As Portsmouth Business School plan research needed to improve the contribution of IT to developing business relationships, Beth Rogers reviews the story so far…

Integrating systems and people in business-to-business customer relationships remains a considerable challenge for many companies.  Many marketing and sales managers report problems in implementing and managing the relationship between systems and data on the one hand and sales executives on the other. For example, perceptions of “doing admin” can affect salespeople’s morale, and concerns about “losing the personal touch” can affect the quality of customer relationships.

The customer experience

The problems caused by not integrating systems with personal contact are even worse. In close business relationships, missing information and communication lapses irritate customers. Purchasing professionals demand electronic access to information, transactions and communications.

Business-to-business customer relationship management has moved beyond automating transactions and cost-cutting. Many companies have customer extranets and web-based interaction.  Purchasers expect to find all the information they need at the touch of a button, and they expect all administration associated with their purchases to be handled accurately and speedily. Even small steps towards real-time information flow can improve customer satisfaction.

Companies need to research and re-research “the customer experience”.  Whether they use systems or personal contact or both, only they can judge the relative effectiveness of suppliers in providing experiences at “touchpoints” that help to develop business relationships.  Customer views should be a dominant factor in strategy formulation.

Employee experience

Strategies, of course, have to be implemented.  So another major consideration is employees’ experience of new approaches to relationship building with customers.  For example, we assume that sales force automation should improve the job satisfaction of salespeople, because they can save time scheduling meetings, follow-ups, call-outs, deliveries, etc. The availability of extranets means that customers can use e-channels to conduct routine transactions, and that should result in sales calls focusing on the really interesting and innovative stuff, rather than assisting the customer with routine tasks.  The feedback of customer information to marketing can open up opportunities for new communications with customers to raise awareness of the range of company products and services. 

Unfortunately, many salespeople do not believe in this scenario. They feel frustrated with technology.  Some implementations have resulted in salespeople leaving, because they feel that their time is wasted on “too much admin”, or they feel threatened by sharing what they know about customers, or controlled by reporting activity.  

There is no way back to a world without extranets and sales force automation (SFA), and modern corporate governance regulations mean that the salesman’s “little black book” of contacts is a thing of the past.  Companies have to manage information about customers carefully and securely. Salespeople need to resolve their issues for the sake of their careers as much as employers need to resolve them for the sake of the business. 

So what sort of systems support is really going to satisfy customers and salespeople feel empowered?  We know from best practice to date that there are a number of success factors.

Strategy

The integration of systems and personal aspects of customer relationships is a necessity for any substantially-sized business, but there are still different strategic foundations for it.  It has been associated with cost-cutting, but now we see companies focusing on customer convenience.  Salespeople and others involved in and affected by systems change need to know what the Board is trying to achieve and why. 

Should inertia be a risk, they also need to know that change in not only important, it is going to be reinforced.  Of course, Board members first need to be convinced that benefits can be derived from more investment in customer-facing systems in their particular environment.  Providers of systems have to be prepared for extensive examination of the business case and small-scale pilots to test it.    

Culture change

Senior management focus is enormously helpful, but successful companies often emphasise the critical importance of cultural change.  Opening up discussions about what the system could do to benefit individuals in their job, their relationships with customers and other parts of their own organisation is normal practice.  Problems and concerns cannot be buried – they are even more dangerous underground than out in the open. They need to be aired and explored.  Psychologists suggest that frequent and persistent reminders of the benefits of change can help people to realise their own solutions to their worries.

Process excellence

Most problems are not technological. Customer-facing processes have been automated for long enough for us to be sure that the software works.  But, how can any automated process contribute to customer intimacy?  Well, it depends whether that process has been designed with the customer’s needs in mind. 

Most manual processes used to be designed to move product from A to B.  Data quality might be a problem. Duplication and “papering over the cracks” were accepted.  First generation information systems inherited these problems, but now systems are granular enough to be redesigned as improvements are needed. 

Having a single view of customer activity across all functions and divisions is well-established as a critical aspect of efficiency and responsiveness.  “Intimacy” may be a strange way of putting it, but if a customer is going to integrate some part of their system with a supplier (a key element of relationship development) they are going to need to be confident that the supplier’s systems are good.

The right technology

We can make sweeping assumptions these days about the reliability of technology, so the new problem for decision-makers involved in buying technology for companies is having too much choice.  Being “leading edge” might excite customers and employees, or being conservative in technology choice might be reassuring. 

The balance of risk and reward will vary from company to company, but it is worth considering that the amount of investment and degree of innovation will give out messages about how important the system is.  Is it designed for strategic competitive edge, or for operational expediency?

Measuring returns

Measuring the success of anything adds about 8% to the cost of it.  But the hidden cost of not monitoring progress could be disastrous.  Many systems implementations, especially those involving the customer interface, have struggled to meet expectations.  Financial returns always seem to take longer than forecast.  That is common to the history of all technological progress.  Only where qualitative factors are also measured can the obstacles to full effectiveness be identified and dealt with.  Up-selling will not increase by 20% if the customer does not get to hear about new offerings whether it comes from an e-mail bulletin or salesperson follow-up.  Once again, researching the customer experience and employee usage has to make sense.

Continuous improvement

Many CRM and SFA implementations were prematurely denounced as failures when they were still work in progress.  They are so different from shopfloor automation or financial software.  They are totally dependent on the quality of user experience in both the supplying and the buying company. 

Very often it has been impossible to predict what functionality will be welcomed until something unwelcome has been tried and criticised. Compared to something like a network upgrade, implementing CRM is a project from hell.  It needs milestones, but cannot be finalised.  Improvements will be needed, small and large, ad infinitum.

In summary….

It is easy to forget when reading and writing case studies about integrations of systems in business-to-business relationship building that even the most successful companies feel pressure to constantly “raise the bar” and do better. 

Why do salespeople still feel threatened, when, despite warnings to the contrary, e-commerce has not diminished their profession?  Why so purchasing professionals still worry about supplier integrity, when so much information is freely available to them?  How much time is wasted still trying to “paper over the cracks” when systems don’t get used properly? 

There is still plenty to explore about the role of information systems in developing business-to-business relationships.  Here at Portsmouth we are planning a new research project on this topic, and are seeking potential sponsors.  If you would like to find out more, please contact:

By Beth Rogers
Senior Lecturer, University of Portsmouth Business School

Email: Beth.rogers@port.ac.uk
Web: http://www.port.ac.uk/

About the author

Beth Rogers manages the postgraduate programme for sales managers at PortsmouthBusinessSchool. She is Chair of the UK National Sales Board.  Beth is a popular author and speaker on sales management. Her book “Rethinking sales management” recently reached the Amazon “hot new releases” top 10 in the US in its category.