The Art of CRM: Proven strategies for modern customer relationship management

Table of Contents

The Art of CRM

Why subscribe?

Packt.com

Contributors

About the author

About the reviewers

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

Download the color images

Conventions used

Get in touch

Reviews

Introduction

My history with CRM

The key ingredients for a successful CRM design

The case of the Sydney Opera House

The case of the Taj Mahal

Summary

1. What is CRM?

The three main pillars of CRM

A bank and a new CEO

Jumping on board with CRM

Introducing case studies

Case study 1 – A mid-size European retailer selling goods

Pain points

Business objectives

Functional requirements

Case study 2 – A mid-size Eastern European retailer selling consumer goods

Pain points

Business objectives

Functional requirements

Case study 3 – A new entrant in the UK retailer sector

Pain points

Business objectives

Functional requirements

Case study 4 – A large financial services company in Africa

Pain points

Business objectives

Functional requirements

Case study 5 – A very large global private bank with international operations

Pain points

Business objectives

Functional requirements

The sales team

What to take away from the five case studies

Summary

2. Getting to Know Your Customer

The 360-degree client view

Case study — VeriPark

Building a single client view in private banking

Client profiling

Interaction history

Summary

3. Conceptualizing the CRM Design from Business Requirements

My experience

Top 10 common business pain points

DX

Digital disrupters

It's about customer experience

A tale of two case studies

Case study 1 – Uber

Case study 2 – The Guardian

Design elements of a CRM solution

Where to start?

Solution Blueprint

Processing catalog

Application architecture

Data architecture

Integration architecture

Architecture Trade-off Analysis Method (ATAM)

Tools for the Solution Blueprint

Summary

4. Architecting Your CRM Solution – Preparing for Today and Tomorrow

The history of the Agile methodology

Backlog

You need a modern CRM platform to start with

A Baltic bank and its business pain point

The activities entity model in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM

The broken ATM

Business strategies and future CRM

TCO/ROI

Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) and Quality Attribute Tree (QAT)

ATAM

Use case – Building an enterprise CRM system

Improvements in the user interface of a CRM solution

Summary

5. Utilizing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Your CRM STRATEGY

Digital business

Evolution of AI

The current state of AI

Teaming up AI with people

Applying AI to your CRM solution

The ethical aspects of AI

An example of AI in CRM processes

The insurance use case

IoT

Summary

6. GDPR and Regulatory Compliance

Why is GDPR here?

What is GDPR?

PID

GDPR obligations

Controller and processor roles

GDPR impacts technology, tools, people, and processes

Data protection officer

GDPR from a business point of view

Assessing and managing the compliance risk

Protect personal data

Streamlining Data Subject Rights processes

Audit logging and GDPR

The key protagonists

Summary

Further reading into GDPR

7. CRM Integration Strategies

Building synergy to orchestrate business processes

Factors relating to data integration

Stakeholders

UI-level integration

Integration techniques

Master data management

Extract-transform-load or data hub?

Simple object access protocol

Integration project phases

Initial data load

System performance

Summary

8. Cloud Versus On-premise Versus Hybrid – The Deployment of a CRM Platform

Factors influencing vendor selection

Cost and complexity

Cloud deployment

On-premise deployment

Cloud and on-premise mixed deployment

Hybrid deployment

So, what are your options?

Summary

9. CRM Differentiators

It's not about the feature list; it's about the ecosystem

The fourth industrial revolution and CRM

AI and smart cloud

To cloud or not to cloud?

Leveraging smart cloud into CRM

Big data

Social selling and advertising

Implementation tools

A sustainable CRM platform

Summary

Other Books You May Enjoy

Leave a review - let other readers know what you think

Index

The Art of CRM

The Art of CRM

Copyright © 2019 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

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Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

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Contributors

About the author

Max Fatouretchi's CRM journey began some 20 years ago as he started his small software business in Vienna, Austria, developing custom CRM applications for clients in Austria. Some 7 years, later he joined Microsoft's international team as a partner technology specialist and industry manager for Microsoft Dynamics 365 products for the next 13 years.

Throughout these 20 years, he has been engaged in many CRM implementations across the globe. The first one was with his own software company in Vienna, where he developed a CRM system for several banking clients in collaboration with HP (Hewlett Packard). At the same time, he fulfilled a role as a mentor and trainer, teaching CRM classes across Europe. After joining Microsoft, he started working with Microsoft teams across Europe the, Middle East, Africa, the Asia, Pacific, China, and Latin America to develop and deliver CRM projects to enterprise customers. As a lead architect and industry manager with Microsoft, he has participated in many CRM implementations with some 100+ multinational companies, mostly in the financial services industry.

I have much to be thankful for in writing this book, such as all my colleagues, clients, and partners who have given me the opportunity to work with them and learn from them in so many exciting projects; this book is my recognition for them all.

I would also like to express my deep gratitude to some of my colleagues, friends, and partners for their voluntary support in reviewing the contents of the book and for providing valuable feedback and input to improve it. My special thanks go to (in alphabetical order):

Erener Ozkan, CEO at VeriPark

Brissaud Philippe, Program Manager - Artificial Intelligence at Microsoft

Fratello Nick, Microsoft Business Applications Solutions Architect

Genov Yuriy, Chief Operation Officer of DSK bank

Jamrik Ferenc, SLA Manager at Emarsys

Khoso Jandost, Group Manager, CRM at Avanade

Slepitsky Andrey, Architect, Business Applications Domain at Microsoft

Venkata-chalam Ganapathy, Senior Program Manager at Microsoft

Verlinden Philip, Architect, Business Applications Domain at Microsoft

Viganò Corrado, Sales Executive - Program Manager Altitudo

Wijns Bert, Architect, Business Applications Domain at Microsoft

Special thanks also go to Veripark for allowing me to leverage some of their intellectual properties in Chapter 2 , Getting to Know Your Customer, and building a comprehensive 360-degree client view. This is one of my favorite solutions with a very rich and easy UI architecture but with a very comprehensive and role-based 360-degree client view.

About the reviewers

Guillermo Barker is an electrical engineer from Universidad de Chile. He is also a CRM consultant and was awarded certifications in Microsoft MCT and MAP last year. Prior to working as support manager at XMS Business Solutions, Guillermo spent almost 30 years in service management with a variety of CRM platforms.

This experience gave him wide knowledge about how to design and configure a Dynamics CRM and how such configurations can impact user adoption. Additionally, he has helped many companies with CRM and its installation, deployment, reporting and configuration.

Guillermo is also a trainer at Golden Training and Comunidad CRM (www.comunidadcrm.com). He is also a frequent contributor to Comunidad CRM on the internet and has reviewed the following books for Packt Publishing:

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Applications (MB2-868) Certification Guide

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Customization Essentials

Building Dynamics CRM 2015 Dashboards

You can read more about Guillermo at http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=32635763&trk=tab_pro. He blogs at http://www.comunidadcrm.com/guillermobarker/.

Steve Ivie is an enterprise solutions architect with experience preparing businesses for the cloud. He has expertise in consulting, management, solutions, the cloud, and business development. His major focus is on business technologies for financial services, life sciences, healthcare, professional services, manufacturing, government, and the sports, and entertainment industries.

He is a partner at BluePrint Business Process Transformation, which is a Microsoft-focused professional services and independent software vendor with employees throughout the United States. As a value-adding partner to their clients, they provide strategic and tactical business solution advice and services in the areas of sales, customer service, marketing, project and field services, operations, talent, human resources, and financial management.

Steve Ivie authored Building Dynamics CRM 2015 Dashboards with Power BI, published by Packt Publishing. This book will provide you with the skills you need to learn how to build and present Dynamics CRM 2015 sales dashboards using Power BI.

Preface

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems have delivered huge value to organizations. This book shares proven and cutting-edge techniques to increase the power of CRM even further.

In The Art of CRM, Max Fatouretchi shares his decades of experience building successful CRM systems that make a real difference to business performance. Through clear processes, actionable advice, and informative case studies, The Art of CRM teaches you how to design successful CRM systems for your clients.

Fatouretchi, the founder of the Academy4CRM institute, draws on his experience of over 20 years and 200 CRM implementations worldwide. Bringing CRM up to date, The Art of CRM shows you how to add AI and machine learning to your CRM, ensure compliance with GDPR, and choose between on-premise, cloud, and hybrid hosting solutions.

If you're looking for an expert guide to real-world CRM implementations, this book is for you.

Who this book is for

This book is targeted at all individuals who are involved in implementing or maintaining a CRM system. It involves storytelling, where the author shares some of the lessons that he has learned throughout his 20 years of CRM work in different capacities. You'll find most of the stories to be from the financial services industry, as this was his primary industry, and most of the implementations to be ones for international firms.

The targeted audience includes both business and technical staff, including chief experience officers, business leaders, project managers, architects, consultants, developers, and end users.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, What is CRM?, explores the roles, views, and responsibilities of project members, since CRM matters to everyone in a company and all staff members need to feel the sense of ownership right from the beginning of the CRM journey, though everyone plays a different role in this journey and has a different view of CRM. I will list briefly the important elements of a CRM system, including the operational CRM, analytical CRM, and collaborative CRM. We will also look at five real-life case studies of CRM implementations to compare how the particular business pain points and company strategies will shape functional priorities for your CRM design.

Chapter 2, Getting to Know Your Customer, helps in understanding the customer by maintaining and managing relevant customer information, which is at the heart of any successful business. Customer knowledge is perhaps the most essential ingredient to a business being successful. Knowing the customer starts with building a sophisticated 360-degree customer view that can capture, process, and present all relevant relationship data in a single role-based 360-degree client view. You will be introduced to a real-life solution of building a comprehensive 360-degree client view from one of the author's partners that he has been working with in many projects and in different countries, which is VeriPark, a very successful CRM company operating globally.

Chapter 3, Conceptualizing the CRM Design from Business Requirements, explores the design elements of a modern CRM solution that are dictated by business requirements, including processes, applications, data, security, integration, and deployment decisions. We will walk through the process of design and will recommend some very simple tools that could help you manage the design process for your new CRM solution.

As CRM provides a good opportunity for your digital transformation, we will explore the five technologies that are the basic ingredients of a digital transformation and essential for a modern CRM solution, including two case studies of successful digital transformation. This chapter will also provide you with a comprehensive overview of the design elements at a high level and set the stage for the next chapter.

Chapter 4, Architecting Your CRM Solution – Preparing for Today and Tomorrow, looks at the work of CRM architects, exploring techniques in architecting a business solution that could solve the business challenges of today and tomorrow. This chapter is not only for architects but also for all technical team members including consultants, project managers, and developers. It could also be relevant to key sponsors in the business departments. We will cover the major elements of solution architecture such as the viewpoints, quality attribute trees, measurement metrics, and architecture trade-off techniques. We will start briefly exploring some of the software engineering techniques—only as much as is relevant to the CRM architecture—including the so-called Agile development methodology, as this methodology is proving to be the most efficient in designing and implementing business solutions in the light of recent technology innovations.

Chapter 5, Utilizing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Your CRM Strategy, explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) could support your CRM processes and enrich traditional business applications to enable higher process automation and better business outcomes. We will bring a few real-life examples of implementations showing how these newer technologies including AI, ML, speech recognition, image recognition, pattern recognition, and cognitive services could be embedded in customer processes to provide self-service and automated customer interactions, and deliver recommendations and personalized customer experiences at an affordable price.

Chapter 6, GDPR and Regulatory Compliance, explores how a CRM platform could be leveraged to support and implement regulatory compliance in general and a real-life General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) implementation with Microsoft Dynamics 365 to illustrate the practical use of the CRM platform.

GDPR is a regulation in European Union law on personal data protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union. All global businesses that are dealing with European Union users and European Union clients are affected by this law. GDPR was adopted by the European Parliament on 27th April, 2016 and has been enforceable throughout the European Union since 25th May, 2018. GDPR regulates the collection, storage, use, and sharing of personal data for all businesses dealing with European Union clients. In this chapter, we will take you through the design proposal for implementing GDPR on your CRM platform.

Chapter 7, CRM Integration Strategies, explores most common data integration factors such as business requirements, related technologies, and stakeholders in CRM integration projects because building a 360-degree client view and enabling end-to-end customer processes often requires integration with various legacy applications and different data sources. Many factors such as security, performance, quality, and portability need to be considered in your integration strategies and in your solution design. We will explore various integration techniques, implementation scenarios, initial data load, and some of the performance considerations for your design. A modern CRM platform should integrate with an ever-growing eco-system in the cloud in order to consume data and leverage other services in the cloud, such as AI, social media platforms, and data lakes, to build a comprehensive customer view or to enable social selling and social advertising. We will also set the stage for the last chapter of the book, Chapter 9, CRM Differentiators, where we will explore the platform capabilities that are essential to integrate with the cloud.

Chapter 8, Cloud Versus On-Premise Versus Hybrid – The Deployment of a CRM Platform, explores factors such as the options and services that are available to you, regulatory compliance, security, portability, how and when you can access your data, who is responsible for keeping your solution safe, and obviously the overall cost of the CRM system, including the money you spend to buy, maintain, and operate, as well as any other ongoing costs (Capex/Opex). These are the factors directly influencing your choice of platform and the hosting of your solution since how you choose to host your CRM application can significantly impact the cost and functionalities of the solution. We will also evaluate the pros and cons of cloud, on-premise, and hybrid deployment.

We will explore CRM deployment options and compare them with each other to provide you with some good tools to help your decision-making processes regarding your CRM deployment.

Chapter 9, CRM Differentiators, shows that the competition among the market leaders is not going to be about a feature list anymore, as the functionalities of the most available tools in the market are continuously improving and are on par with major vendors such as Microsoft and Salesforce.com. The differentiators between the vendors will be more about how the CRM platform is able to leverage the broader technology innovations that are evolving today with the smart cloud, such as big data, AI, ML, and cognitive services. In this last chapter of this book, we will explore how the CRM platforms available in the market today can provide you with some powerful options and services that are usually ignored or neglected during the platform selection process. We will explore some significant capabilities of the CRM platforms that are needed to enable a sustainable solution for the long run.

We will talk about the elements and characteristics that make a successful CRM implementation in today's market environment. We will not compare CRM products explicitly but will explore the eco-system a new CRM platform should provide in order to solve the business challenges of today and tomorrow.

To get the most out of this book

This book covers all the important aspects of a modern CRM implementation with many real-life examples and also provides the tools and a high-level design and implementation guide for building a sustainable CRM solution for your business.

You will discover the most critical elements of a modern CRM implementation, both in theory and in practice.

We will talk about many great new ideas and technologies such as AI and ML, developments in recent years, state-of-the-art techniques, and finally how these technologies could actually be implemented within your CRM for your business.

This book is not deep technically. If you are a technical expert, you will be able to apply these ideas easily to your CRM implementation. It provides you with guidance for design, architecture, platform-selection, and implementation tools. It does not explain the bits and bytes of CRM; it assumes that you are either familiar with the basics of CRM or you can find the basic information easily on the internet.

This book involves storytelling, experience sharing, and knowledge sharing. It also covers the use of technological innovations in CRM solutions.

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