CRM - November 2007 - (Page 15)

Insight way, not with yelling,” Albano says. stages with knowledge management. This becomes apparent in engineering“Show how you’re enabling salespeople in order to make them understand why to-order processes. “We maintain virtually no finished goods in stock. Almost it’s necessary.” Beyond adoption, Hickernell notes all orders we take require engineers to be where tech companies are different from involved before production begins,” says others in terms of CRM. “Selecting the Phil Shields, senior analyst at K&L Microwave, a manufacturer that right CRM components is uses CRM software from IFS. more important,” he says. Even in the tech “They may be involved in the “Channel management and quoting process, determining knowledge management are world, “people if we can even build a product important considerations. are still selling to the customer’s specs, proThere’s a very complex value to people.” viding technical data or prechain—relationships are at liminary drawings. After we least B2B2C,” he says, and often reflexive, where two manufacturers sell receive an order, engineers will design each other their products. “Work is the new product; even for repeat orders, spread across the value chain, involving engineers many times need to check the original equipment manufacturers, orig- documentation provided by the cusinal design manufacturers, and even dif- tomer to make sure there are no changes ferent divisions of a single company sell- since the last time.” Prior to implementing sales-anding to itself as an internal customer.” This means careful tracking of channels, marketing functionality, K&L was generand a firm grasp on information at all ating quotes with the IFS ERP system. “This required us to create a customer, sales part, and inventory part just to create a quote,” Shields says. “Integration with our ERP system was one of the big reasons we selected IFS’s CRM system.” Requiring zero programming or customization, all customers, sales parts, customer orders, and invoices are now available within the CRM system. “The IFS CRM system has given us one place to put information, both customer-furnished and K&L documents, so that everyone in the company can access it,” Shields says. Knowledge management and dissemination also comes into its own in high technology. “The expectation for selfservice, especially Web self-service, is much higher in this vertical,” Hickernell says. “The customer is much more savvy, and more is expected of the vendor. If an error message is programmed into a piece of technology, the customer expects there to be a knowledgebase article for dealing with it.” —Marshall Lager http://sage360.com/crm http://sage360.com/crm

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - November 2007

CRM - November 2007 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity Have You Caught It? The Mother of Enterprise Information Market Focus: Technology: The Simple Truth about Complex Manufacturing Q&A: Gianforte Talks CRM Required Reading Predicting Profitability Checking the Pulse of the Contact Center Cast a Narrow Net Modern Times, Modern Methods Primos Hunting Calls Snares Efficiency Nailing It Down Moving in on Mortgage Delinquencies RDS Delivery Delivers on Service Secret of My Success Re:Tooling The Tipping Point Pint of View

CRM - November 2007

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