM Software solutions in the market

Evaluating and choosing a CRM involves calculation and comparison of o Cost of ownership VS Budget availableo Upgradation and Maintenance costs VS Budget o Functionality VS Features neededo Usability VS Training costso Availability including Mobile access

CRM Market for large enterprises can be excluded as they are present for long time, might have their own CRM software built home grown or would have customized through ERP systems. The major market of CRM software is the small to medium enterprises (SME). Some of the popular software for SME market is evaluated by well known Forrester research group is here.

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The major CRM functionality compared among popular products:

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The Social Collaboration

Social collaboration refers to processes that help multiple people interact, share information to achieve any common goal. Such processes find their 'natural' environment on the internet, where collaboration and social dissemination of information are made easier by current innovations.

Sharing concepts on a digital collaboration environment often facilitates a "brainstorming" process, where new concepts may emerge due to the contributions of individuals, professional or otherwise. A crucial concept behind social collaboration is that 'ideas are everywhere.' Individuals are able to share their ideas, as it is not limited to professionals, but rather the general public who wishes to become involved.

Social collaboration is related to social networking, with the distinction that social collaboration is more group-centric than individual-centric. This is driven through the principles of participation, collectiveness, transparency, independence and persistence. Individuals put forward their ideas/thoughts/problems/opinions independently. Others, who share similar ideas/thoughts, collectively participate in contributing and nurturing them. The entire collaboration is persistent and transparent to the entire community or group.

o Groups also called networks are created for a specific purpose. o Interested members join this group and start contributing.

Contribution

Feedback

Judgement

Change

Purpose

Encourages

BuildsCreates

ReceivesResults

CommunityCollaboration

Cycle

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o Sometimes Organizations perceive interest cultivation exercises in bringing people together.

o This contribution receives feedback in the form of comments and likes.o Over a period of time, collective intelligence builds up and also few

community members are recognized as experts.o Individuals start building their reputation and have more followers, building

relationships. o These networks form virtual teams (away from actual organizational

hierarchy) and informally strive in accomplishing organization goals.

The Social Collaboration is required both in internal and external environments

Internal collaboration happens among employees of all functions including sales, engineering, manufacturing/distribution, human resources etc. External collaboration happens among partners, vendors, customers and prospects. Both collaborations can be used effectively for efficient customer relationship management.

Social Collaboration ToolsThese are typical social collaboration tools that are used by Social Networking sites like Facebook, Twitter for the open world initially. Now the Enterprise Social Collaboration software has all these tools to engage communities for Enterprise needs.

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o User Profiles – People keep their profiles up to date. Serves a employee directory with all the contact information available

o Groups – Collobarate on specific purpose based on individual’s interests building networks (or communities). Individuals can create groups and invite others. Those new members invite few others. This gets into viral and communities start building up in very less time.

o Discussion Forums – Discussion Forums help people discuss over a topic.o Wiki – Helps adding content easily and collective editing.o Blog – Publish content for others to read, like and comment.o Create/Update/ Files with versioning – any kind of documents that are

needed to be shared as part of collaborationo Photos, Videos o Like – People can express their initial observation on the content item as

they like or unlike. Based on the number of likes indicates wide popularity.o Follow – A part from liking, you may wanted to know what else is

happening on the content item say a blog. Now when start following any one who comments on the blog you get notified. Similarly a group can be followed to get notified on whatever happens with in that group. Similarly following an individual lets you notified of what he is sharing with the community

o Tagging – all related documents, discussions, wiki, photos can be tagged with a name. The tag cloud helps to find popular stuff, so that more people can follow them.

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CRM Collaboration Use Cases

Customer Relation Management involves all interaction points with customer that includes Marketing, Sales and Support. In all these Social Collaboration tools can help marketing and sales personnel to engage customers and internal staff effectively. Find below the broad CRM use cases with helpful collaboration tools:

Out of the complete use cases we have, let’s discuss some cases where internal and external collaboration happens at great length.

o Converting Leadso Solving Customer Problems

We shall try look at them from software industry perspective. Let’s assume a fictitious Software firm “Clear Sea Technologies (CST)” is offering software consulting services. Let’s say a lead “ITC is looking for software consulting services” has been generated from one of the partners say, “Red Sky Technologies (RST)”. Now assume “Clear Sea Technologies” uses Social Collaboration platform and is connected internally with all the employees and externally with all partners and existing customers.

Note: Appendices D and E list out these Collaboration cases using Qontext Software.

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Converting Lead “ITC” into Business Customer .

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RST Manager logs on to CST collaboration platform and sends a message to RST Partner Group. (This group members are senior sales/marketing folks from both the RST and CST)

CST Marketing Manager quickly identifies looks for any contacts in ITC. Mails the marketing and sales pitch to ITC. CST Sales VP is following CST Manager

ITC Information Technology (IT) Manager responds to mail asking what CST can offer. CST manager quickly creates ITC Engagement group and invites ITC IT manager to it. He also sends the company brochure documents and presentation targeted to FCMG industry where ITC is in.

ITC IT Manager can quickly start the discussion by posting RFC document. CST Marketing Manager needs to know technical feasibility and hence creates a wiki page and invites solution architect.

Solution architect with few of this team members captures the technical capabilities and higher level effort and time estimates on this wiki page.

CST marketing manager quickly creates a discussion with HR Manager to check for any resource constraints. Prepares RFP document and shared with ITC IT Manager.

ITC IT Manager negotiates terms with CST Manager.

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CST Sales VP following CST Manager gets to know the current deal status and if favorable and makes final decision on closing it.

The process won’t stop here even if the ITC lead goes into cold/lost state. There won’t be loss to information even if the current CST marketing staff changes. Serves as a loop back when CST marketing team try exploring new opportunities in future based on already captured valuable information on ITC requirements and business scope, new product/service offerings can be targeted and intimated.

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Solving “ITC” Reported Issue

ITC IT Manager logs the issue into CST Defect/Issue tracking system. This Defect tracking system is connected to collaboration platform. So CST Manager associated with ITC engagement gets to know that customer is facing problem.

CST Engineering team prepares a questionnaire to understand the issue on the collaboration platform and invites ITC team.

ITC team answers the questionnaire that helps CST team proceed with fixing the problem. In this process multiple Debug and other log files are exchanged.

The CST team looks into relevant tagged items based on the problem symptoms to find a quick solution

CST Marketing Manager is following the ITC customer and the issue. If the issue resolution is expected to take longer than SLA, then he steps in opens discussions with other higher authorities in Sales, HR and Engineering teams to prevent the loss of business.

CST Issue resolving team may get additional resources and would deliver on time. At the end of the day, the ITC team likes the delivery.

The ITC issue related discussion valuable understanding on defect, its nature, test data, workarounds and solutions. All this information is in the form of wiki pages, blogs, discussions, questionnaire will be tagged accordingly and serves as future knowledge base.

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Recommendations and Conclusion

Social Collaboration has become viable to complement not only CRM use cases but also to entire organization processes. Social collaboration won’t happen automatically by employing a social collaboration software, but to be driven as an organization strategy to leverage employees ideas and expertise collectively and pro-actively. Involve outsiders like customers, partners appropriately in the total value creation.

Social Collaboration can also lead to wastage of time if used for private purposes. It may also spread unwanted information quickly among the organization. So organizations should enforce a usage policy on controlling people to avoid enterprise collaboration software for private reasons and also impose restrictions on un-authorized content to be posted. Any such incidents have to be reported to the Information Systems audit committee.

As the benefits of social collaboration are multiple, enterprises are inclined to provide such productive tools to the employees and stakeholders. The familiar usability of social features is attracting many enterprise software application providers to either provide their own version of collaboration or hook into existing enterprise collaboration players like Qontext.

Just like we have enterprise service bus that integrates all information systems inside enterprise, similarly Qontext like social collaboration platform can link all your enterprise information systems to acquire collaboration capabilities in the present form without much investment. This takes the enterprise system a truly integrated by the people, for the people approach.

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Appendix A: Qontext Enterprise Collaboration Software

Qontext portal is the gateway for enterprise collaboration. It has the necessary Social collaboration tools. Find below the Quick Tour snapshot.

Qontext apps are available for all major mobile platforms like iPhone, Android Qontext Platform Tools: Qontext mobile apps

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Appendix B: Qontext Collaboration inside SugarCRM

Qontext Social Collaboration software nicely embeds into SugarCRM software.

Find below the Qontext Portal page that is the gateway to collaborate and view what is happening in your network.

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Your collaboration Home page is part of your CRM. Keep track of all activities across business objects.

Your collaboration Home page is part of your CRM. Keep track of all activities across business objects.

Collaborate contextually at the record level – here all collaboration happening around Opportunity Acme Corp

220_1008 | January 24, 2011

QuickPost provides handy tools for instant collaboration.

QuickPost provides handy tools for instant collaboration.

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Appendix C: SalesForce with Chatter

Chatter tab is the home for collaboration in your community

Collaborate at the record level – here all collaboration happening around Opportunity “opp2”

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Appendix D: Collaboration during Lead Conversion

Clear Sea Technologies (CST), a fictitious IT Software services firm targeting ITC software requirement needs from the lead information obtained through fictitious Red Sea Consulting Technologies (RST), a consulting partner. The following people are assumed to be working in these roles:

o Suresh – Marketing manager in RST o Murthy – VP, Marketing and Sales, CSTo Akhil – Marketing Manager, CSTo Rajesh – ITC IT Manager.

CST is assumed to be using Qontext collaboration software. “RST Partner Group” has been set up and invited marketing folks in RST. Now that RST team can collaborate with CST team. It also assumed that RST folks were doing market study on FMCG industry and were closely monitoring ITC. As part of their research in improving ITC business, they found ITC logistics need a better software. CST is their partner that can address their current requirements. RST wanted CST to explore this opportunity.

The possible sequence of collaboration that can happen during this lead conversion is captured with using Qontext Software

1) RST marketing manager, Suresh informs through their marketing CST about opportunities in ITC.

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2) RST marketing manager, Suresh informs through their marketing CST about opportunities in ITC.

References

1. The Social Organization (How to use social media to tap the collective genius our your customers and employees) – Anthony J Bradley, Mark P. Mc Donald

2. Sales Force CRM software resources: www.salesforce.com

3. Sugar CRM software resources: www.sugarcrm.com

4. Qontext Collaboration: www.qontext.com

5. NetSuite ERP: www.netsuite.com

6. Wikipedia

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7. http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/what-is-social-crm/

8.

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