Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) is a technology that allows computers and telephony systems to communicate with each other. It enables businesses to integrate their telephone systems with computer applications, such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems, helpdesk software, and other business applications.
With CTI, businesses can enhance their telephone systems functionality by adding features such as caller identification, call routing, and screen-pop of customer information. CTI also enables businesses to automate routine tasks such as call logging and tracking, and it allows agents to manage calls more efficiently.
There are several advantages to using CTI, including improved productivity, better customer service, cost savings, and enhanced collaboration. CTI streamlines communication systems, reduces the need for additional devices, and improves the efficiency of communication processes.
However, traditional CTI systems are often expensive and complex to set up because they require specialized hardware and software. This hardware often includes PBX (Private Branch Exchange) systems, gateways, switches, and routers, which are used to manage phone calls and routing within an organization.
In addition to the hardware requirements, traditional CTI systems also require specialized software to manage the integration of computer and phone systems. This software can be complex to configure and maintain, and may require additional training for IT staff.
Fortunately, advances in software-based voice solutions have greatly simplified CTI. One of the key changes on CTI has been the use of software-based voice solutions like Aircall. These VoIP solutions use software applications to manage voice communications, rather than relying on traditional hardware-based systems, with several advantages over traditional phone systems, including cost savings, improved flexibility, and advanced features such as call routing and conferencing.
Traditionally, the cost and complexity of CTI systems could make them prohibitive for many businesses, especially smaller ones with limited budgets and resources. Nowadays software-based voice solutions, such as VoIP and softphones, offer a more flexible and cost-effective alternative, allowing businesses of all sizes to benefit from the advantages of CTI without the high costs and complex hardware requirements.
Softphones have greatly simplified CTI by enabling users to manage phone calls, interactive voice response, click-to-call and queue callback directly from their computer screens, with full sales and support systems integration. Highly flexible and scalable, softphones eliminate the need for specialized hardware and reduce the cost of deploying and managing communication systems. Softphones also provide advanced features that improve the efficiency of communication processes and enhance collaboration.
In conclusion, CTI is a powerful technology that enables computers and telephony systems to work together seamlessly. Software-based voice solutions, including VoIP and softphones, have greatly simplified CTI by providing a flexible, scalable, and cost-effective alternative to traditional hardware-based phone systems. By using software based voice solutions like Aircall, businesses can improve communication, collaboration, and productivity, while also reducing costs.
“It was a pleasure!” These were the words of Torre Fashion Group CEO, during the formal delivery of the multi-channel support solution developed by Sollogica.
Torre S.A. is a reference at European level in men’s ceremonial and formal clothing, with recognized tradition and experience in the sector, standing out for its strong commitment to national design, planning and production. With the goal of improving customer service processes, Torre invited Sollogica to present a proposal in order to satisfy the presented requirements.
With the dedication and commitment that characterizes us, Sollogica’s proposal, based on the Hubspot and Aircall platforms, stood out from the competition, and through the centralization of customer information, process standardization, production of analytical information and support channels improvements, quickly turned into a successful project. In the words of Gonçalo Soares, CEO of Torre SA:
“The partnership established with Sollogica… was a highly positive process at all levels: Technical, Collaborative, and above all in the Implementation component…
At the technical level, we found in Sollogica the partner that provided us with a clearer picture of the path we wanted and needed, making it possible to analyze the several possibilities in an uncompromising way with the final solution. There is a permanent concern of adapting the solution to the customer’s needs, in a uninterested way, something that reinforced the context of trust that was established from the beginning.
I speak of the Collaborative Capacity, for the positive and creative approach to the problems / situations that were successively presented, and which was always able to respond to. Balanced solutions were found for the challenges presented. Creative solutions and always with the economic angle in mind.
Finally, in terms of Implementation, there’s nothing better than saying that the objectives we set ourselves at the start of the project were successfully met and all the project’s Stakeholders, including myself, were satisfied.”
On our part, we can thank all the dedication and commitment Torre team provided throughout the several stages of the project, as this close collaboration was one of the key elements for its success.
We are pleased to announce Sollogica partnership with Aircall, a cloud-based provider of voice solutions with an innovative and competitive offering in the areas of call center and voice platforms.
In an area historically dominated by complex solutions, with dependencies between hardware and suppliers, “un-agile” CTI integrations and high management, implementation and maintenance costs, Aircall provides a practical and innovative offer that removes the complexity of combining suppliers, telephone exchanges and management software, through an easy and complete service at very competitive costs.
Where you need to be
The phone app is located on your computer or mobile phone as needed. Connected to the respective user account, it allows to receive or perform calls anywhere via PC or mobile phone, being the ideal solution for sales and support services working in-office or remotely.
No complex implementations
Removes implementation and integration efforts between operators, hardware infrastructures and business management systems, through a software as a service solution with an intuitive and easy-to-use interface.
Easily connectable
With dozens of prebuilt integrations with the main management systems and custom integration capabilities via API, it connects with your relevant systems in order to effectively manage voice channels in sales, support or other relevant business areas.
Real time information and analytics
Provides real-time monitoring and detailed analytical capabilities, allowing to analyze teams performance or check all the voice traffic performed in a quick and user-friendly interface.
Competitive
With a transparent subscription model, it ensures your business voice solutions at very competitive costs compared with the current market offering.
For Sollogica it’s a pleasure to be an ally in Portugal to such innovative products, that clearly generate added value for our customers. Aircall is a safe choice in the area of voice communications, with an offering that far exceeds expectations compared to the traditional solutions available in this area.
After detailing the foundations of this subject in the article customer relationship management, in this article we will look into customer experience management, and how this evolution translates into a new level of knowledge about the business and it’s customers, in order to translate this knowledge into added value for organizations.
What is customer experience management
The general definition of customer experience management, known by the acronyms CEM ou CXM, is the collection of processes that an organization uses to organize, track and follow all interactions between a customer and the business throughout the customer lifecycle. These collections of processes, in turn, aim to achieve or exceed customer expectations, in order to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
What is the importance of customer experience management
In a competitive global market, where the consumers have an increasing ability to choose between products and services, organizations need to innovate to stand out from the competition. One of the currently most popular ways to stand out, is through the optimization of all contact points between the business and the customer, ensuring an optimal experience from the first contact to its conclusion.
This optimal experience is not only intended to build customer loyalty, but also to transform the customer into an advocate for the product, brand or service, influencing in a positive way people or entities around them.
What steps to implement a CXM strategy
Just like it’s predecessor, CXM is not a technological solution or a category of softwares, but a business strategy that consists on a set of processes, based on qualified and standardized customer data, activated by information technologies, therefore the steps to be taken for a successful implementation involve defining the strategy, aligning it with business processes and subsequently identifying the technologies that will ensure the acquisition and qualification of key information.
Above all, the strategy foundations must be based on the added value intended for the organization’s processes.
Strategic framework
Excellence yes, but excellence in what sense? Easier, faster, better looking, better? The characteristics of an optimal customer experience will vary depending on the customer’s expectations, together with the specifics of each product, service or business area, so the first question to consider is: “given the characteristics of the business, what is the direction that best meets customer expectations and strategy objectives”.
In addition to defining a path, one of the crucial goals of this stage is to avoid a “better in every way” approach, something that, in addition to being utopian, will certainly be fruitless given its overly generic scope.
Customer Journeys
The second step to take involves the mapping of all customer journeys, which means identifying all interaction points between a customer and your business throughout the customer lifecycle.
What are the entry points into your business? What actions are taken from consideration to purchase? And what steps are made after closing the deal?
Every action involving customer interaction must be identified, monitored and optimized, in order to provide an experience that stands out in a positive way, enhancing the loyalty and promotion of your business through your customers and improving the business profitability in return.
This step will allow to identify which business processes are involved in the different customer journeys and where/how they interact with the journeys, which allow to to transition into the technological aspects of the strategy.
Technological framework
With the strategy and mappings ensured, it’s now possible to identify the technological solutions that allow to complement the previous points, in order to monitor and optimize the different stages of the customer journey.
As mentioned before, there’s not a “one size fits all” solution, since the business characteristics in conjunction with customer’s expectations and the chosen strategy will define which solutions are a best fit.
In a general way, the technological approach must cover the following areas, at the core of the customer facing processes:
The promotion of the business, brand and / or products on the defined channels
Content Marketing and digital channels management
Communication automation at the several levels of the business lifecycle
Monitoring and optimization of commercial activities such as events, outbound calling or 1-to-1 meetings
Customer service management
And finally as an aggregation point of all previous bullets, customer data management and KPI generation
Hopefully this article will provide a succinct but detailed look at customer experience management and the main steps for its implementation. As always, If you have any questions or want more information about these subjects, reach us through the available channels.
A popular and efficient strategy throughout the years, customer relationship management is a step towards knowing better your potential or existing customers, through a set of processes and technological solutions, implemented mainly in the areas that directly interact with the customer, such as marketing, sales, and support.
Currently this concept has evolved a new level called Customer Experience Management, which deepens the originally defined concepts to obtain an even more detailed level of knowledge of your customer and business, through the creation of “Customer Journeys” for example. However, to achieve this level of detail, it’s first necessary to understand and implement the foundations that stem from the original concept of customer relationship management.
The foundations
Understanding customer relationship management
CRM is not a tool or software, but a business strategy that integrates internal processes and external networks to generate added value for potential or existing customers. It is based on qualified and standardized customer data, activated by information technologies, hence its natural association with technological solutions and the category of software called with this acronym.
However, it’s crucial to understand that achieving results through customer relationship management is not only ensured by technology, but through a business strategy that combines both processes and technology to achieve it’s goals.
Understanding CRM types
There are three strands of CRM that we list below:
Strategic
Customer-oriented business strategy from where the term customer-centric comes from, that aims to gain and retain profitable customers by generating increased value in relation to its competitors.
Operacional
Centered on automating processes in areas that interact directly with the customer, such as Marketing, Sales or Support, however it can also impact processes in other areas.
Analitical
Is the process by which the organization transforms customer and process data into relevant information that improves it’s performance, supporting decision making and process evaluation.
The combination of these three strands allows the definition in the strategic part, the implementation in the operational part, where the various types of CRM solutions fit to implement the defined processes, such as Marketing automation, sales force automation and service automation, and in the analytical aspect, the evaluation, through solutions that mold base systems information to produce performance indicators, forecast models and other analytical information.
Centralization and integration of information
One of the important steps towards a “customer-centric mindset” is the centralization of customer information, in order to provide a complete vision, consolidating all processes and interactions with the various areas of the organization. This holistic view of the customer is crucial to identify the customer’s evolution, their background in the organization and above all to provide a positive customer experience.
In this centralization process, the integration of information across the organization’s several systems plays an important role, in order to eliminate information silos that isolate and fragment relevant information.
Business processes
As mentioned before, customer relationship management is a business strategy, so the implementation of its customer-facing processes is one of the key aspects of the strategy.
Campaign management in the case of Marketing, management of leads, contacts and opportunities in Sales, or service level management in the case of Service automation, are examples of processes that should be implemented and periodically revised according to the desired level of optimization.
The way to monitor process performance will be carried out through the technological solutions implemented for this purpose, whether at operational level, in the case of CRM solutions, marketing automation, or support automation, or through analytical solutions that generate key performance indicators and other relevant aggregated data.
Automation
Whether through the implementation of information systems, or through the optimization of these same systems to reduce the effort in “data-entry” tasks, automation plays a preponderant role in the optimization of business processes.
The solutions at operational level, such as the aforementioned CRM, marketing automation, or support automation solutions, must ensure that information is integrated, secure, and accessible to the organization’s relevant resources, while ensuring the performance of business processes.
These systems must also ensure a low effort in data insertion and updates, minimizing the impact that the strategy has on the organization resources. I’ve already written an article on this subject for CRM, that you can consult here.
Information integrity
Another critical success factor of a CRM strategy is the quality and integrity of the information collected, since performance indicators are the main method to evaluate the success of implemented strategies, and these cannot be obtained through erroneous or missing information .
Duplicates, redundancies or incorrect data are enemies of a successful CRM strategy, given its crucial importance in assessing the effectiveness of implemented processes, which is why this risk must be mitigated right in the design of the operational systems.
Automation also has a preponderant role in this area, through the implementation of validation mechanisms and information complements, however one of the most relevant measures to mitigate this risk is in the solutions design phase, anticipating this issue through the type of fields used as well as the validation mechanisms they will have.
Although this strategy has been known and adopted globally for many years, I hope this article will allow the reader to identify the foundations of CRM, guiding a successful implementation and identifying the most common problems. These foundations are equally important to evolve this concept to its most current versions, such as customer experience management, a topic that I’ll reserve for a next article.
Data collection is a consolidated practice in our information society, where through websites, blogs, social networks or information systems, considerable volumes of data are accumulated. However in their raw state they bring little value. Why? Because the missing next step: Turning data into knowledge.
The digitization of organizations brought the mechanisms for information gathering, which in general are consolidated, however the work of analyzing and shaping this data in order to produce relevant business information, is something that is done at the level of large international organizations, often on massive scales as the case of Big Data, however at smaller companies these areas are approached in a generic way and without significant results.
Why isn’t more involvement in this area?
Analyzing the reason for the lack of involvement in this area, we reach a combination of three main factors:
Perception
In-depth business knowledge is essential to ensure its performance, however data-driven management methodologies are not yet fully recognized as a way to obtain this level of knowledge. This is above all a matter of perception, which needs to be mitigated.
Lack of know-how
The perception of added value already exists, but the processes are not placed into practice due to lack of experience or knowledge. This scenario is where specialized partnerships have a determining role, by demonstrating the added value of producing knowledge from information.
Cost
The fear of excessive costs or not obtaining a return on investment. This is mainly due to the outdated knowledge of the currently available solutions, since the democratization of technology has brought robust and effective solutions at very competitive costs.
So how we’re turning data into knowledge
Adjusting the solution according to complexity and size of the target organization, it’s possible to implement solutions with competitive costs, that through the existing information systems can produce outputs capable of generating new knowledge of your business, covering the desired areas in order to improve performance, effectiveness and efficiency of the organization.
This process of turning data into knowledge is divided into the following phases:
Data integration and processing
Usually described as ETL, the basic data preparation process is where the different data sources are normalized, corrected and formatted to allow their integration and aggregation.
Data analysis and modelling in order to produce information
IT aims to identify patterns and produce metrics based on data analysis and modeling, to discover new information or to deliver previously identified business information requirements, usually defined in the form of key performance indicators.
Usually the business already has a series of questions to which it wants answers, such as:
“how long does it take to produce and deliver a certain product” or “what is the average visit time to our site“, since these processes should start from the base business need to obtain relevant information for decision-making, however it’s important to emphasize that the discovery of new information from data analysis will always be an important point in this stage.
Information representation
The way of representing a set of information affects the ability to draw conclusions, regardless of the what information is displayed.
A good example of this topic is the adoption of the new risk matrix to the Covid-19 pandemic, which was started out in Portugal during March this year, where through a matrix with two axes and specific coloring, greatly improved the ability to quickly understand the level of pandemic risk per region or at national level.
Knowledge acquisition
From the information interpretation and analysis, a new level of knowledge is obtained that potentially supports decision-making. However all steps should be reviewed in order to validate the conclusions obtained. Therefore the refining of the previous steps of this process as well as the continuous analysis of the data will produce additional information, refining this process of knowledge acquisition.
This process when based on consolidated information collection practices, is a small step towards a new dimension of knowledge, which as mentioned, already exists through the data present in business systems, in site analytics or in digital interactions. The effort to transform this data into knowledge is minimal and the advantages are obvious, especially when one considers that they are already present and are not being used.
Following the previous article on the main areas of evolution in CRM, today we’ll be detailing CRM Automation, since this is one of the areas with greater focus on this type of business solutions, and also because it represents an important step to ensure the implementation effectiveness.
Despite talking about this topic under the CRM scope, this subject is also applicable to other business solutions, since automation plays a predominant role in the optimization of any solution that requires information from different sources including its users. The measures shown here may not be appropriate for other solutions, however the concept remains relevant.
Why CRM automation?
The optimization of business processes in the areas of sales, support and marketing, leveraged by a need to centralize and streamline information to increase product and service quality, generated increased information needs in all business solutions and the CRM was no exception. In this advent, data-entry tasks and information quality gained a lot of relevance but also produced an increase of effort, which, although necessary cannot be excessive, due to the risk of generating a new optimization problem.
CRM automation emerges in this context, fitting into the business processes and daily activities of each area professionals, in order to reduce the effort on systems updating, without compromising crucial information to ensure organizational performance.
Main measures of CRM automation
The following measures are safe assets to guarantee the efficiency and effectiveness of CRM solutions, ensuring the quality of the system information and at same time reducing employee’s effort in data-entry and update tasks.
Integration with productivity tools
Supported by leading CRM manufacturers such as Zoho, SugarCRM, Dynamics CRM or Salesforce, allows integration with the most popular productivity suites such as Office or Gmail, ensuring integration of email, calendar and documents, which allows you to synchronize meetings, emails or tasks automatically.
Workflows and customizations
An effective way to ensure information integrity through the provided CRM solution mechanisms, such as, automatic pipeline progression when each phase objectives are fulfilled, automatic filling and updating of fields according to the business rules or the creation and automatic assignment of tasks due to SLA or other business driven objectives.
Mobile Apps
Particularly important to commercial areas, mobile apps are also part of the main CRM packages, ensuring integration with maps, phone and tasks. In addition to the benefits of bringing the CRM in your pocket, allowing you to check contacts, interactions, addresses or proposals, and update information without having to go to the office.
Information intelligence partners
Integrations with businesses that provide information from companies such as D&B or ZoomInfo, allowing autocomplete and automatic fill of CRM information, facilitating the process of creating records and avoiding duplicate creation and data inconsistencies.
AI Chatbots
Specially relevant for marketing and support, AI Chatbots or their workflow based versions allow you to carry out basic tasks, directing the client on the intended topics without requiring the allocation of resources. In addition to provide guidance and relevant feedback, based on native language in the case of AI Chatbots, it offers a direct channel to the customer, significantly increasing the interaction and attractiveness of the business.
If there are other measures that you consider more relevant, or you wish to know more about this topic, leave a comment or reach us through the available channels.
CRM solutions since their inception have gone through several stages of evolution, following technological and market trends to provide increasingly agile, complete and effective solutions. We bring this article to understand which are the main areas of evolution in CRM that all organizations should be watchful.
What is CRM?
CRM is an acronym for “Customer Relationship Management“. This category of business software was born out of the need to prevent important customer information from being dispersed between CEO emails, salespeople’s memory or accounting excel files. Creating a central repository accessible to the relevant personnel, containing information about who the customers are, where they are, persons of contact, exchanged emails, meetings held, closed and under development deals, gave rise to CRM solutions and an increasingly popular business approach, of placing the customer at the center of business processes.
With the development of this business solutions category it’s scope was extended, expanding naturally in the sales area through the lead and opportunity management processes, but also on other areas such as marketing and customer support. In this evolution process, the CRM focus began to cover other areas such as sales force, marketing or support automation.
The main areas of evolution in CRM
With the adoption of CRM solutions and it’s principles to centralize and standardize information, other topics specific to this type of solution or with high relevance in this area began to emerge. The evolution of these subjects was reflected in the solutions development, with emphasis on these areas that we consider main contributors to CRM evolution.
Automation
Companies gained new capabilities with relationship management, sales force and support automation solutions, improving the capability to monitor and analyze their processes thanks to the level of information detail, but at what cost?
A company or contact record has several fields of information that cannot be overlooked, duplicates must be avoided in order to guarantee data consistency, activity records, tasks, opportunities, proposals, support requests. How to ensure the required information without overloading a resource with system update tasks?
This is where automation comes in. Through various methods over time, it has increasingly reduced the effort to update systems, without compromising the quality and quantity of information.
Customer Experience Management
Customer experience management is the following step of customer relationship management, deepening the original concept to cover all points of interaction with the customer, regardless of the source channels, products and services acquired or relationship stage.
The core aspect of customer experience management is the identification and improvement of customer journeys throughout all the interactions with the supplier, ensuring that all steps from acquisition to business completion and after-sales support follow the best practices and provide the best possible experience.
CRM tools have developed increasingly robust solutions that make it possible to standardize all steps according to channels, business areas or other desired criteria, ensuring detailed follow-up and monitoring and allowing that resources allocated to the processes comply with all steps outlined, through the creation and assignment of tasks and other relevant measurable actions.
Master Data Management
Or “MDM“, is not a CRM specific subject, however it provides crucial improvements to all the organization’s business solutions, including the areas assigned to CRM.
Information sharing between business areas, encompassing the solutions each area includes is a critical factor to organizational performance, therefore defining principles of ownership, accessibility and information sharing, allows to create synergies between all business areas in order to leverage their performance.
A basic example of master data is the customer record. Basic information such as the address of the headquarters should be common knowledge to several areas such as marketing, sales and finance. However, who is the “owner” of this information? At what stage can each of these areas update a customer’s address? If the systems are different how the update is guaranteed?
These questions can be simple or complex to answer depending on the size of each organization, therefore master data management has a crucial role to ensure the integrity of the information and in turn the quality and capacity that your CRM solution has to add value to the organization.
Digital transformation has changed society, which also generated an impact on CRM solutions, however the external factors that conditioned the evolution of business solutions, such as the case of social networks and overall digital presence, will be a subject to cover in another article.
This is the second part of a series aimed at covering the process of selecting and implementing business software solutions, where this article finishes the selection process and covers the “How to implement software solutions” part, from the customer’s perspective.
In the last article the selection process was not completed, because the final step is related to implementation aspects that we’re now detailing. Solutions of this dimension require a relevant level of configuration and customization to ensure alignment with business requirements, therefore, how the solution will be implemented, what project methodology will be used, the level of business involvement, and of course the project effort, represent important factors in the choice process.
At this stage, the functional and business requirements are already identified, the solution is also identified and the selected partners have submitted proposals, therefore is possible to determine the cost and evaluate the proposals.
“But isn’t the implementation independent of the solution choice? “
Depends on several factors.
As mentioned in the previous article, the choice of the implementation partner is as important as the choice of the solution, due to the complexity and scope of the enterprise software solutions. The absence of a qualified implementation partner, inability to respond to key requirements or excessive costs are factors that can define the choice between two competing software solutions.
Other possibilities to resolve limitations at partner level should not be ruled out, however given the purpose of this article it’s important to highlight the impact of the implementing partner on the project’s financial effort, on the quality of the final solution, as well as on the project’s ROI.
Proposal evaluation
In addition to the most prevalent criteria, such as compliance with requirements, effort and cost, there are other relevant criteria that allow to evaluate the received proposals in greater detail. We’ve highlighted the most relevant ones below:
Level of financial detail
What is the cost of the base solution, the cost of the initial implementation, annual corrective maintenance effort, license renewals, training, involvement of internal resources. This level of detail is important to ensure that TCO estimations are not defrauded.
Level of planning detail
As already mentioned in the first article, overly simplistic proposals often follow a commercial approach, and will almost certainly need revisions throughout the project. Ensure the implementation plan covers all key aspects with a proper level of detail.
Level of project complexity
It may happen that some requirements significantly increase the effort of the project, therefore it’s important to understand from the provided requirements, which ones are easy and difficult to accomplish. A common approach when requesting proposals is asking to identify per requirement, which ones are guaranteed natively by the tool, achieved through customization and if customized what is the level of complexity.
Knowledge management
If you have important business processes reflected in the new software, it becomes necessary to retain knowledge on the implemented solution. This retention of knowledge must be ensured by the partner through contracted maintenance services or by formal knowledge transmission.
These and several other criteria are difficult to determine if you don’t have the proper knowledge within your organization. If this is the case, it’s recommended to acquire consultancy services from a partner like Sollogica, to assist in the process of selecting and implementing the software, mitigating knowledge risks and providing the necessary expertise to move towards the intended objective.
Solution Implementation
After the selection is made, we then proceed to the implementation process, which despite being under the responsibility of the entity hired for the purpose, must be carefully monitored by the client.
As the internal requirements assessment phase, resources should be allocated to ensure project monitoring, requirements clarification, operational processes detailing, user experience and other necessary aspects before the acceptance phase. The team constitution must be carried out by defining the necessary roles to be involved, followed by the allocation of resources to each role.
Within the profiles identified there will always be a project sponsor, typically linked to the top management, with the aim of monitoring the overall progress of the implementation, which leads us to the implementation methodology.
Project Management
In terms of project management our preference and advice always goes to methodologies based on Agile principles, where Scrum is the most popular but there are others like Kanban.
Not all projects can be implemented this way, due to project size, specific characteristics of the business area or implementation requirements, however, of all the Agile principles, we highlight two that we consider fundamental to the process of developing and implementing solutions, regardless methodology:
Satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software
This is one of the principles that we consider most important in any implementation, given the greater ease in managing expectations and moving towards the proposed goals.
Welcome changing requirements, even late in development
Assume that despite the clients work, there are imponderables that increase according to the size and complexity of the project, therefore the ability to make adjustments without compromising the project should be ensured.
Even if the implementing partner uses another project management approach, at least these two principles should be ensured to properly follow the implementation work, and to provide the ability to react to changes in the project scope. Having mentioned this, our recommendation will always be in the use of Agile methodologies.
Change Management
This is one of the most important aspects for the implementation success, since it’s natural to have some resistance to the solution adoption. This resistance will vary depending on the solution scope and areas, the business culture or the level of digital maturity of the organization, however the lack of adoption is a high risk that must be managed.
To mitigate this risk we highlight the following measures:
Identify and transmit benefits of change to all affected areas. This transmission can even be done hands-on through preliminary accesses, ensuring that everyone involved can perceive the change benefits.
Leadership must give the example, assuming the change, getting involved in the process and monitoring the adoption over time to avoid setbacks.
Key users are not just proactive resources, but should be ambassadors for change within their colleague circles.
Group culture can generate censorship if an individual who understands the benefits of change is surrounded by non-receptive colleagues. All of the organization networks must be involved to avoid rejection.
Acceptance and Go-Live
After the acceptance tests, the go-live can be scheduled according to the defined approach, and while taking advantage of the new features and benefits, the next initiatives can be pursued.
This article is part of a series aimed to cover the process of selecting and implementing business software solutions and as the title says, this first article is focused on: How to choose the best software solution for my business?
Enterprise software solutions have the ability to dramatically improve the performance of a business, ensuring greater control and perception of operations in order to produce added value for users, management and customers. However, given the effort and impact on the business, if this process is not properly planned it can result in significant losses.
And if there’s one thing in common throughout the years I’ve provided business solutions, it’s that no two implementations are the same. The organizational context, human context, business area specifics, the technological context of the organization, the level of maturity of the business processes, are all factors that contribute to the level of specificity of the project.
Given that these specifics produce a certain level of risk at financial, effort and change levels, from the moment you start assessing an enterprise software solution, it’s necessary to identify which functional and business requirements must be considered, as well as who should be responsible for identifying and validating the requirements, in order to mitigate the process risk.
What are enterprise software solutions
Enterprise solutions are large-scale software systems, capable of centralizing and managing the assigned business areas processes. These systems provide a level of automation, monitoring and information collection that allows to reduce operational costs, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of processes, while producing performance indicators in real time.
The types of enterprise software solutions and their relevance will vary depending on the size of the organization or business areas, however here are some examples:
Marketing automation platforms
Customer Relationship Managment, or “CRM”
Enterprise Resource Planning, or “ERP”
Supply Chain Management systems
Human Resource Management, or “HRM”
Enterprise Asset Management, or “EAM”
Business Intelligence systems
Who should be involved
To identify who should be involved in the requirements gathering process, it’s necessary to define the key roles to perform the project tasks.
Typically the necessary resources fall into the following roles:
Sponsors
Profile of the main heads of the organization, the project sponsors must provide the vision and the direction to follow, ensuring the alignment of all involved.
Deciders
Management profile usually associated with the impacted processes, such as those responsible for production or finance in the case of an ERP, or the sales person in the case of a CRM.
SME’s
Or Subject Matter Experts, are the specialized resources in the target processes, responsible for the collection, evaluation and elaboration of the requirements.
Support and collaboration
Other stakeholders, resources of related areas that have relevant information, and operational support.
Business Requirements
Business requirements are the elements that the business needs to ensure its operation, such as business processes, business rules or tasks. The distinction to functional requirements relies on the fact that business requirements represent something that the business needs for its operation, without being directly related to what’s intended from the software solution.
Business processes are for example, employee onboarding, opportunity management or product development. In case of a business rule we have for example, how to determine the discount given to a customer or the criteria for expense approval.
At this stage, it’s highly important to ensure that all stakeholders are involved in the process, in order to ensure the complete and detailed identification of all business needs.
A good practice after identifying business requirements is to categorize and define degrees of importance for them. In this way it’s possible to make adjustments more easily, or to evaluate the proposals received with greater precision.
Functional Requirements
Functional requirements are the functionalities that the system must perform, from the user’s perspective, in order to suppress identified needs, such as: “When registering a new support request, the system must notify the support team by email, as well as the manager of the person who made the request”.
In this stage, all the desired functionalities must be identified, so it’s important to ensure that all relevant stakeholders are involved. In addition, some resources assigned to this stage must have the necessary background to validate the requirements and assess their feasibility.
On this stage the general characteristics of the tool start to be identified, such as Cloud or On-Premise, multi-language, multi-currency capabilities, extensibility of the tool, export and integration capabilities and overall user experience.
Cost
Financial effort will always be a decisive criteria in choosing the right solution, given the solutions broad scope and the potential longevity of the implementation process.
In order to anticipate the financial effort for the investment, the main indicator to consider is the Total Cost of Ownership, or TCO. This KPI identifies all costs associated with the implementation and availability of the solution, including product acquisition or licensing, customization and configuration, corrective and evolutionary maintenance.
The importance of this indicator comes from the fact that, in solutions of this dimension, the effort of customization and maintenance of the tool can become superior to the acquisition or licensing of the product. On the other hand, it’s a common practice to attract the customer through a low initial investment and overly simplistic implementation models, revealing the real cost and complexity only when the customer is already deep inside the project and it’s too late to go back, therefore estimating the TCO as soon as possible in the project is a way to avoid unforeseen costs that can lead to complications.
One of the relevant points in estimating the TCO is the correct identification of business requirements. The way the organization intends to reflect its business processes in the new solution can cause radical variations in the effort and cost of the project, therefore the identification and application of the requirements is a key part in the TCO estimation.
Common misconceptions
After describing some key steps in this process, it’s also relevant to demystify some ideas and issues that often occur during enterprise software implementations.
No Out-of-the-box solution does what you need
Out-of-the-box or OOB is the way to describe the solution as just acquired, and there are no configurations or customization’s made. Due to the broad scope of this type of solutions as well as the diversity and complexity of different processes and business areas, the software will hardly be ready when you receive it.
Even in an extreme approach of aligning business processes to the way they are reflected in the base solution, something that I do not recommend any business to do, there will always be a need to configure the solution.
Na aquisição de soluções empresariais de grande dimensão, deve sempre assegurar um parceiro de implementação que possua o expertise necessário para implementar os requisitos identificados, garantindo que a ferramenta irá atingir os When purchasing large business solutions, you must always ensure an implementation partner that has the necessary expertise to implement the identified requirements, ensuring that the tool will achieve the proposed objectives.
If you don’t know in detail what the solution needs to do, then the solution can become part of the problem
The pun is intended, because unfortunately, the incorrect or missing identification of business requirements is something that occurs with some frequency. It is also one of the main reasons for implementation costs to start escalating, either through additional effort on the project to suppress information needs or through evolutionary maintenance to correct something that should have been done right from the start.
Properly identified business processes are a premise for successful implementation.
Process and technology need to be aligned
Even with well-identified requirements, situations almost always emerge where the solution cannot fully answer one or other requirement, or else the effort to fulfill them is exaggerated, or else some solution fulfills the most important requirements as no other can, but has some limitations in another area.
Ensuring an exact match in everything the business needs will always be a daunting exercise, so the safest way to approach the subject is to be able to perceive, in each alignment case between processes and technology, which side can be aligned more easily. This is a basic case of the importance in having knowledge and experience on your side, which leads to the next topic.
Choosing the implementation partner is just as important as choosing the tool
Due to the complexity and scope of business software solutions, one of the key aspects to ensure is the choice of the implementation partner. In addition to the common choice criteria such as experience and cost, the implementation partner must ensure the alignment between technology and business, extracting the maximum potential from the solution in a transparent, integrated and effective way.
Sollogica fulfills these requirements with distinction, having the expertise to intervene in requirements gathering or solution implementation stages, ensuring the success of the proposed initiatives.
Process Steps
After reviewing the main topics of the subject, it’s possible to summarize the first steps of the selection process:
1. Define project team
Assign a team to the process, identifying the target resources for the defined profiles.
2. Identify business and functional requirements
It emerges from the inventory and mapping of business processes, as well as the requirements analysis.
3. Formalize requirements
Through specifications, RFP or other desired model, in order to present to selected partners for proposal development.
4. Make a shortlist of solution and implementation partners
Shorten the options depending on the requirements and other criteria identified. Several solution manufacturers delegate configuration and customization to partners, so at this stage you should also identify which partners fit you best considering the identified solutions.
5. Identify TCO
With the partners proposals you should already have the main elements to identify the total cost of ownership, which will provide you to fully understand the financial effort over time.
The following steps for effective product and partner selection depend on additional factors regarding the implementation process, which will be covered in the second part of this series: How to implement enterprise software solutions.
