Executive CRM: Winning Over High-Powered, Low-Patience Users

Computerworld - For most organizations, it's a challenge to persuade executive-level users to use a CRM system. Executives are busy, and they're protective of their hard-won and often lucrative relationships. And unlike with a commissioned salesperson or highly managed call center staffer, the carrot-and-stick approach doesn't work as an inducement to share their knowledge with the CRM application.
Because executive users are so valuable yet so tough to win over, it is crucial to intimately understand what drives their behavior and make sure your processes and CRM platform accommodate their needs. The following are recommendations for making sure the CRM system you choose gets used at the highest rungs of the corporate ladder:

• Drive immediate gratification. If executives access the CRM system and don't find the information they're looking for, they won't come back. Therefore, take the time before deployment to ensure that the CRM system is populated with the types of data executives need at their fingertips, such as relevant relationship intelligence (i.e., who knows whom).



• Ensure reliability. Almost as inexcusable as delivering to executives a CRM system without data is delivering one with unreliable data. Poor data quality is one of the greatest inhibitors of user adoption of a CRM system. A multitude of products and services are available to help streamline the data cleansing and maintenance processes. Given the importance of the issue, leading CRM suppliers have even started building data quality and data change management tools into their products as well. Use them.



• Create a no-learning-curve environment. Most executives don't have the time, patience or inclination to learn how to use new software. To win over this elite group, the CRM system must be so intuitive to use that they can access what they need with virtually no assistance.



• Remember that vendors take different approaches to user friendliness. Some provide a Web interface and leave it at that. More innovative approaches include tight integration with personal information management (PIM) tools (such as Outlook, Lotus Notes and Novell GroupWise), which lets executive users access all CRM functionality directly from their PIM environment. Some products will push data out to users so they don't have to go searching for information. Some products do all of these things. Knowing your users helps dictate the best approach.



• Secure sensitive and private information. Executives swim in elite and confidential circles. If your CRM tool isn't flexible enough to allow executives to pick and choose what information to share or keep private (be it customers' vacation-home phone numbers or notes from a confidential conversation), they will opt out altogether. Accordingly, look closely at how and to what extent your system can be configured to provide confidentiality. And keep in mind that multiple executives will want to keep confidential information on the same contact.



• Include controls over contact data. Executives lose confidence in the CRM system when data they know to be accurate in their PIM gets changed through the bidirectional synchronization process -- for example, John Doe suddenly becomes Jonathan F. Doe. To avoid this, your CRM system should allow users to keep their own versions of contacts, without creating duplicates, even if that version differs from the central repository.



• Align internal processes. Internal processes, like incentives and compensation, must also be aligned with your CRM strategy. Some organizations base bonuses in part on CRM contributions for precisely this reason. If executives have incentive not to share, chances are they won't.