Step 4: Employ Technology Smartly

Select information technology and systems that utilize open architecture, thereby making it easy to enhance and enlarge the system over time. Look for software applications that are modularized and can be easily integrated into or interconnected with your existing information databases. Ensure that the technology you select is portable. For example, it uses UNIX, NT, CORBA/COM/DCOM (Java/ActiveX) and other such standards. For firms conducting business between the field and headquarters, or across regions, select software applications that are network compatible and that permit easy Web connection and/or data synchronization between information held on field computers and information held on regional or headquarter computers. To accommodate future changes, be sure the technology you select can easily be customized as well as modified. In other words, let the technology help you to grow.

Although technology is only one step in the overall approach for successfully implementing CRM, it is vital to the functioning of CRM systems. Here is a list of the leading technologies users should be familiar with. The following technologies will continue to drive customer acceptance of CRM in the future:

• Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)— This new software technique is making software easier to program for the technical team and easier to use for CRM end-user. Recently introduced technology used in this category includes CORBA/COM/DCOM which are programmed with development environments such as Java, C++ and ActiveX.

  By using these object-oriented architectures, customer relationship management software vendors provide a framework into which new components can be plugged. As corporate cultures and business processes change, individual objects (applets and servlets) can be updated, rewritten, deleted, or added and quickly distributed and installed throughout the user environment, without having to rewrite the entire application, business logic, user interface, or back-office application.

• Notebook computers— These portable computers are the choice of sales and marketing executives who tend to spend much of their time in the field. Weight restrictions are quickly disappearing as new lightweight battery technology is introduced. From our experience, choose equipment of the lighter side, this tends to keep the mobile workers happier. In choosing the hardware be careful not to compromise on screen size, keyboard feel and ease of interfacing with options such as networks, CD-ROMs, etc.

• Handhelds, Smart Phones, and PDAs— Expect to see an increasing number of pen-based portable computers and PDAs (personal digital assistants) being used in niche CRM areas such as inventory management, route accounting, and additional or alternative sales force automation clients. 3Com and Handspring have been supporting the ISV (independent software vendor) community and this has resulted in several CRM thin-client packages running on the Palm platform. Microsoft has been growing their handheld offerings with new releases of Windows CE and their Pocket PC platform. Several ISVs are exploring the Microsoft platform as the seamless integration with Outlook, Word, and Excel showing lots of promise. Some vendors are introducing integrated Smart Phone platforms using one of the aforementioned handheld operating systems or lightweight browser features such as WAP, WML, J2ME, and other newly introduced wireless technology operating on the TDMA, CDMA, GSM wireless networks. Another wireless technology that we are seeing ISVs embrace is the BlackBerry platform by Research In Motion (RIM). While the beauty of the platform is its simplicity, a few vendors feel that this is what makes the platform so intriguing.

• Voice recognition— Despite the potential benefits of computers based on voice recognition, we are still several years away from the seamless integration of voice and computer. However, in recent years progress has been made in this direction. Over the past year, this market sector has seen business consolidation activities that have brought more strength to the segment. One key player, Dictaphone (the dictation pioneer), offers Naturally Speaking, Voice Express, and Kurzweil Voice Commands. Another leader in the market, IBM, has consistently been maturing its Voice Type product line.

  Once inside an application, such as a word processor or e-mail application, the user's continuous speech will be converted to text, with approximately 97 percent accuracy. The difficulty that speech recognition development companies have with voice command and control is that operating systems developed to date have been designed for the keyboard, the integrated pointing device and the primary interface. In order for voice navigation to be smooth and efficient, a new operating system paradigm will need to be designed. While companies like Microsoft and Apple are both developing these new operating system interfaces, they are still a few years off.

• Modem support— Most portable computers have the option to be configured with an internal modem, thereby permitting users to communicate to and from the field, including sending and receiving faxes as well as e-mail messages, and to connect to networks such as the Internet or virtual private networks.

• Wireless technologies— The new wave of data communication technologies is already available. Cellular and other mobile communications, which permit sales and marketing executives and field service personnel to send and receive data from virtually anywhere, will continue to improve their cost performance and will become, without a doubt, the technology of choice for busy, on-the-move sales and marketing executives.

  2001 to 2004 will bring about many new innovations in the wireless arena. The major problem that we still face is in the area of wireless standards adoptions, especially in the United States. Currently ISVs have too many wireless platforms that they need to support. The next one to two years should help to bring about more wireless technology consolidation.

• Client/server architectures— Client/server architectures permit the two-way transfer of selected new or modified data, thereby ensuring continually up-to-date data, decreased data communications costs, since only changed data is transferred between the clients and the server, and connectivity with existing databases regardless of their location, platform, or data format. This allows a company to maintain its current information technology investments. While several of the vendors still offer client/server architecture, we are in the midst of major rearchitectures. The main problem is that occasionally connected devices like laptop CRM applications that can operate with connectivity still require client/server architecture. Many vendors are trying to get away from this and go 100 percent Web-centric. The problem with this approach is that there are still major geographic areas where it is hard if not impossible to achieve network connectivity to the Internet. It is our opinion that we will see some form of client/server architecture for several years to come.

• “N-tiered” CRM architecture— This is a growth area. This new direction in system architecture accommodates multiple CRM clients—thick (laptops/desktops), thin (browser, WAP, BlackBerry), and bulgy (i.e., Palm, MS Windows CE, Pocket PC). This architecture allows CRM applications and database servers to reside in regional offices with synchronization of subsets of information on a regular or real-time basis. Multiple application servers and database servers can be integrated in order to provide information to the various CRM clients that are relevant for their particular task.

• Graphics, video, and sound support— This equipment, which is available today, will continue to improve because of better compression algorithms, larger storage devices in portable computers, and improved multimedia and streaming technology and improved network bandwidth. Graphics, video, and sound support enhances sales and marketing personnel's ability to easily display their goods and services in the field, e.g., showing color pictures of their products and services on the computer rather than having to carry around an out-of-date paper catalog. Other areas where graphics, video, and sound are increasingly important are CRM user community training (e.g., e-training), product demos and virtual sales meetings (e.g., evoke communications, Centra, WebEx, PlaceWare, etc.).