What is Analytical CRM?
I was talking to one of my colleagues the other day – technical guy – and he told me that he now had the answer the question “How long is a piece of string?” This is a particularly important issue for Steve because people are always asking him to estimate how long it will take to do some clever technical stuff. He has a well rehearsed answer!
This question came to mind as I started to write about Analytical CRM. Because it’s not one simple thing and it means different things to different people and different organisations... how long is a piece of string? Having said that, there are two common threads that run through the subject.
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Decision Support
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Data Visualisation
Decision Support in Analytical CRM
Decision support is my start point. Analytical CRM provides information which supports a decision which must be taken about some aspect of marketing, sales, support or customer relationships... or about the people who have responsibility for carrying out these functions within the business. Analytical CRM turns data into knowledge. In my experience the piece of Analytical CRM (or decision support) with which most people are familiar is the Sales Forecast. The Sales Forecast takes data about deals which are in the pipeline and ranks them into date and “probability” order so that you can see if you are on track to make all your numbers. Another is the Cases (or Tickets) report against customer SLAs, where status data about tickets can provide the knowledge to help the Helpdesk Manager stay on track and within contract.
Data Visualisation and Analytical CRM
Data visualisation is my second. Most, if not all, approaches to Analytical CRM have a strong visualisation element. This could be as simple as a “white space” report. Here data is displayed in row and column format so that missing data (white spaces) are obvious and the information components which are messing up the analysis can be rectified. In a more sophisticated world, data visualisation takes you into the world of business intelligence (BI) tools. Here data can be pulled from many disparate sources like CRM, sales order processing, financial accounts, and rendered into charts and graphs which highlight trends or exceptions to the norm.
So how do you configure Analytical CRM correctly? Well first of all you need to decide what measurements are important to the success of your business; what “levers” can you pull to get things back on track if they’re not going smoothly. Once you have this in mind, designing Analytical CRM is straightforward and can be extremely cost effective in helping you run a successful operation.
Oh! And the answer to the original question? It’s double the length of the start to the middle!
Alan Joenn is Marketing Director at Collier Pickard.
