Why Feature Matrices are a waste of time

I am currently competing against a couple of CRM software firms and consultants for a new clients business. This client is in the consulting industry and they are using primarily Outlook, Word, and Excel to manage their client information and reporting. Everything is incredibility manual so they are a perfect candidate for some business process re-engineering and technology automation. This client did take the first step and document their requirements and I received them in a feature matrix.

As I mentioned in my Jan 19th entry – ‘What is the Right CRM for me’ the feature set of a CRM tool is not going to solve business problems. First you must define a problem statement or statements, the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) of solving that problem, and the strategy you’ll use to get all the appropriate stakeholders working with the solution defining (WIIFMs) What’s In It For Me. Sometimes it’s difficult to come to a consensus on these points until you get the key stakeholders in a room and have some discussions to document these. Unfortunately, this type of discussion requires some skill as most users want to discuss features and functions rather than what matters. Because these discussions are difficult – what most companies end up with at the end of the day is a list of features and functionality.

Most CRM tools have very similar features and functions and have some differences from a user interface perspective. With the right business and implementation strategy thought out – there are probably half a dozen systems that will work for any given organization. So when feature matrices are sent out to the vendors – whether it’s CRM, ERP, or whatever software – they are all going to say they can meet all the requirements. In my opinion feature matrices are a wasteful exercise to create and complete. At the end of the day the decision should be made on factors such as flexibility of solution, ability to scale, ease of use, total cost of ownership over time, financial viability of the vendor, and depth of skill sets in the market. I’ll review why I think each of these is important in my next entry.

Mobile CRM - is it for real?

For this week, I thought I’d change it up a bit and talk a bit about my opinions on wireless. CRM is obviously one application for wireless technology. Interestingly, I was discussing wireless applications back in 2001 when the devices were still coming into their own. It really seemed for the last 5 years that there was a lot of talk, but very little action in deployment of wireless applications for sales. Wireless applications have been around for years in areas like transportation (FedEx, UPS) and consumer packaged goods (Frito-Lay, Pepsi). However, the mainstream sales community has really only begun to scratch the surface of what is possible with mobile technology.

I think most folks reading this article would agree that most mobile device usage has been for email, calendar, and contacts only. Most business people carry either a Blackberry, Palm, or Pocket PC enabled device and have a ‘push’ or ‘pull’ set up with their Outlook or other mail client (if there are folks out there still using Lotus and GroupWise)

As referenced in this great interview on Destination CRM (http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=6617&KeyWords=mobile++AND+devices)

The complexity around mobile deployment has a lot to do with all the pieces involved. The handheld and mobile phone market is very fragmented with many devices, networks, operating systems, and applications. Where an organization hasn’t put a corporate plan together – there is always going to be a hodgepodge of technology and vendors to deal with – that is if they even support the end users which aren’t on the plan. If you have a growing sales force or just a lot of customer facing end users which are out of the field – it probably makes sense to start standardizing on a mobility platform. Several of the carriers can offer the device, network, and voice/data plan.

Once you have a handle on the types of devices in the field, there is a lot that can be done from an application standpoint. I recently presented to a new Microsoft CRM client of mine who had standardized on the Samsung Blackjacks and HP Ipaq phones. We showed them the Mobile express client of Microsoft CRM which any device with a wireless browser can access. Their sales team at that moment saw value above and beyond just the device and the capabilities they had experienced so far. Now a sales person in the field can look up a service ticket history before walking into an account. A service technician can check to see if there are large opportunities pending at a ‘hot’ customer to make sure they get extra special care. When corporate data is accessible in the field – the right people, get the right data, in the right format, at the right time.

My client will be using CRM as the hub for mobile access but data will be integrated with CRM which includes inventory availability, open quotes and orders, shipment status, and other information which traditionally required a phone call to operations or accounting to obtain. The sales people will truly become mobile knowledge workers and be differentiated from their competition who has not made the same investments in technology.