StrikeIron Blog

Migrating to a New CRM Platform? Don't Miss the Data Opportunity

As technology evolves, companies inevitably upgrade to new CRM systems, often from new vendors, and often moving to completely different platform approaches, such as from enterprise CRM software to software-as-a-service or "Cloud" solutions. Salesforce.com, Netsuite, Microsoft CRM, Oracle CRM On Demand, SugarCRM and the myriad other CRM platforms all provide ways to import legacy data into them, but this should only be one small piece of the actual data migration.

Since any CRM system is only as good as the data within it, a CRM migration represents a unique opportunity to significantly increase the value and usefulness of the internal data assets that can fuel the success of the new system. A well-thought-out, comprehensive data migration plan can be worth its weight in gold.

For example, a CRM migration is a great time to:

- Validate email addresses to ensure that they are current and the particular contact still works at his or her listed organization (if not, this can be an opportunity to re-engage with contact organizations)
- Validate all physical addresses are valid and deliverable for future communication purposes
- Ensure phone numbers are valid and up-to-date
- Eliminate junk contact records
- Eliminate duplicate/redundant contacts (Robert Johnson at IBM and Bob Johnston at International Business Machines)
- Fill in missing data (missing addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, etc.)
- Enhance existing data by adding useful demographics such as an organization's number of employees, revenue, SIC code, and more
- Standardize data to ensure non-ambiguous representation in the database for better reporting (Ohio=OH,VP=Vice President), etc.
- Take the time to apply any other organization-specific data requirements that can help increase levels of success

Other things a data-centric organization can do during a CRM system upgrade  is to put filters and other real-time data quality and data enhancement mechanisms in place at new points of data collection such as Web-to-lead forms. This can ensure the data doesn't degrade over time, and that these same sets of issues don't exist a year later.

It's also important to establish an ongoing data management plan, complete with goals, metrics, and incentives.

Experienced, insightful data professionals will recognize the unique opportunity CRM migration represents. Don't let it slip away.

Do You Have a Data Management Plan?

One of the most important asset categories an organization has is its collection of data assets. This is why so much money is spent on databases, applications, hardware, software, people, and other information system line items: to support these data assets because people understand in general the value of these data assets and how they can help an organization succeed. Often, information technology costs are even far more than other parts of the organization.

We all know that systems are only as good and useful as the data within them. Yet, so few companies have plans around the quality and completeness of the data that sits at the very core of these systems where major investments have been made.

Most companies have general business plans, sales incentive plans, go-to-market plans, financial plans, technology adoption plans, and product offering plans. But how many organizations actually have a 'data management' plan in place?

If you are not sure if your organization has one, or if you think your organization has one and you surmise it is not an effective one, here are some questions to ask:

Is there an individual in your organization responsible for the overall quality, completeness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness of the data assets that form the lifeblood of the various systems in use by the organization?

Is there an actual written data management plan accessible by all, one that states what the goals of the plan are, and establishes metrics for achieving those goals?

Is there a process for ongoing "data quality testing" to ensure that the data management policies in place are actually being adhered to and achieved?

Are members of every department aware of the policies that exist in the plan? Are they enforced across the organization? Are all employees trained on these policies?

Is there a technology strategy as part of the data management plan? Have technologies and products been identified and under review to determine if they can help an organization meet the goals stated in the management plan?

If you are not comfortable with the answers to these questions, chances are a plan doesn't exist, or if it does, its implementation has been poor and is likely ineffective.

The data an organization has about customers, potential customers, partners, and other contacts can be such a critical, competitive advantage in the marketplace. If there is not a plan to maximize the value of these data assets in place, at least a basic plan with basic metrics, then I think a lot of opportunity for your organization is simply being lost. Since this is one of those areas of the business where you have practically 100% control over, not having a data management plan in place is a sure sign that your data, and your organization, is far from what it could be.

Cloud Companies' Share Price Increase Dramatic Versus Dow

The "Cloud" has been seeing a lot of momentum this past year, and one place where that is readily apparent is in the stock price of companies making major strategic investments in Cloud technology and associated offerings, as well as aggressive go-to-market plans with those offerings.

To demonstrate this, take a look at the one-year stock price increase of eight major cloud vendors versus the Dow Jones Industrial Average. These eight growth companies were selected because of their software-as-a-service (SAAS) or infrastructure-as-a-service (IAAS) focus. They are Informatica (INFA), Salesforce.com (CRM), Amazon (AMZN), Netsuite (N), Rackspace (RAX), Success Factors (SFSF), Akamai (AKAM), and VMWare (VMW). These securities have seen on average an 81% price increase over the past year, versus a paltry 6% versus the Dow Jones Industrial Average (which at least has gone up).

Will it continue? There is still a long way to go in this space, so probably so.

Are Your Call Center Reps Spending Too Much Time Collecting Caller Data?

Using benchmarking to gauge call center performance can significantly help boost call center ROI over the long run. Measuring performance can aid in pinpointing those key metrics within a call center that can be improved by applying technology.

One such metric is the average amount of time a completed call takes. Reducing the average per-call time spent on the phone even twenty to thirty seconds can result in tremendous cost savings across thousands or even millions of calls, and can significantly contribute to the bottom line in many ways.

For example, call center representatives often spend a good deal of time collecting data about customers or prospective customers while on a call. If this data collection component of a call can be reduced, the cost savings can be significant. Also, a representative then has more time to perform actual customer service or answering questions, resulting in happier customers.

One way to reduce this time spent on the phone is by using an electronic data collection form that can be auto-filled using integrated Web services APIs within the call center application. The simplest example is using a caller-provided zip code or postal code to automatically populate a data entry form with city, state, country and other pertinent geographical information. Other services such as a frequently updated reverse telephone number service can provide more specific information such as name and address (and other consumer or business demographics) pre-populated from a Caller-ID mechanism.

These time savers not only can have dramatic cost-savings over a large number of calls, they also ensure more accurate information as human error is significantly reduced. There are also other verification services available to check data in the same way in cases where manual data entry must be employed. Call center analytics are often much more accurate when comprehensive data about callers are compiled, rather than partial and incomplete data that can leave significant business intelligence gaps.

These are basic examples, but they can go along way in improving over-all call center performance and ROI.

Cell Phone Numbers and the "Do Not Call" List

One of the many Web service APIs StrikeIron provides "out in the Cloud" is the ability to check if a telephone number is on the Federal "Do Not Call" list or one of the many similar state lists. This helps an organization that makes outbound telephone calls stay in compliance with Federal Trade Commission and state laws much more easily and cost-effectively. StrikeIron provides this service as an easy-to-integrate API. We also have done a slick integration into Salesforce.com, making compliance within Salesforce very easy as well.

If you are not familiar with the Do Not Call (DNC) list, you can simply register your telephone number to this national list, and by law, telemarketers may not call you pitching their various products and offers. There are exceptions of course (such as if you owe money to an organization), but in general companies face large fines if they do not adhere to this list with their outbound efforts. The largest fine levied so far has been in excess of $5 million dollars, and over sixty organizations have faced legal action for violating the list since its inception.

When the StrikeIron service is invoked (either a SOAP or REST call from an application) to check a given number, typically from a call center application or a business process of some kind, it checks other lists as well such as the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) list. It returns whether or not the provided number can be called, and if not, the reason it can not be called.

One of the possible reasons that we indicate a number can not be called is that the number is a cell phone. Federal regulations already prohibit most telemarketing targeted to cell phones.

We invariably get asked whether or not cell phones need to be separately registered with the DNC list. We also often get asked if the viral emails that are traveling the world indicating that cell phone numbers are going to be released to telemarketers very soon are true. The answer to both questions is no. There is no impending deluge of telemarketing about to occur to mobile devices. There is no separate cell phone registry either.

While you can register a cell phone number to the Federal DNC list without harm, there are already laws in place to prohibit telemarketers from using auto-dialers to dial cell phones and calling cell phone numbers without the consent of a consumer. So there is no need for cell phones to be registered to the list.

And if you are using a service such as StrikeIron's subscription-based DNC Call List Verification to check numbers against the DNC list, you can rest assured that cell phone numbers that are checked will come back with the appropriate response.

What Address Verification Standards Does StrikeIron Use?

At StrikeIron, we have hundreds and hundreds of customers that use our address verification capabilities to ensure impeccable address quality in various business systems. These uses include CRM, call centers, marketing systems, for use in various GIS systems, and also to drastically reduce customer service problems associated with incorrectly shipped products in e-commerce scenarios.

Each of these individual customers is verifying addresses "in the Cloud" using our subscription-based address verification offerings (delivered as easy-to-integrate SOAP and REST APIs), often several times a second each, twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week.

The primary reasons customers work with StrikeIron are because of our high performance delivery, the investments in reliable infrastructure we have made, and the zero data maintenance required to work with our products (we do all of the reference data updates in our own data center so our customers don't have to worry about the time consuming and costly process).

However, from time to time we get questions as to why a certain street address abbreviation gets applied, why a suite number gets standardized the way it does, and several other similar questions. Invariably, in the case of USA address verification for example (we also have Canadian and global address verification capabilities), we point people to the postal addressing standards documentation provided by the United States Postal Service (USPS). These guidelines define the correct abbreviations and address processing logic that is utilized within our systems. These rules also ensure the greatest level of address quality across multiple systems and use cases.

If you'd like to know exactly what these standards are, the USPS guidelines can be found here: http://pe.usps.com/cpim/ftp/pubs/pub28/pub28.pdf

So in addition to all of other great performance, reliability, and reduction of complexity reasons to integrate StrikeIron address verification into Websites, business processes, and other applications, another great reason is the assurance that we are utilizing the highest possible standard of address quality processing when we deliver verified, standardized, and enhanced addresses by the millisecond, anywhere in the World.