Past Versus Present
More than any other time in history, consumer goods sales and marketing teams are leaning on intelligent systems to navigate change. CGT’s Publisher, Albert Guffanti, asks industry expert Michael Shoemaker of Microsoft to explain why yesterday’s technologies don’t match up to modern day business and consumer needs. How has the face of CRM changed for CG companies?
Shoemaker: Real-time access to information is the driving force behind the behavior of consumers who are “connected.” In younger days, we were influenced by our parents’ brand loyalty and television, but even TV is almost too slow relative to the Internet and smartphones. Young buyers today are anything but brand loyal.
CRM has been around a long time, but most sales and marketing information systems a decade ago (or less) required complex set up and design for adaptation to a business’ strategy at that particular point in time. Beyond cost, those processes fundamentally “prevented” progressive capture of market share more than they enhanced it. The information was based on routine input from sales and marketing, but the design and implementation came from operations. Entering raw data was like “homework” after a challenging day, and then of course, consumer behavior changed the strategy every quarter!
Modern CRM systems are still evolving, but yielding big ROI for proactive CG companies. Personalized, role-based input screens have enabled user adaptation; deployment on personal mobile devices is allowing real-time input; and modern development platforms are solving the criteria that prevented adjustment to the constant state of change. Live dashboards are allowing imaginative marketers to plug into social sites for real-time campaign impact; usable workflow engines are closing the gap on customer service responsiveness; and collaborative sharing functions are bringing group thinking to insightful levels for the responsiveness we all need to compete!
How can ERP solutions make sales and marketing processes more efficient for CG companies?
Shoemaker: Sales and marketing roles have evolved into an ubiquitous state and need to have one eye on the consumer and the other eye on company dashboards at all times to stay ahead of the competition. New brands and enhanced product options, combined with unlimited communications make shopping 24/7 a virtual reality. Staying relevant for savvy sales and marketing teams requires not only real-time data, but informational guidance from the data. ERP solutions, smartly implemented, bring together a single source of master data across a business. Ideally, this provides a backbone for departmental contribution and output search tools for retrieval access throughout the enterprise. ERP, then, becomes almost a passport to compete. Efficiency gains improve across organizations when departmental silos become connected, opening the opportunity for “integrated collaboration” not only between sales, marketing and operations, but with externally connected suppliers and customers through connected portals.
How do ERP capabilities and opportunities differ from just 5 years ago?
Shoemaker: Conceptually, the idea behind ERP has always been to facilitate the onslaught of informational need across organizations by aggregating cross-departmental data. However, until recent, only companies with gobs of time and resources have afforded “working” companywide ERP solutions. And, even those successes experience frustration at the operating level with the challenges of localness, culture and the constant rate of change in today’s marketplace, forcing perpetual adjustments to systems. Thanks to advances in chip designers, processing power has improved at a precipitous clip. Modern ERP solutions, designed to operate across 32-bit platforms, are incorporating several core innovations we didn’t used to see “out of the box”, including:
- Information output engines, like enterprise search and self-serve business intelligence
- Role-tailored user screens to facilitate rapid deployment, security and efficiency gain
- Workflow engines to drive business process execution and connect internal and external participants
- Rapid deployment models connecting departments, divisions, countries and M&A to ERP by industry
- Built-in integrations to standard productivity and collaboration applications
Overall, CG companies need an ERP strategy to compliment and facilitate advances in the way we work together. This will enable them to keep pace with the consumer and constant improvements driving the multi-channel shopping experience.