360 Degree Intelligence
Make the move from the 360 customer view to 360 degree customer insights through CRM and Artificial Intelligence.
The release of ChatGPT in November of 2022 has spawned a megastorm across the world of technology and business, of which we are only witnessing the beginning.? The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) segment sits in the eye of that storm, with the major players releasing generative AI products as fast as their marketing teams can create their descriptions.? While this generates a lot of buzz and hype for businesses to now jump on that bandwagon, it is also serving as a bit of a distraction.
AI is not all that new to CRM
Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities have been a part of the CRM stack for years.? Salesforce Einstein was released in 2016 as their embedded AI.? A now ancient but foresightful article published by Forbes in 2019 forecasted the transformative use of AI within CRM (5 Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming CRMs, August 10).? However, these AI analytical capabilities are not getting the demand that their potential warrants.? Many of my clients want to have intelligence be a key element of their digital transformation, but CRM intelligence remains pretty far down the collective IT roadmap.? Additionally, a sizable portion of companies have licensing access to the AI included in their CRM stack, but are uncertain what to do with it!
Every organization falls somewhere on the CRM AI maturity continuum.? For those that are on the lower end with little or no AI capabilities in the CRM stack, you are positioned for what we can refer to as AI readiness and planning, and would benefit from a roadmap to take you further down the continuum.? Organizations that have begun the journey but have encountered challenges or still have a ways to go are in a position to assess their current maturity and identify gaps.? This is a two-part article series, which in the first part will outline an approach for building out the roadmap.? The second installment in the series will be dedicated more to those who have embarked on the CRM AI journey and need to assess what is required as a next step.? Perhaps, for those further along on that maturity continuum, generative AI will make a lot of sense, but for others, we might want to get the foundation built first.
CRM and the Holy Grail
For many years the big vision for CRM has been to create the proverbial 360 degree view of the customer.? This is a great achievement for which to aspire, although not everyone has fully pulled it off yet.? However, it is no longer good enough to just want to view customer engagement points.? We should now aspire to be intelligent about them, even be so audacious to predict how they are going to transact.? We want to have actionable insight into every angle of customer engagement, and use that insight to make data-driven decisions that have optimized outcomes.? Previously we were in the Informed CRM Era.? Now we need to move into the Intelligent CRM Era.
How did this all work during the Informed CRM Era?? We examined the business processes of the functions that manage customer engagement points and we used automation to reduce manual effort, improve collaboration, and capture transactional data.? What’s different in the Intelligent CRM Era?? We are going to utilize that data, along with other sources, and apply analytical insights at the point of decision making to improve decision quality, velocity, and experience.
Marketers will utilize AI to enable lead nurturing to improve campaign lift metrics.? Sellers will utilize AI to take better actions for managing opportunities and improve deal close rates.? Servicers will utilize AI to be more aware that an inbound caller is at the point of churn and be provided next best actions to improve retention metrics.
The part about the 360 degrees remains important.? Data from across all customer journey engagement points will be utilized to provide insights cross-functionally.? This is an element of the power of CRM that can finally be realized to its true potential.? Each customer-facing function learns and benefits from actions taken elsewhere.? Marketers get insights from sellers.? Sellers get insights from servicers.? It is a thing of beauty.
What about the Business Case?
For some organizations it is a matter of functionality that is already paid for.? Although, there will still be an investment necessary to get AI capabilities launched and adopted.? CRM platform vendors have been feverishly adding AI products to their stacks, and there are endless opportunities to accumulate more licenses.? But, the payback looks pretty good.? There are returns to be gained across the business outcomes spectrum - growth, efficiency and experience.? For many organizations, the utilization of AI will be where they finally see the benefits to justify the CRM investments.
While we believe the return on AI investments will have a solid payback, we do recommend that showing a clear path from solution investments to targeted returns is an important element of the planning process.
领英推荐
The 360 Degree Intelligence Roadmap
The path that you take to build and leverage analytics and AI within your CRM stack may not look the same as other organizations who undertake the journey.? The prevailing wisdom today advises that you start small, achieve a short-term success, then build from there.? Creating a company-specific roadmap that identifies this first pilot initiative and provides guidance through a sequence of prioritized initiatives is the way to go.? Following is an outline for a modest roadmapping exercise.
1) End-state Alignment - We know from more than two decades of CRM program evaluation that the top predictor of success is when we get senior level stakeholders on the same page relative to the CRM strategy - what should be the focus, and what should be the outcomes.? Planning for an AI initiative within the CRM program is no different.? Leaders need to be aligned on the priorities and how the use of AI will serve to better achieve business goals.? The first step of the planning process must focus on program objectives and expected business outcomes with sufficient involvement and input from senior level leaders to secure their agreement.? Clarity around targeted outcomes will also help to define metrics for monitoring benefits achieved from the AI investments.? The ability to demonstrate measurable gains from pilots and other early stage use cases is essential to program scale and success.
2) AI Enabled Business Capabilities - The next step in the development of the CRM AI Roadmap is to identify what customer engagement capabilities will benefit from improvement through actionable insights and data-driven decisioning.? This is typically best achieved through working sessions with functional teams.? Where are there opportunities for marketers, sellers, and servicers to benefit from intelligence that they don’t currently have access or easy access?? Part of the exercise can include making insights more available, such as embedding intelligence directly into the business process.? This second step in the process needs to take guidance from the output of the first step.? Capabilities to be AI enabled must support the program objectives and ensure achievement of outcomes.
3) Solution Design - For many organizations there will be AI products available as an element of their CRM platforms that will be sufficient for enabling the business capabilities targeted from the second step.? It is just a matter of appropriate design and deployment.? For some capabilities there may be a need to add a third party product, such as NLP, on top of the CRM stack.? For both cases, it will be important to be guided by experienced AI Solution Architects to design the technical solutions.??
It can also be expected that a portion of the targeted use cases will involve data challenges, which may require new integrations, data migration, and perhaps data cleansing.? To best ensure the quality of the data solution design it will be critical to utilize experienced Data Architects in this portion of the roadmap exercise.? It is common within roadmapping efforts that not all solutions are designed to the same degree of detail or finality.? For solutions that are expected to be delivered earlier in the long-term plan, it will be necessary to involve more due diligence and detail.? Solutions expected to land later in the roadmap may not require a fully baked design.
4) Prioritized Phases of Delivery - The final step in the exercise is to gain agreement around the priority of solution delivery.? What is first, what comes later, and are the deployments targeting some parts of the organization earlier than others?? A key to success for this planning process is to select early releases that have both measurable and meaningful results.? Pilot and MVP phases should be chosen involving use cases that are important to the business for providing early benefit, but also should be lower risk solutions that have the best chance for success.? This helps to propel the program into further stages and to best secure funding.
Program Success
One critical element of a roadmap that often gets omitted is the plan for ensuring program success.? This encompasses several topics, all which are success factors for program effectiveness.??
The four steps outlined for creating an effective CRM AI Roadmap do involve some degree of effort.? It is a planful approach for launching an AI initiative within the CRM program, and it is an approach that will improve the impact of the investments to be made.? However, it does not have to be a burdensome exercise.? Experienced planners can facilitate the development of roadmap deliverables in several weeks of effort.? It is a modest investment with big payback!
#AI #CRM #roadmap #strategicplanning
Director Business Development for IT Services and Salesforce Consulting
10 个月As usual, this article is excellent and represents the thorough way Matt always approaches his work on any project. Nicely written, Matt, and very genuine to what I have experienced in the West's MFG, Dist., Auto, and Energy sectors.