Orbis management system
Description
Provide a report to the CEO of Orbis, Property, Site & People Protection Company in implementing a new management system technique to solve it’s issue.
Check the added files to understand the issue and what management techniques are we implementing into solving it, using the managers opinion on CRM and BA.
Hello BYT,
It looks like my plan to have a sit down with you is increasingly unlikely. In the interests of kicking things off, I thought I should give you some background on the proposal I am promoting. Basically, what I am arguing is that we need to become more effective at cross-selling, and that’s not something that Aura and its Salesforce interface are delivering for us. But before I make the case for the new CRM package, I probably need to explain the market in a little more detail.
As you know already, our strategy continues to be to expand and enrich our offering to customers. The idea being to move from the low margin physical security business to technology-based products that we will install and provide service/monitoring over an extended period. This is all well and good assuming that: Our customers are aware of the services we can offer; that we can identify the needs that the customers have through our understanding of them; and that we have a clear view of who holds spend authority lies in the customer organization. Currently we’re a little disjointed in these efforts. In theory the Branch Managers have responsibilities for managing key accounts, and this should include building the relation through new sales. In practice their interaction with clients is predominantly around solving operational issues and maybe expanding the number of properties being managed. They simply aren’t getting enough opportunity to focus on ‘what-else’ we could offer clients. Granted we need to work with them to redefine their role, but more than this we need to be sure that they are getting relevant information from the front line about what properties could benefit from.
Customer Relationship Management is, in my view, the way to tackle this problem because it gives us the tools to know our customer better and to keep track of what we’re doing, and could be doing, for customers. Anyway, I’m not going to bore you with the sales pitch because I know you’ll have researched the CRM package we’ve identified. The key thing to grasp is how it will dovetail with Aura. As you’ will appreciate, Aura is a combination of our original sales-order processing software which handles the administrative side of things, interfacing with the stock system and the accounting package. And attached to it is a version of Salesforce which allows us to schedule jobs, and record interaction related to particular jobs. Unfortunately, we weren’t very smart when we implemented Salesforce back in 2015 and the information it captures is limited to details on specific jobs recorded between the customer and the service centre. Interaction with operatives is limited to photos of the work and notes explaining why recorded time/cost was as the level that it was.
You’ll recognise immediately that this provides little if any practical basis for leveraging what is happening on the ground – i.e. when operatives arrive and inspect properties – in order to inform and influence the client on what services would be helpful for them going forward. The proposal I’m championing would focus on the social side of the package as a means to encourage interaction between operatives about the jobs, what’s needed, and how things can be tackled. This will introduce a whole new vista of insight for operatives – who will be able to work more efficiently – and for that matter it will open up new areas of information through which Business Development can identify sales leads, and service development opportunities.
For me, CRM is the underlying issue we keep coming back to in management meetings and my BIP certainly has strategic fit. Guy is completely up to speed on this and we’re almost entirely in agreement on the direction we need to take. I know other ideas are on the table but its sales that are the lifeblood of the organization.
Regards,
Howdy BYT,
Really sorry, I’m not going to be able to Skype this afternoon, but here’s my thoughts.
Look, you’ve worked with me for a while now. You know the challenges. With the best will in the world its damn near impossible to patch together the databases in the company. For example, the Sage accounting suite that the company grew up with just isn’t up to it any more and the interface between it and the sales order system amounts to an overnight update that, often as not, throws up enough exceptions to occupy someone from IT, someone from Finance and someone from the Service Centre for half a day. Of course, this also means that there’s no direct relationship between the accounting system and Aura, or between Aura and the procurement system, you can’t trace transactions easily.
Where this really bites us is at meetings like the one next week where everybody turns up with their own home-grown report to prove that it’s not their fault. Steven and I usually end up trying to get to the bottom of things for the rest of the month. There’s also the financial reporting side of things. Steven knows more than I, but we’ve been getting pressure from the auditors to improve our controls. It went in the Management letter a couple of years ago.
Steven’s Accounting Control System proposal won’t resolve the issue, because the systems that link into the accounting one are still going to be suspect. Specifically, we still have data integrity issues in Aura, even after the upgrade in 2016. The implementation team decided not to purge the legacy data before they loaded it onto the new system. Unfortunately, some of the stuff they were loading was garbage. Lots of old, old customers including councils that are no longer in existence like ‘Strathclyde Regional Council’, I mean, where the hell is Strathclyde anyway?
This is half the challenge in the call centre because customer service people put orders in the wrong account and the credit control routine stops them dead in their tracks. Or, they manage to take the order and this generates an exception when transferring to the accounts package. Or, they can’t find an order because they’re looking in the wrong account. Or, they can’t find a contact from the customer file, or use an old contact name when phoning a client. You get the picture I’m sure.
If you take these issues together – inconsistent reporting, bespoke information produced within silos, data integrity concerns – then the answer has to be Corvu. Then again, my argument is not so much that the software will change the company as much as accessing the data that will allow us to assert managerial control over the company. I’m strongly of the belief that if we pay proper attention to the data we have – and by implication what we don’t have – we can shape what information/intelligence we draw from it. Establishing a steering committee is, therefore, central to my proposal as we’ll need to ensure we don’t end up with a mass of information requests and bespoke reports. What we need is a balanced approach in which we use Corvu to identify redundant and corrupt data; revise the interface programmes that have generated the issues between accounting and the other systems; and decide corporate priorities for information provision.
As the implementation would include a clear out of the data this allow us to save a fair amount in operating costs. Maybe 10% of call centre headcount, I dunno, you’d have to check. Plus better information in the depots and less time correcting duff orders so less downtime. Plus we’ll be able to get at some of the information that Shawna is looking for from the CRM proposal. And, if we find that buying in data –or even ‘big data’ – will help then Corvu’ll let us do that. Should yield a percent or two to the sales figures in a year or two.
Man that was a lot to get off my chest. Sorry to dump this on you, but I know you’ve got broad shoulders and a good head on you so I’m sure you’ll come to the right decision {wink}. Just remember whose paying your wages {wink, wink}. Only kidding {wink, wink, wink}.
{wink, wink, wink, wink},
