CRM for the small to medium enterprise--king-sized CRM on a Bite-Sized budget. (Customer Relationship Management).

All enterprises are not created equal. The wild habitat that is today's business matket-place includes enterprise animals of all dimensions -- from the 800-pound gorilla to the agile yet moderate jaguar to the diminutive yet highly adaptable chameleon.

Enterprises of every shape and size are leveraging the fiscal and strategic advantages of strong customer relationships. Today's small to medium-sized enterprises (SME) are realizing how effective CRM can help to acquire, retain and grow profitable, long-term customer relationships and even reduce overhead in sales, marketing and support.

The benefits of the latest technologies are not reserved for the colossal corporations. Small to medium-sized enterprises, however, require specific business strategies and procedures when exploring CRM technologies in order to co-exist with the dominating giants of the industry.

SMEs require a well-thought CRM strategy and technology that installs quickly with few technical resources, is easy to use and offers integration with existing applications. Scalability and reliability are essential, and in the end, the solution must have a low total cost of ownership.

In an aggressive marketplace, CRM technologies can help SMEs respond to new competitive pressures, but only if the chosen solution is accompanied by defined goals and refined business rules and procedures. For SMEs looking to implement CRM, achieving the functionality of the larger companies is a two-part process. With the right plan and technology in place, SMEs can leverage all the benefits of CRM and might even see a better ROI than some of the larger species in their habitat.

Part I: Strategy

The Best Laid Plans

The lack of a planning has often been fingered as the culprit in the overwhelming amount of CRM failures exposed in the past few years. Many CRM vendors were slinging their solutions to customers that were simply not ready for them, and the result gave CRM solutions the mistaken reputation as vaporware.

SMEs need to determine what internal processes can be improved upon or replaced in order to better serve customers. Additionally, they should do this before they start looking for CRM technology. Determining first what should be accomplished and then devising a plan for implementing the CRM strategy will greatly increase the chances for success when it's time to apply the technology.

With a myriad of highly functional CRM solutions on the market, the possibility of improved support, more cohesive sales and marketing decisions and more fruitful customer relationships is completely realistic. Yet, without a plan to adapt the technology effectively, the benefits are lost, leaving a big software bill and a very angry CFO. End-users and vendors have both learned from the past failures laid to rest in the CRM graveyard. Now, responsible and well-experienced vendors know to talk strategy with prospective customers before talking technology.

Information: Sharing The Wealth

Knowledge is power, and in today's enterprise, knowledge comes down to precise, reliable information. The strength of the SME relies heavily on the ability to effectively manage and share information -- from customer and product data, to service agreements and IT assets.

You've likely got all the pieces of the puzzle -- your marketing department is implementing campaigns and collecting leads; your sales team is filling out the pipeline; and customer support is working to keep current customers satisfied.

SMEs require a CRM strategy that puts the pieces together in a powerful, yet uncomplicated manner, and technology that can unite disparate islands of information through one comprehensive tool that improves efficiency, saving time and money. When all is said and done, the most expensive part of implementing a CRM strategy is not applying it properly and ignoring your customers.

Drum Up Some Support

One of the most critical factors for ensuring successful CRM is to ensure your project has executive backing. Executives will set the tone for implementing customer-based initiatives and programs, and for the overall usage of CRM technologies. CRM initiatives have the best chance for success when it is driven, or at least supported by, key executives.

It is also essential to involve the future users - support representatives, IT staff and so on -- in the strategy and decision-making process. By creating a team of key users, representing various functions in the organization, you promote success through an expert panel that can tell you exactly how the product should be used and how it can be tailored to best meet the company's processes.

From a technology standpoint, it is critical to carefully evaluate CRM suppliers. Companies should ask the question: Can this CRM supplier help my company meet its goals and effectively bond their technology to our processes? If the answer is a confident "yes," then the implementation has a much better chance of succeeding.

Now, the proper strategy is in place. So what should CIOs and IT managers look for when selecting a CRM solution for their SME?

Part 2: Selecting The Solution

King-Size CRM On A Bite-Sized Budget

It sounds like pure fiction, or a hallucination a CIO has late at night while poring over a stack of vendor proposals. But finding a CRM solution that delivers high-level functionality and fits the SME budget is nor just a daydream.

To ensure that the CRM solution selected is truly the best fir for the best price, SMEs should evaluate vendors that specifically target their market. Vendors that have historically targeted the Fortune 500 and the like are beginning to strip down their solutions, lowering the cost to make them affordable to SMEs. Be cautious: often these solutions lack the functionality and depth required to be truly effective.

Plan For Growth

In any enterprise, growth -- of internal staff, the customer base, revenues -- is desirable and often inevitable. For the SME, growth tends to happen in large percentages. Because every penny counts, every software and hardware purchase by the SME must be essential and hold its value over time. Therefore, the allowance for growth should be placed at the top of the list of features to look for in a CRM solution. A solution that provides vast scalability and a modular structure will grow with your business and protect the company's investment in existing assets as well as allow for seamless integration with future hardware and software purchases.

Customizations: Friend Or Foe?

Customizations should work for you, not against you. In the spirit of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," don't tweak a solution just because you can -- it's expensive and it can complicate what may be a simple process. There are many CRM solutions that are highly functional right out of the box and, with a few simple customizations, can be designed to fir individual business rules.

Then again, SMEs shouldn't go for "quick fix" CRM solutions that often offer limited functionality right along with the minimal potential for customization.

Attaining the technology for CRM is an investment on its own. SMEs should look for a solution that won't end up costing an arm and a leg in consulting and professional services charges. It's also a good idea to select a solution that uses a standard development language for customizations, like Visual Basic, Visual Basic .NET or Java, so that there is no proprietary development learning curve and an ever-increasing supply of qualified and inexpensive developers on hand.

Metrics For Success

What good is it to implement CRM strategies and technology if you don't know how they are affecting your organization? After all, CRM is not just about improving customer relationships, it's also about enhancing business processes in order to positively impact the top and bottom lines.

It's important to select a CRM solution that helps support departments and management identify and forecast their contribution to the bottom line, in order to reach greater profitability and predictability. From the sales perspective, CRM technology should provide reporting functionality that enables SMEs to monitor the sales pipeline and analyze leads. This will enable management to oversee the pipeline for forecasting and detailed reporting, improving the efficiency of the sales force.

Reporting features should touch every point of your CRM implementation, including marketing. A CRM solution that can track marketing efforts and determine which campaigns produce leads that turn into sales will allow focus to be shifted off less successful projects so resources can be placed on the ventures that produce profitable results.

Furthermore, a CRM solution should deliver flexibility beyond standard reporting. CRM should empower you with robust reporting capabilities with the ability to develop additional customized reports and automate reporting processes.

Let Customers Help Themselves

What's better than a support center that resolves customer issues quickly and effectively? An online support center that allows customers to help themselves quickly and effectively. By allowing customers to be autonomous in seeking solutions, you establish a more productive relationship and can keep customers satisfied, while reducing support costs.

Many CRM vendors are adding self-service to the functionality menu of their solutions. Online self-service offers customers the opportunity to resolve certain issues without calling your support center, saving your customers time and your company money. Self-service helps improve call-center efficiency because it dramatically reduces the number of first-level calls made to the support department, so support staff can focus on more critical issues.

Self-service provides SMEs with the convenience and quick resolution customers desire, as well as the low-cost and high ROI potential of a flail-scale self-service solution.

CRM, The Open Road

CRM has the potential to offer today's SME a serious advantage in the marketplace. Of course, the benefits of CRM are no secret, and enterprises of all shapes and sizes are looking to take advantage of CRM technologies.

SMEs have several advantages over the big guys when it comes to implementing CRM. For example, training processes are simpler and less expensive and often benefits are realized more quickly due to the focused efforts of smaller departments.

In the end, successful CRM comes down to a solid game plan and effective execution of the right technology. The road to CRM success doesn't have to be rocky. With a well planned strategy and a CRM technology specifically designed for the SME, the odds are the destination will be both fiscally and strategically successful. Enjoy the ride.

Doug Berry is vice president and general manager of the Clientele Group of Epicor Software Corporation (www.epicor.com). Clientele is a provider of customer relationship management solutions used by more than 3,000 companies worldwide.

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