What does CRM stand for?
Yeah!
I know what you are thinking…
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management.
It’s simple, right?
Well,
It’s not that simple.
CRM does lot more than just managing customers.
Okay, now let’s get down to business:
Features of CRM software.
This is one of the most important part of CRM that you must know.
Why?
Because
And
There are 3 KEY reasons behind this failure are –
I am telling you:
Working as a CRM Business Analyst, this is one of the most frequently asked questions that I have faced.
And you know what?
When I tell them about benefits of CRM, very next question that comes is –
What is best CRM for my business?
In today’s super competitive age, it is really difficult to run a business without systematic approach.
And I call that approach as CRM (Customer Relationship Management).
History of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software.
Let me tell you, History is not always a dull, monotonous subject. (Really ?)
However I never understood – what is the point of knowing King X fought with King Y 1000 years ago! 🙁
But guess what?
Here I will talk about History of CRM Software. (I am serious!)
And,
I am telling you, History of CRM is not boring like our History subject.
Over the past few decades, CRM has undergone sea-changes – from old ledger days to today’s Cloud/SaaS based CRM.
So, let’s start the fun!
Ledger is the oldest form of CRM.
Those days paper and pen were enough for businesses to note down basic customer details and sales information.
Remember,
A device with rotating wheel fitted with removable cards –
Yes, that’s a Rolodex – a rotating file device to store contact information.
Rolling + Index = Rolodex
It holds special kind of index cards that can be removed or added to the rotating spindle. Each card contains details about a person or company.
In 1956, Danish engineer Hildaur Neilsen invented Rolodex, an improved version of Wheeldex. (Source: Wikipedia).
It made life bit easier than ledger as business could easily locate customers, update details or add new customers.
Digitization started with Mainframe system.
Mainframe digitized all manual files to save storage space, organize customer data and facilitate quick search.
But,
Mainly large organizations used it for critical applications and bulk data processing such as consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning and transaction processing.
You may wonder,
Why 1970s when Mainframe computers were available from 1950s?
Though mainframe was invented in late 1950s, there was almost no user interface till early 1970s.
In earlier days, data was mainly uploaded in batch mode in Mainframe system using punched cards, paper tape or magnetic tape.
By early 1970s, many mainframes got interactive user interfaces. It helped users to work simultaneously along with batch processing.
IBM played a major role in producing mainframe system.
Since inception, mainframe system has gone through many ups and downs. Modern mainframe can run multiple different instances of operating systems at the same time. This technique of virtual machines enables applications to run as if they were on physically distinct computers.
Mainframe is the most secure system with low single digit vulnerabilities compared to other systems like Windows, Unix, and Linux.
Many organizations, mainly financial and airline sector, still use it for back end transaction processing.
In 2015, IBM launched its most recent generation mainframe – IBM z13.
( Want to know more about Mainframe? I would suggest you to take 2 training courses – The Complete Mainframe Professional Course of TSO/ISPF and JCL. )
Database marketing played a major role in history of CRM software. It was the first big move to integrate customers with sales strategy.
Database marketing was improved form of direct marketing. Organizations started to collect and analyze customer details to gain better insight about customers’ behavior.
Marketing professionals used to communicate directly with customers or prospects for higher conversion. It helped business to send personalized communications to increase sales.
But,
Main drawback of database marketing is that it was more like a one way communication.
There was no way to track customers’ responses.
Mainly Robert D. Bob and Kate Kestnbaum pioneered database marketing. They developed new metrics including customer lifetime value and applying financial modelling to marketing strategies.
In 1967, they founded a consulting firm ‘Kestnbaum & Co‘. This was the training ground for many of database marketing leaders and thinkers like Robert Blattberg, Rick Courtheaux and Robert Shaw.(Source: Wikipedia).
In 1980s, Kestnbaum collaborated with Robert Shaw and developed marketing database for many big organizations like BT (20 million customers), BA (10 million), Barclays (13 million).
Shaw introduced new features into the Kestnbaum approach like
(Source: Wikipedia)
Later these features have been incorporated into CRM.
YES!
– Acronym for ‘Yes, Everybody Sells!’.
In 1986, Mike Muhney and Pat Sullivan founded Conductor Software in Carrollton, Texas. They started a new project named as ‘YES!’. This was later known as ‘ACT!’.
In 1987, Conductor Software lunched first contact management software – ACT!.
Original name was Activity Control Technology and then changed to Automated Contact Tracking.
It was the first contact management software. Later Goldmine and other vendors also released CMS applications.
CMS was nothing but a digital rolodex.
It helped business to store and manage customer data efficiently. It also connected various business units like sales, marketing, service mostly by back end jobs.
To use CMS system, companies had to invest a lot in software and hardware maintenance and dedicated IT employees.
In early 90s, database marketing transformed into Sales Force Automation (SFA).
It enabled companies to track leads, contacts, opportunities, quotes and many other sales related business functionalities efficiently.
Sales Force Automation = Contact Management System + Lead Tracking System
Those days, Siebel was the most popular SFA software in the market. It played an important role in evolution of Customer Relationship Management.
In 1993, Thomas Siebel and Patricia House founded Siebel Inc.
And,
In 1995, Siebel Inc. released first Siebel Sales Enterprise software for sales force automation.
Today SFA is a part of CRM beside marketing and customer service.
In 1995, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is coined.
Who invented that name?
Well,
That’s a debatable matter.
Mostly credit goes to technology research company Gartner. But some point to Tom Siebel also.
Few other names were also considered like Customer Information Management (CIM), Customer Information System (CIS), Enterprise Customer Management (ECM). But CRM stood out and accepted by majority.
In late 90s, many ERP vendors like Oracle, SAP entered into CRM market via acquisitions or in-house development.
In 1997, Siebel made two acquisitions – InterActive WorkPlace Inc.and Nomadic Systems Inc. It became the fastest growing company in United States.
In 1999, Siebel released first mobile CRM – Siebel Sales handheld.
Oracle, SAP, Peoplesoft also launched mobile version of their CRM applications.
However,
Mobile adoption was not so popular those days due to lack of devices and network connectivity.
In 1999, former Oracle executive Marc Benioff and 3 others (Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez) formed Salesforce.com, a company specialized in software as a service (SaaS). (Source: Wikipedia )
A new era of CRM began…
But
You know about Y2K problem, right?
Like other software applications, CRM was also hit hard by dot-com bubble.
Oracle experienced a loss in licenses of over 25%.
For the first time, Siebel reported decline in quarterly revenue.
Cloud based software industries were hit hardest as companies stopped spending on dot.com technology.
Post Y2K, many new vendors entered into CRM market.
In 2001, Microsoft acquired Navision and released Dynamic CRM in 2003. The main benefit of this CRM is its strong integration with other Microsoft products like Outlook, MS Word.
In 2006, Oracle acquired Siebel in a deal worth $5.8 billion.
In 2007, Salesforce.com launched force.com, cloud based application development environment. This was a major step to push CRM in the cloud – Software As A Service. Force.com is a platform as a service (PaaS) that allows developers to create multi-tenant add-on applications.
And with this a chapter started in history of CRM software.
In 2008, CRM turned into Social CRM. Companies started to track customers’ social behavior more closely to give better customer experience.
Today’s CRM is more social and mobile friendly.
From ledger to SaaS, CRM has already completed a long journey and is still evolving.
Companies have shifted their focus from Transaction to Interaction.
Now a days, increasing customer value is more important than customer acquisition.
Acquiring a new customer is five times costlier than retaining an existing customer. (Source: 29 Customer Loyalty Statistics )
With help of big data, CRM is now more focused on understanding customer data. Plain data has been converted to knowledge and actionable information.
It helps businesses to run targeted campaign, reduce sales time, increase customer experience and loyalty, predict accurate ROI and customer response.
In near future, CRM will be tightly integrated with Internet Of Things (IOT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Before I close this article, a quick look on current CRM market share and revenue.
Today we have more than 100 CRM applications from different vendors.
Though Salesforce, Oracle, SAP and Microsoft collectively hold almost 50% of CRM market share, few other niche players are –
As per Gartner, worldwide CRM revenue will touch $36.5B by 2017, up from $13.9B in 2010.
From the above statistics, it is clear that Salesforce.com has major CRM market share.
But surprisingly Indeed.com job trend report shows that Microsoft Dynamics CRM has more job opportunities than Salesforce.
So it is your choice – you want to go with Salesforce or MS CRM. Both will give you good job opportunities.
You will find many training courses and learning materials on the web for both CRM applications.
But if you ask me to recommend JUST 3 COURSES, here it is –
That’s it!!
Now it is your turn. Please share what do you think about history of CRM software.
Did I miss any?
Where CRM is heading in near future?
And a difficult question – who invented CRM ? 😀
Next article: What does CRM stand for and what is CRM?
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You already know the importance of customer loyalty. In this infographic, you will see 15 mind blowing Customer Loyalty and Retention Statistics.
To read more about customer retention statistics, click here: Customer Loyalty Statistics
Do you have any question? Please feel free to comment below.
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You know:
Siebel Open UI is browser and device independent Siebel client. It has better user friendly and flexible interface than traditional Siebel application.
Even you can modify existing Open UI theme/s or add custom theme/s as per business need.
But…
Is it developer friendly CRM application too?
Thanks to John for asking this question on our Facebook page ‘TechOneStop‘.
It’s quite interesting question. Isn’t it!!
We always talk about user friendliness of an application – be it Siebel Open UI or any other application. But hardly we discuss about developer friendliness of an application.
In this article, we will discuss about developer friendliness features of Siebel Open UI.
First, let me tell you what I want to see in a developer friendly application.
There are lots of criteria to measure developer friendliness of an application.
But here, I will consider only three characteristics
Let’s see how Siebel Open UI meets above three criteria.
This can be controversy…
But, I believe, Siebel is fairly easy to learn but not Siebel Open UI.
Why so?
Siebel is huge but Siebel Tools is a great help for application configuration.
Besides Oracle’s training materials, you will find lots of Siebel configuration related articles on web. There are many forums as well where you can post your problems and Siebel experts share their experiences.
Overall, if you spend some time, you can achieve mastery skill in various aspects of Siebel.
But…
To do Siebel Open UI related changes, Oracle does not give you any tool like Siebel Tools. Plus you will not find enough materials on web about Siebel Open UI as it is relatively new.
However, learning HTML or CSS or JavaScript is not difficult. Also training materials are easily available.
Best place I could suggest to learn HTML or CSS or JS is W3schools.
Though Open UI specific script is bit different from normal JavaScript but it is quite easy to learn.
You can go through our Siebel Open UI training articles as well. Oracle also conducts training on Siebel Open UI at a regular interval.
No doubt, it is tough for any Siebel developer to learn web design on Open UI platform. But over the time, it can be learnt.
Next…
Is it an easy task to do all Siebel Open UI related changes?
Answer is definitely NO but why?
Very first reason is that there is no tool like Siebel tools to do Open UI related changes. You have to use notepad or similar kind of application to write script for Open UI. So chances of doing syntax or logical error are quite high.
If there is any error in script, there is no way to catch it without registering the file in the application. You have to remember all web design related syntaxes and Siebel Open UI methods without any help of tool. Also once script is ready and file is registered, you have to test it in all browsers one by one manually.
But, here is the best part…
You can use our PM/PR generator tool to build Presentation Model or Physical Render for applets or views. This will definitely help you to minimize syntax and logical errors.
You know,
From Siebel Open UI 8.1.1.11 onward, we do not modify manifest file any more. Instead we register all files under Manifest Administration within application.
No doubt, it has minimized scripting.
But still you have two files to maintain – Presentation Model and Physical Renderer.
Presentation Model is for building logic and Physical Renderer is for rendering user interface. To know more, read our article on Presentation Model customization and Physical Renderer customization.
But if Oracle can make it a single file, it will definitely reduce scripting as well as maintenance overhead.
Recently Oracle has released web based Siebel tools – Siebel Composer. Though it is not ready for production environment right now. But when it will be available, application configuration will be faster and easier.
Last…
Do you think debugging Siebel Open UI script is easy?
Can Siebel developers understand and modify Open UI script easily?
Well,
I think, debugging is not difficult task because of browser developer tool.
Almost all modern browsers have built in browser developer tool. It gives an inspector to verify JS or CSS files have been downloaded properly or not. It allows inline modification of HTML / CSS to verify look and feel of webpage elements. Also it has debugger to set breakpoints in JavaScript and verify variables values.
To open developer tool, you just need to right click on browser and then choose ‘Inspect Element’.
To know more about debugging, you could read our article on Siebel Open UI Debugging.
If the script is well structured and as per best practices, it is not difficult for Siebel developers to understand and debug.
After analyzing all 3 criteria, I could say, though Siebel Open UI is not highly developer friendly CRM application for a Siebel developer but not difficult to learn.
However, Oracle should plan to build Siebel Open UI customization tool like Siebel Tools.
For the time being, use our PM/PR generator tool to build PM and PR files 🙂
Now it’s your turn…
What do you think – Siebel Open UI is developer friendly application? Is it easy to learn or customize or debug Siebel Open UI?
Please leave your comment below!
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