Getting closer to customers is a top priority, especially on the Internet. This means
effectively managing every stage of the customer relationship — including initial customer
contact, lead processing, customer acquisition, fulfillment, ongoing marketing activities and customer
service. It also means communicating with customers via their preferred mechanisms, including the Web,
phone, automated telephony systems, fax and print.
The focus on the customer has given rise to the biggest buzz phrase in IT and management circles
today: customer relationship management (CRM). CRM systems help companies acquire customers, respond
to customer needs better, and manage marketing and sales efforts better — which can translate
into increased revenues.
Plenty of software vendors offer CRM products, including Siebel Systems, Clarify, Vantive, IBM, and
Janna Systems. Even high-profile enterprise resource planning (ERP) system vendors like Oracle, SAP,
PeopleSoft, and Baan now offer (or plan to offer) CRM applications built on top of their application
infrastructures.
While these CRM products have strengths in certain areas, many are lacking a
critical component: the ability to control and automate the sophisticated back-end business processes
that drive the applications themselves. To do CRM correctly, you need solid process management, and
the ability to integrate multiple systems and multiple departments across the organization into that
process.
This is where workflow products shine. The best workflow products can manage and automate complex
business process that span multiple departments or functional areas within an organization, such as
customer service departments, sales organizations and marketing departments. In addition, a workflow
solution can act as the integration layer that enables multiple back-end data stores and applications
to be tightly linked to the same business process that includes the front-office CRM application.
CRM Encompasses Diverse Applications
CRM systems manage or automate customer-oriented operations at various stages of the customer's
life cycle. With such a broad definition, it is no wonder that CRM applications can be extremely
diverse; applications that involve contacting, acquiring or servicing a customer can all fall under
the CRM umbrella. Examples of CRM applications include general order processing, Web-based sales and
order processing, marketing campaign management, customer self-service (via phone or Web), call center
processing, field service and partner collaboration.
Traditional CRM products are designed to
address the specific requirements for these types of applications. But while most CRM products offer
rudimentary routing or notification capabilities, it is not the same thing as sophisticated process
management extending beyond the boundaries of the front-office application.
Under the CRM mantle,
workflow can be deployed as a strategic infrastructure that spans your enterprise. This is a major
evolution from workflow's former perception as a tactical solution for addressing narrower
problems such as accounts payable or claims processing.
It makes sense to find a workflow solution
that can address the needs throughout your organization rather than starting with a stand-alone
departmental solution. An enterprise approach will let you immediately tackle high-priority
customer-oriented processes that span your organization and then use the same technology to address
other isolated problems as needed.
Business processes are the common denominators for the wide
variety of CRM applications that companies may want to implement. Think of all the myriad and
interrelated workflows and complex subflows that could be automated within your own company. Every
customer interaction can (or should) trigger a chain of events to carry out a well-defined business
process, whether it's fulfilling a Web or phone order, handling customer complaints or logging
customer preferences and notifying the marketing department (which might spawn another process to
generate personalized marketing material).
Enterprise workflow solutions offer sophisticated
processing engines that are tailor-made for these kinds of applications, and they will route all of
the appropriate documents, contact information and transactional data from the customer-facing
applications, such as CRM, to the back-office fulfillment systems.
Addressing CRM Requirements
Beyond process automation, there are many other critical requirements for workflow systems that
support CRM deployments. One of the biggest needs is for an open architecture that simplifies the task
of integrating multiple applications and data sources from multiple departments and lines of business.
In most organizations, there are completely separate groups for call centers, e-commerce,
marketing, sales and accounting — all of which use different applications and information stores.
If the goal is for these various groups to operate in a coordinated fashion, the workflow platform you
choose must be able to integrate with such disparate systems. At the same time, the workflow platform
should be able to integrate with the front-office CRM application interfaces, providing a seamless
experience for users.
Many workflow vendors are easing integration by re-architecting their systems
around component object models such as COM, CORBA and JavaBeans. Using an object model greatly
simplifies integration with other applications and databases, and makes it easier to embed
functionality into a CRM application. Among the leaders in this area are Staffware
(www.staffware.com), Identitech
(www.identitech.com) and Plexus
(www.plx.com). These vendors offer a
full complement of COM objects that allow their products' functionality (such as the creation of
work containers or tracking of work items) to be embedded within the framework of other
applications.
Another critical need is the ability to develop and deploy workflow applications quickly. The
component object model approach addresses this by facilitating fast development of portable and
reusable workflow components.
Another approach to speeding development faster is to create template
applications that can be used in multiple scenarios. For example, products from FileNet
(www.filenet.com) and
Lucent (www.mosaix.com) offer template
applications that can be reused in
multiple process automation scenarios from customer relationship management to back-office enterprise
resource planning applications.
Workflow systems used in customer relationship management deployments must also provide the
architecture to reliably handle the high volumes and scalability demands that are typical of electric
commerce applications. Vendors such as Keyfile, Plexus, Staffware, IBM and Oracle accomplish this by
leveraging middleware components such as Internet application servers, transaction processing
monitors, and message queuing services.
For example, Keyfile (www.keyfile.com) has
integrated its Keyflow product with Microsoft's
Commerce Server. Plexus and Staffware have integrated their products with the Tuxedo and WebLogic
e-commerce transaction platforms from BEA Systems (www.beasys.com).
Oracle (www.oracle.com) tightly
couples its workflow component to its Advanced Queues messaging services. IBM
(www.ibm.com/software/ts/mqseries/workflow)
has made its workflow solution, MQSeries Workflow, an
integral part of its own MQSeries middleware layer.
Finally, workflow systems must handle a wide variety of data formats and communication standards that
may be used within the CRM implementation. From a customer's standpoint, it shouldn't matter
if they are contacting you by logging into your Web site, by sending you e-mail, by using your
automated telephony system, by sending you a fax, by mailing you a written request or by speaking to a
customer service representative at a call center. Workflow must support any of these formats (as both
triggers and actions) if the customer experience is to appear seamless. Lucent underscored the
importance of this requirement when it acquired Mosaix's ViewStar, which supports information
capture and management for a wide variety of interaction channels.
What's Next for CRM And Workflow?
In the next year, we expect workflow to become a much more integral part of customer relationship
management solutions. Many workflow vendors see the CRM market as a prime opportunity to expand, and
they are either opening their systems or forming formal partnerships with CRM vendors. For example,
FileNet and Siebel Systems (www.siebel.com)
have a relationship in which FileNet's Panagon
VisualWorkFlo manages the workflow between the enterprise and Siebel's call center and customer
service modules. Staffware has relationships with multiple CRM vendors including Siebel and Vantive
(www.vantive.com) to offer process automation by
embedding Staffware functionality within the CRM
components.
At the same time, expect the CRM and ERP vendors to continue to enhance and differentiate their
offerings. Some suppliers will acquire workflow vendors and embed their technologies, as Lucent has
done. Other vendors will develop or improve their own workflow. Oracle, for example, has added a
robust workflow component to its Oracle Application Suite, which includes Web-based CRM applications.
IBM has developed a tight integration between its Corepoint call center application and MQSeries
Workflow. Mid-market ERP vendor JBA International (www.jbaworld.com)
provides a workflow add-on for
its core system. Even groupware vendor Lotus (www.lotus.com) now offers a workflow system that can be
used to automate Domino-based customer care applications.
For the end user, the message is clear: if
you want to be truly effective in customer relationship management, you must address the need to
automate and integrate multiple business processes. If you're implementing this technology for
the first time, take an enterprise approach rather than starting with a stand-alone system for one
departmental need.
Keeping up with market changes will be challenging in the year ahead. Not only
are workflow vendors acquisition targets for CRM vendors, but CRM vendors are attractive to ERP and
communications vendors. Witness ERP vendor PeopleSoft's acquisition of Vantive communications
vendors Nortel Networks, Alcatel and Cisco purchased Clarify, Genesys and Web Line Communications,
respectively.
In addition to these market issues, there are integration and complexity issues.
Workflow vendors must continue to simplify their products' integration with CRM environments. And
CRM systems have earned a reputation for being as hard to implement as ERP systems. The industry has a
long way to go before tightly-coupled, easy-to-implement CRM and workflow is a reality.
It
isn't simple to build customer-centered applications that capture all channels of customer
interaction to speed service. You'll have to determine your specific needs and identify the
myriad interlocking applications that may be involved, including call center and e-commerce
applications handled by CRM systems, back-office processes managed by ERP systems and process
automation systems that manage the transactions. The good news is that CRM, ERP and workflow vendors
all recognize the customer needs and opportunities and are building more complete solutions that will
be easier to deploy.
Bill Chambers is a senior analyst and Joe Fenner is a senior technical writer with Doculabs, an
advisory firm specializing in helping organizations choose e-business technologies. For more
information, e-mail info@doculabs.com or call 312-433-7793.
