In 2009, I attended two Gartner Summit events: the Gartner Business Process Management (BPM) Summit in March in San Diego; and Gartner Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Summit in September in Scottsdale. I not only saw a number of same vendors at both events, but both events also had many similar themes, such as customer service, workflow automation, business processes, collaboration, customer retention, social media, key performance indicators (KPIs)/performance metrics, and so on and so forth.
It might be indicative that BPM and CRM are quite converging disciplines in that Gartner found enough synergy to host its CRM and BPM summits back-to-back in Washington, D.C. in late 2008 (events I did not attend). While BPM vendors are beginning to offer more CRM capabilities, CRM vendors are “returning the favor” with BPM features (e.g., workflow and business rules engines).
This process (no pun intended) may have begun several years ago. Namely, in 2005, the former Onyx Corporation (acquired by Consona Coporation in 2006 and meanwhile renamed into Consona Customer Management), began shifting its focus from highly contested and commoditized CRM applications toward more adaptive BPM-enabled applications via the former Onyx Process Manager in 2005. Consona’s CRM division does not sell its BPM module outside its CRM offering, but is proud to talk about its product’s adaptability due to native BPM features.
Both software categories also grew (CRM about 5 percent and BPM about 10 percent) in 2009, in contrast to a decline in most other enterprise applications. When money is tight, shrewd businesses look for ways to do more with less, and BPM seems to hold the promise of improving the customer’s experience. As companies cite business processes affected by CRM as their top challenge, CRM vendors have moved from focusing on pure technology to enabling processes, and BPM capabilities have taken a greater role in CRM suites. This convergence leads me to quote Forrest Gump: “We goes together like peas and carrots.”
In fact, many paragraphs in the 2009 white paper entitled “Customer Relationship Management: The Winning Strategy in a Challenging Economy” and authored by Microsoft Dynamics CRM talk (perhaps not unwittingly) about BPM-related features. Past CRM initiatives that focused on sales, customer service, or marketing activities have left many companies with siloed, disjointed processes that do not represent a holistic process flow to the customer.
The white paper asserts that the current recession is an opportunity to re-examine and streamline those disorganized business flows, and one of the fastest ways to improve efficiency is by streamlining key business processes and improving individual productivity. Needless to say, both initiatives are business process-oriented, or related to BPM.
Streamline Business Processes
Every business has a plethora of processes that must be repeated time and again on a daily basis. Time spent (if not wasted) on repetitive manual tasks, delays associated with cumbersome cross-group approval practices, and the lack of consistently enforced standards can bog down a business.
Thus, many CRM products today include powerful yet intuitive workflow capabilities that allow organizations to streamline and simplify everyday tasks as well as organization-wide business processes for improved operational efficiency. In the case of Microsoft Dynamics, these capabilities come from the embedded Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) technology.
Workflow management capabilities enable organizations to streamline time-consuming customer-related processes such as sales budget approvals, campaign execution, lead qualification, lead routing, request for proposal (RFP) submissions, sales follow-up, reference management, and case routing, to name but a few. The more these processes can be automated, the more employees can focus on their core competencies. Ultimately, streamlining and automating business processes allows organizations to enforce so-called best practices and free up employees to concentrate on higher-value activities.
Workflow enablement can also take the guesswork out of more complex processes via the setting up of business rules. For example, leads can be automatically distributed based on sales territory or informational mailings can be sent out based on pre-defined triggers.
Another way to leverage workflow capabilities is by automating end-to-end business processes. For example, a workflow can be used to take a holistic approach to sales by enforcing best practices from lead to final close, defining a common sales methodology and streamlining execution. Organizations can model each stage in the sales process, define an ideal flow, and ensure that all criteria are met and data captured before a deal advances to the next stage.
Organizations should also be able to take established sales methodologies such as Miller Heiman or Sales Performance International (SPI) and institutionalize those sales methodologies within the CRM solution itself. The CRM vendor elevator pitch will thus likely be based on enabling a specific CRM process such as order-to-cash or lead-to-opportunity, instead of on traditionally selling CRM modules such as sales force automation (SFA) or enterprise marketing management (EMM).
It might be indicative that BPM and CRM are quite converging disciplines in that Gartner found enough synergy to host its CRM and BPM summits back-to-back in Washington, D.C. in late 2008 (events I did not attend). While BPM vendors are beginning to offer more CRM capabilities, CRM vendors are “returning the favor” with BPM features (e.g., workflow and business rules engines).
This process (no pun intended) may have begun several years ago. Namely, in 2005, the former Onyx Corporation (acquired by Consona Coporation in 2006 and meanwhile renamed into Consona Customer Management), began shifting its focus from highly contested and commoditized CRM applications toward more adaptive BPM-enabled applications via the former Onyx Process Manager in 2005. Consona’s CRM division does not sell its BPM module outside its CRM offering, but is proud to talk about its product’s adaptability due to native BPM features.
Both software categories also grew (CRM about 5 percent and BPM about 10 percent) in 2009, in contrast to a decline in most other enterprise applications. When money is tight, shrewd businesses look for ways to do more with less, and BPM seems to hold the promise of improving the customer’s experience. As companies cite business processes affected by CRM as their top challenge, CRM vendors have moved from focusing on pure technology to enabling processes, and BPM capabilities have taken a greater role in CRM suites. This convergence leads me to quote Forrest Gump: “We goes together like peas and carrots.”
In fact, many paragraphs in the 2009 white paper entitled “Customer Relationship Management: The Winning Strategy in a Challenging Economy” and authored by Microsoft Dynamics CRM talk (perhaps not unwittingly) about BPM-related features. Past CRM initiatives that focused on sales, customer service, or marketing activities have left many companies with siloed, disjointed processes that do not represent a holistic process flow to the customer.
The white paper asserts that the current recession is an opportunity to re-examine and streamline those disorganized business flows, and one of the fastest ways to improve efficiency is by streamlining key business processes and improving individual productivity. Needless to say, both initiatives are business process-oriented, or related to BPM.
Streamline Business Processes
Every business has a plethora of processes that must be repeated time and again on a daily basis. Time spent (if not wasted) on repetitive manual tasks, delays associated with cumbersome cross-group approval practices, and the lack of consistently enforced standards can bog down a business.
Thus, many CRM products today include powerful yet intuitive workflow capabilities that allow organizations to streamline and simplify everyday tasks as well as organization-wide business processes for improved operational efficiency. In the case of Microsoft Dynamics, these capabilities come from the embedded Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) technology.
Workflow management capabilities enable organizations to streamline time-consuming customer-related processes such as sales budget approvals, campaign execution, lead qualification, lead routing, request for proposal (RFP) submissions, sales follow-up, reference management, and case routing, to name but a few. The more these processes can be automated, the more employees can focus on their core competencies. Ultimately, streamlining and automating business processes allows organizations to enforce so-called best practices and free up employees to concentrate on higher-value activities.
Workflow enablement can also take the guesswork out of more complex processes via the setting up of business rules. For example, leads can be automatically distributed based on sales territory or informational mailings can be sent out based on pre-defined triggers.
Another way to leverage workflow capabilities is by automating end-to-end business processes. For example, a workflow can be used to take a holistic approach to sales by enforcing best practices from lead to final close, defining a common sales methodology and streamlining execution. Organizations can model each stage in the sales process, define an ideal flow, and ensure that all criteria are met and data captured before a deal advances to the next stage.
Organizations should also be able to take established sales methodologies such as Miller Heiman or Sales Performance International (SPI) and institutionalize those sales methodologies within the CRM solution itself. The CRM vendor elevator pitch will thus likely be based on enabling a specific CRM process such as order-to-cash or lead-to-opportunity, instead of on traditionally selling CRM modules such as sales force automation (SFA) or enterprise marketing management (EMM).
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