1. CRM in the Adaptive Enterprise
CRM Must Adapt to Evolving Business Priorities
A R T i C l e
Evolutionary Considerations Businesses change, so CRM technology must be adaptable. From regulatory changes to mergers
It’s important to choose a flexible CRM and acquisitions, every shift in the external business climate can require corresponding moves in
solution. Flexible architecture and platform strategy and business processes. Businesses need technology infrastructures that can respond to
technology marks the difference between rapid change.
adaptable, competitive organizations and
inflexible, slower-moving organizations. Just as some consumers prefer modular furniture that can be expanded and contracted to
Regulatory pressures and evolving re-configure a physical space, the ability of mid-sized companies to re-configure processes quickly
permission-based marketing principles will through flexible technology can be a competitive advantage.
cause some companies to struggle and
cobble together solutions in spite of their One approach to creating a CRM solution involves envisioning every possible feature, function, and
systems. business rule that an organization might ever require over its lifetime, and then delivering it out-of-
the-box. Vendors who’ve taken this approach have produced CRM solutions that are cumbersome
Forward-thinking and agile enterprises will
select flexible CRM to move them forward,
and inflexible.
and might view the need to address regulatory
Instead of trying to envision every possible feature and business rule, Pivotal CRM provides a set of
requirements as an opportunity to renovate
their systems. building blocks that can be assembled to support unique business processes and solutions. These
building blocks consist of product architecture and platform technology. The Pivotal CRM solutions
Key questions to consider: for sales, marketing, service, and channel management, as well as our industry-specific solutions,
• Are your market conditions stable or derive their flexibility from the strength of these building blocks.
dynamic?
For many of our customers, this has provided the agility they need to connect with their clients and
• Will you need to change the way you
to link systems and applications inside and outside the company, as well as the flexibility to adapt
do business to keep up or outpace the
competition?
to changing business requirements.
• What is your plan to keep up with regulatory Customization Versus Configuration
pressures in your industry?
In general, there are two measures of CRM flexibility: configurability and customizability. Each
• What technology infrastructure is needed to of these has its own distinct merits, despite the fact that the industry often uses the terms
support new systems, new data sources, interchangeably.
and new users?
• Can all important and relevant customer Configuration lets even non-technical users make changes to the application or the user interface,
information be collected and combined typically without programming. For example, users can select pre-determined security settings,
within this technology infrastructure? change interface preferences, or define sales territories. Configuration is restrictive in that
configuration settings are limited to a range of pre-defined possibilities. As a result, organizations
can only model their business processes within the limits of the configuration settings delivered by
the vendor. This “sandbox” solution is valid if and only if your vendor understands your business
better than you do. For more complex configurations, such as end-to-end business processes, a
business analyst can be employed to configure each module within the overall CRM application.
Customization lets companies model unique business processes by modifying an application or
template through system-level properties or programming code. For example, a sales process to
manage RFPs or RFIs could be modeled by adding tables and code to customize an application.
Customization, when done properly, allows organizations to “redefine the sandbox” by supporting
their existing business processes (no matter how complex), or even creating new ones.
Making it easy to customize a CRM application is one of our core differentiators. Through a
combination of configuration and customization, Pivotal CRM solutions can be modeled to any
business process, while configuration settings are limited appropriately to areas such as allowing
sales managers to change a sales process by editing milestones, or allowing users to personalize
display preferences.
The Pivotal CRM Approach
The Pivotal CRM Suite is unique in combining a flexible platform with key out-of-the-box features,
resulting in an architecture that is as easy to customize as it is to configure. A customizable CRM
application supports changes in both underlying data definitions and business-process rules
without requiring alteration of source code, binaries, or runtime environments.
Adaptable CRM Architecture
The Pivotal CRM architecture is “metadata-driven,” which means customer data is isolated from the
business rules that describe how data is used. A metadata-driven approach to architecture makes
Pivotal CRM | Article

2. it easy to change both how and what data is presented, Interfaces) for Visual Basic and VB Script application
modified, distributed, or accessed. New database tables can developers to customize against, as well as providing support
be added, for example, and business rules that describe for .NET scripting, with the ability to write new server scripts in
workflows can be altered. Other systems can be integrated, C#, VB.NET, and other .NET languages.
security settings can be modified, and even the look of
the application can be tailored for different users. Not all Deployability
CRM solutions can be customized like this. For some CRM The implementation of a CRM system rarely comprises the
solutions, customer data and the rules that describe it are largest cost in any CRM deployment. As business goals and
inextricably linked together, forcing a business to operate the processes change or become more refined in response to the
way the technology does. changing marketplace and competition, the CRM deployment
needs to evolve in lock-step. To faciliate this ability to move
Built to leverage .NeT with the organization, CRM systems must be implemented
Pivotal CRM’s metadata-driven architecture is designed on with the foresight to allow for post-implementation
the .NET framework—significantly decreasing the time and configuration and/or customization without disrupting day-to-
effort needed to integrate CRM with enterprise applications day business.
and data, both within and across business boundaries.
.NET enables both new and existing applications to connect Most CRM vendors deliver support for offline test and
with software and services across platforms, applications, development systems, allowing customers to create,
and programming languages using standard Web Services implement, and test customizations/configurations before
protocols (XML, SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI). This facilitates moving them into production. Some systems require that
the ability of Pivotal CRM to integrate with Web Services, and customers re-implement the changes they’ve made to their
provides the ability to quickly build, deploy, manage, and use test system (code line by code line) on their production
connected, secure solutions. Companies can extend their system.
existing infrastructure more quickly in the way they see fit. By comparison, Pivotal CRM provides a push-button
implementation method: customizers centrally modify the
A Graphical Customization Toolkit Pivotal CRM system and move customizations from an offline
Customizations are performed within the Pivotal CRM development system into production with a single command
graphical customization toolkit, an easy-to-use visual tool that called a UFO, or Upgrade From Offline.
enables rapid customization to meet business needs. Familiar
metaphors such as forms, tables, lists, and queries—the The Right CRM Architecture Makes You
key elements that customizers interact with—are designed
to be intuitive for customizers to use and learn. Pivotal CRM
Adaptable
provides an elegant, uncomplicated framework for how these For complex organizations that require robust sales,
metaphors interact with each other to create functionality. marketing, service, and channel management capabilities,
being able to customize a CRM solution is essential. These
Customizers work with forms, which are the visual companies need to model unique business processes, and
representation of CRM data, business processes, and they often have to integrate a CRM solution with other existing
workflow that the user sees on their client. Forms contain enterprise applications. For CRM software, flexibility is a
the database structure—every field on a form is, by default, function of how easily the software can be customized and
linked to a table in the database. To modify a form to meet integrated. This flexibility is determined, or constrained, by the
the needs of users, customizers lay out the form directly software’s underlying architecture.
using point-and-click buttons and other screen elements.
Customizations are then saved as metadata, not as code or Centra (USA)
rigid table extensions. Centra, a leading provider of specialized software and
services for online business collaboration, has embraced
For example, creating a simple customer contact form
CRM across all customer-facing aspects of its business,
requires the customizer simply to link the new form to the
automating its sales, marketing, and service departments.
corresponding database element, lay out the form using our
Centra’s director of business systems, Todd Williamson,
graphical form designer, and register the new form with the
describes Pivotal CRM as a “springboard” for their ongoing
navigation menu. All this is done without needing to write a
service and support strategy. He says, “(The Pivotal CRM)
single line of code. If a new table is required for this form,
architecture allows us to more quickly adapt our technology to
Pivotal CRM has graphical tools to allow the customizer to
ever-changing business needs.”
quickly build new tables into the system.
Using Pivotal CRM, in conjunction with CDC MarketFirst,
This powerful WYSIWYG model for customization makes the
Centra manages all marketing projects and campaigns;
process easy, rapid, and intuitive. Pivotal CRM provides form
provides opportunity management and forecasting
templates out-of-the-box with logic and rules built in. In this
support for sales; delivers incident tracking and support-
way, the customizer role can be filled by any business analyst,
contract management to the support department; offers a
because no code-level changes are required.
knowledgebase for all employees; and, provides the product-
To ensure customizers have a full range of options for how development group with customer enhancement requests and
they prefer to work, the Pivotal CRM team makes available technical-issue management.
a comprehensive library of APIs (Application Programming
Pivotal CRM | Article

3. Asked what aspects of their business they use Pivotal CRM Compliance Can Present New Opportunities
for, Williamson says, “It’s probably easier to define what Evolving regulatory-compliance requirements in every industry
we don’t use it for.” He adds, “Today Centra has the most mean that businesses have to assess and report on more
maintainable and extensible architecture to move our CRM internal controls. Rather than implementing stand-alone
application forward. As business rules change, we now have applications that support each regulation, more businesses
the lowest total cost of development and administration are investing in technology applications that not only enhance
environment within which to grow our internal systems and their ability to comply, but further improve efficiency.
processes.”
Of course, there are a slew of federal and industry regulations.
eSRi (USA) California Senate Bill 800 (SB800) gives homebuilders the
For ESRI, CRM was about creating a centralized company right to fix problems that may occur in a new home before
knowledgebase to bring together everything ESRI “knew” the homeowner can file a lawsuit. AMA’s Council on Judicial
about a given customer. ESRI wanted their solution to give and Ethical Affairs publishes guidelines to help physicians
them a better way to serve an ever-growing customer base, and industry representatives make ethical decisions regarding
which now includes most U.S. federal agencies, national the appropriateness of gifts. Sarbanes-Oxley protects
mapping agencies, 45 of the top 50 petroleum companies, shareholders and the general public from accounting errors
U.S. state health departments, and most forestry companies. and fraudulent practices.
ESRI’s director of sales operations, Jeff Peters, explains, “We There’s an opportunity for companies to leverage investments
have always been very customer-driven. The problem was in CRM to automate and otherwise improve their business
finding a system that could support this customer-driven processes, as well as comply with regulations. In financial
company approach, and then re-engineering our approach to services, for example, organizations face multitudes of
data to architecturally support that solution.” compliance issues. Gram-Leach Bliley (or PIPEDA in Canada)
regulates how customer information is handled, used, and
“Customization is the strength of Pivotal CRM —that’s why we shared by companies. Regulatory bodies such as the SEC or
chose it,” adds Peters. “It’s the fact that Pivotal CRM offers NASD have their own regulations; for example, tracking gift-
a rapid development environment and highly customizable giving to asset managers, and disclosing of affiliations and
system. We would never have gotten out of the gate if we had interactions with analysts and reported companies.
a pre-canned system that forced us to tell people that they
had to change the way they do things. People do things often These key compliance issues are addressed by the Pivotal
because that’s the way that it needs to be done. People are CRM financial services applications, which can track and
smart and want to feel like they are influencing things, so if report on: use of customer information, gifts to brokers for
you come in with a top-down sledgehammer, you might as fund wholesalers, interactions with clients (phone calls,
well uninstall the software from the system because they’re meetings, e-mails, etc.), analyst relationships with reported
not going to use it.” companies and officers, and the influences these parties may
have upon each other.
Allianz Dresdner Asset Management (United Kingdom)
Around the world, there is pressure from regulators to
Aimed at improving the service and value they provide incorporate permission-based marketing practices in all
to both institutional and retail clients, Allianz Dresdner customer and prospect contact. The companies that build
Asset Management has benefited from the flexibility and successful relationships with customers and prospects not
customizability of the Pivotal CRM system, using it to more only align themselves to incorporate privacy safeguards,
tightly integrate their marketing and sales functions. “It would but also to gather and use information in a way that sets
have been an easy option to go down the off-the-shelf or them apart from their competition. These companies are
packaged-application route, but this would not have served finding ways to tailor marketing practices to deliver targeted,
the needs of our business well in the long term,” explains personalized messages that put the right offer in front of the
Giles Hardy, head of e-business at Allianz Dresdner Asset right person at the right time, ideally using the medium of
Management. choice.
“By working closely with the Pivotal CRM team in the UK,
we have been able to take a phased approach to the FPDSavills (United Kingdom)
development and implementation of a comprehensive CRM At a time when both the commercial and residential property
solution which we expect to continue to serve our needs markets were experiencing considerable growth, the board
across both sides of our business. We recognized the value at FPDSavills made a strategic decision to centralize all
that a highly responsive CRM system could bring to our IT systems. Their goal was to reduce IT operating and
business, enabling us to open up the lines of communication management costs, drive improved customer service,
and interaction between what were previously distinct and comply with new legislation that required property-
business information silos.” management organizations to furnish full audit trails on all
mortgage services provided to their clients.
Hardy adds, “The investment management business is very
specific, detailed, and highly complex. Due to the flexibility Driven by the need to comply with the new regulations,
and customization capabilities of the Pivotal CRM technology, coupled with the need to provide a highly personalized and
we have been able to adapt the system to meet these needs.” responsive service to their clients, FPDSavills developed a
Pivotal CRM | Article

4. customized contact management and mortgage solution Flag Choice Hotels (Australia)
entirely using Pivotal CRM. Flag Choice Hotels, the second largest accommodation-
franchising group in Australia, needed a scalable solution that
FPDSavills IT director Richard Coleman states, “Using Pivotal
supported real-time distributed environments, wireless and
CRM, we are now able to manage the complete process of
disconnected users, and multiple interaction channels.
selling properties through a single system. From attracting
vendors, marketing properties, and matching with prospective “Right from the beginning, the Pivotal CRM system struck us
buyers, to managing expense claims and invoicing vendors, as being a flexible solution that would grow and develop with
Pivotal CRM underpins our entire business on a day-to-day us at our pace,” explains Flag Choice Hotels’ IT manager,
basis.” David Blackman. “Our business is extremely complex and we
have a layered approach to dealing with our various markets
Because of the speed and flexibility with which FPDSavills
and to reporting on them. In fact, Pivotal CRM has been more
developed and implemented new business modules with
widely used than originally envisaged, effectively becoming an
Pivotal CRM, they have been able to centralize core client
indispensable tool for Flag Choice’s day-to-day operations.”
information and automate business processes to meet
regulatory requirements. Flag Choice Hotels has extended the Pivotal CRM system into
other areas of the business, and continues to add features to
Sharp electronics (USA) the solution to keep in step with business change. “The initial
Sharp Electronics treads carefully between wanting to know installation highlighted just how many areas could benefit from
and serve customers well while not violating their right to Pivotal CRM,” says Blackman. “As we make greater use of the
privacy. “Privacy simply means sharing information with those technology, we continue to learn how we can work smarter
companies we trust, while not divulging to those we don’t. It and be clever in the way we develop and use it. Pivotal CRM
means using what we know about customers to meet their has opened up doors for us, and that is invaluable, given the
needs—the way they want them met,” says Sharp’s director of increasingly competitive market we work in.”
strategic marketing, Fred Krazeise.
North Shore Credit Union (Canada)
Sharp carefully tracks response rates of lifecycle message
For North Shore Credit Union, integrating flexible software
campaigns and newsletter content, even tracking the
enabled them to achieve 100% of their three-year growth
frequency with which e-mails are forwarded to colleagues and
plan target in just 18 months. One of the fastest-growing
friends. “By analyzing this information we have the insight we
credit unions in Canada, North Shore Credit Union uses
need to make changes to both our content and the frequency
CRM to help respond to rapid changes and new competitive
with which we communicate to our subscribers, ensuring
pressures in the financial services sector. “Our greatest
we’re respecting their preferences and their privacy,” says
challenge was dealing with other financial institutions that
Krazeise. He continues, “By giving customers and prospects
were globalizing, reducing costs, and therefore providing their
what they need, we’ve been able to maintain consistent
services at a cheaper price,” explains Chris Catliff, president
subscribe and unsubscribe rates for every issue.”
and CEO at North Shore Credit Union.
CRM Should Help You Grow Your Own Way “We countered by adopting an innovative model of service
Flexible CRM technology must not only capture current excellence that relies on CRM to provide timely, customized
requirements, but also retain the flexibility to change and information to our staff so that they can respond in a very
evolve with the business as rapidly as possible. What’s member-intimate fashion. Pivotal CRM met our key criteria
required is a system designed specifically to reflect the for a CRM solution because it was faster to implement, less
underlying processes both in the front-office and back-office expensive than other alternatives, and it wasn’t bulky. It
and which, as business conditions change, has the ability to allowed us the flexibility to take what we needed, and ignore
alter relevant processes appropriately. the other screens and capabilities for which we really had no
need.”
learn More About Pivotal CRM
To learn more about how Pivotal CRM can help your organization’s unique needs, call us today at +1 877-PIVOTAL (+1 877-748-6825) or visit us at
http://www.pivotal.com.
Copyright © CDC Software 2007. All rights reserved. The CDC Software logo and Pivotal CRM logo are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of CDC Software.