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Selling CRM to Salespeople
An Office Business Application is improving sales at Microsoft by providing “anywhere, anytime” access to customer data in Siebel through Office Outlook 2007
by Scott Barton
Give David Swanson a moment, and he’ll confess that he’s much happier today, having banished what he saw as the bane of his existence. Did he recently land a new job or perhaps rid himself of a live-in mother-in-law? Not quite. In fact, Swanson’s arch-nemesis is a computer software program. What’s ironic is that Swanson himself sells software. Even more ironic, he works at Microsoft, the world’s largest software company. And he’s not alone—there are thousands at Microsoft who share his dislike.
At Microsoft, as with every other company, the efforts of its employees are the driving force behind the company’s business performance. This is especially true for salespeople like Swanson, a Solution Specialist in the company’s Northern California region. He spends his day working with Microsoft customers and, because he’s rarely in the office, must be able to access and act on customer information regardless of location.
At Microsoft, the official repository for such dataand the source of Swanson’s past frustrationis a Siebel customer relationship management (CRM) system, which is used by some 17,000 employees and contractors. The problem was that Swanson and his peers found the system awkward to use, viewing it as more of a forecasting tool imposed by upper management instead of something that could make their own sales jobs easier. In fact, many companies face similar challenges with their CRM systems; management relishes the additional control the vendors of CRM systems promise, but CRM deployments are rarely successful because the salespeople that must use them dislike the classic CRM interfaces that require them to spend time in their offices inputting data instead of being out with their customers.
Garbage In, Garbage Out
Many problems stemmed from the system’s user interface which, because it was Web-based, was slow to respond to user input and required people to be connected to the corporate network. “You had to click through so many screens that it could take 15 to 30 minutes to enter a single opportunity,” says Swanson. “And having to wait until I was connected to the network meant doing it at the end of the day or days later. My frustration was so high that I did everything I could to avoid using Siebel.”
Stephanie Achard, a Paris-based Enterprise Account Manager, also found Siebel frustrating to use. She had stopped trying to enter sales opportunities and other information as she acquired it and instead set aside a two-hour period on Friday mornings. As a result, her entries could be up to a week old, denying others who shared her accounts up-to-date information on new sales opportunities.
Because of the significant effort involved, most salespeople input only the bare minimum into Siebel and neglected to maintain existing data in the system. And with the data in the system old and incomplete, it was virtually useless to people who needed accurate, current information before walking into a customer meeting.
“I’d go into Siebel and see 98 opportunities with no relevance to me, or opportunities that were three years old,” says Andy Engle, an Account Technology Specialist based in St. Louis, Missouri. “I’d have to play with filters and reports to get to the information that I needed—and I didn’t have time for that.”
To complicate matters, Siebel wasn’t the only place that people had to look for customer data. In preparing for a sales call, account executives had to use a different system to view the status of open support incidents for the customer, a third system to view sales and licensing history, and so on. That meant even more time in the office, leaving less time for meeting with customers.
“You had to click throughso many screens that it could take 15 to 30 minutes to enter a single opportunity… My frustration was so high that I did everything I could to avoid using Siebel.“
David Swanson
Solution Specialist
Microsoft
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Finding A Better Way
Luckily for Swanson, someone else was aware of his problem. That person was Vish Vadlamani who, in late 2003, took over as Group Software Development Manager for the Siebel system at Microsoft. At the time, the company was in the midst of a U.S.$40 million Siebel upgrade, which was more than a year late and millions of dollars over budget.
Although getting the project back on track was a full-time job, Vadlamani realized that he also needed to find a way to make the data in Siebel more useful. As a former member of the Microsoft field sales force, he knew that people saw the entry of data into Siebel as extra work and typically input only minimal information, driven by the need to do so if they wanted their commission checks.
The answer to Vadlamani’s challenge turned out to be right in front of him. Customer Explorer, the solution that he went on to develop, provides access to customer data in Siebel and other line-of-business systems through the Microsoft® Office Outlook® 2007 messaging and collaboration client—the same tool that salespeople already use throughout the day to interact with customers and colleagues. As an Office Business Application (OBA), Customer Explorer functions as an add-in to the familiar desktop program, extending its functionality to include the management of customer data and information on sales opportunities.
Vadlamani worked on Customer Explorer for three months without any formal funding approval. Many people were skeptical, believing that it would serve as a distraction from the already-late Siebel development effort or that it might somehow negatively affect the reliability of the core Siebel system. “After six weeks or so, a number of vice presidents had seen the demo,” recalls Vadlamani. “Everyone had an opinion—some loved it, while others wanted to shut down the project.”
The turning point came in July 2004, when he demonstrated the Outlook add-in at Microsoft Global Briefing, the company’s worldwide sales conference. “The demo received an overwhelming response from the field sales force, who told us it was exactly what they needed,” says Vadlamani. “When the current business sponsor for the Siebel system upgrade saw their reaction, she finally agreed to fund continued development.”
“With Customer Explorer,I can see new opportunities while I’m sitting with the customer... When you can cut three weeks off a sales cycle that may take three months, that’s a substantial timesavings.“
Jim Kehoe
Account Technology Specialist
Microsoft
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Streamlined Access to Customer Information
Today, Swanson and some 2,000 other members of the Microsoft enterprise sales force use Customer Explorer on a regular basis. The solution retrieves data from Siebel and two other back-end systems and stores it on the salesperson’s laptop, along with e-mail, calendar, and other Outlook data. Swanson can update Siebel activities, contacts, and opportunities while working offline and, upon connecting to the Microsoft corporate network, synchronize his changes with the master Siebel database, providing others on his account teams with access to the new information.
The OBA adds a new top-level Customer Explorer folder to the familiar three-pane Office Outlook 2007 user interface, alongside the Inbox, Tasks, and Calendar folders. Under the Customer Explorer folder, there are subfolders for My Accounts and My Opportunities. Under the My Accounts folder are subfolders for each of Swanson’s accounts. Clicking a customer name brings up a profile for the account, with options for accessing account details, support incidents, and sales history.
Although the ability to view data from Siebel and other systems is helpful, the application’s real utility comes from being able to manage Siebel activities, contacts, and opportunities in Outlook, such as Swanson might do after learning about a new sales opportunity. He can easily convert Outlook items—e-mail, calendar, task, or contact—to Siebel items, with information prepopulated to reduce data entry. Similarly, Siebel activities, contacts, and opportunities can be converted to Outlook items with just a few mouse clicks.
Customer Explorer also gives Swanson access to information in two other systems: Clarify, which is used by Microsoft to manage support and service requests, and MS Sales, a large data warehouse used for revenue reporting. Data from those systems is presented alongside Siebel data for each account, giving him a comprehensive view of each of his accounts without having to look in more than one place.
“My entire attitude towardmy job is different today…I’m now more productive at work and less frustrated when I get home. I have more time to spend with my family and to work out—I’ve even improved my tennis game.“
David Swanson
Solution Specialist
Microsoft
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Improved Sales Effectiveness
Swanson is using Customer Explorer to increase the amount of selling that he does. He estimates that Customer Explorer is helping boost sales in his Northern California region by about 20 percent. “If I’m in a customer meeting and the customer refers to a project that they’re working on, I check Customer Explorer before I respond,” he says. “For example, I was talking to the networking group at a large company about their security concerns. Thanks to Customer Explorer, I was able to tell them that a colleague of theirs in another group was already working with a colleague of mine on a similar solution, and that perhaps they’d want to check it out. It led to a much bigger sale.”
Microsoft salespeople also are using Customer Explorer to speed the sales cycle, closing sales more quickly and accelerating revenue flow. “Before Customer Explorer, I’d come back from a customer meeting, go to Siebel to find a new opportunity, and then have to request another customer meeting to raise it, which could take weeks to schedule,” says Jim Kehoe, an Account Technology Specialist in the company’s Chicago office. “With Customer Explorer, I can see that new opportunity while I’m sitting with the customer, so there’s no delay. When you can cut three weeks off a sales cycle that may take three months, that’s a substantial timesavings.”
Customer Explorer also helps Microsoft salespeople collaborate on sales opportunities more effectively. “It doesn’t matter who deals with my customer,” says Andy Engle, who complained about “data overload” when he had to work directly in Siebel. “As long as they enter the information in the system, I know about it. There’s nothing more embarrassing than not knowing what’s going on in your account, and nothing more valuable than knowing.”
Having access to customer data when and where it’s needed can often be the key to making—or saving—a sales opportunity. Engle was reminded of this recently when talking with executives at a large financial institution. The customer pushed back on him almost immediately, convinced that a competitor’s product was better. “With a couple of inconspicuous taps, I saw that someone else at Microsoft was involved in a different networking initiative with them that was going very well,” Engle recalls. “I hadn’t known about it—and neither had they. But it opened their eyes and their minds to the possibility of a Microsoft solution and kept us in play for a million-dollar opportunity.”
“I can’t tell you what anamazing boost in productivity I’m seeing with Customer Explorer. Not exaggerating, I’d say that it saves me three hours per week… It sounds silly, but it has changed my life as a salesperson.“
David Swanson
Solution Specialist
Microsoft
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Better Customer Service
Thanks to Customer Explorer, Microsoft salespeople also are able to interact with customers more successfully after the sale. Jeff Morris, an Account Technology Specialist in the company’s Pittsburgh office, syncs Customer Explorer before leaving his office and checks it while he’s in a customer’s lobby waiting for a meeting. His check goes beyond sales opportunities to include the status of a customer’s contacts with Microsoft’s support organization.
“The customer may have had an Exchange Server computer go out that morning and the last thing that I want to do—for my sake and theirs—is greet them with a big ‘How are you doing?’ when they’re dealing with a headache,” says Morris. “Being armed with the right information means I can instantly help them triage the situation and marshal the Microsoft resources that can help resolve it.”
Stephanie Achard, the Paris-based Enterprise Account Manager, also uses Customer Explorer to turn concerned customers into happy ones. When a customer expresses a concern in a customer satisfaction survey, the response shows up immediately in Customer Explorer—allowing her to respond just as quickly. That’s what happened recently with one of her customers who was working with a Microsoft support team to address an intermittent problem—an issue on which the customer wanted faster action.
“I called the customer as soon as I saw the survey response and followed up with the customer’s support team right after that,” recalls Achard. “The next day we had a conference call with the customer to plan a more aggressive course of action. The customer was really pleased to see that we paid attention to his survey response and solved the problem within days. It would have taken me another week or more to see and act on the situation if I had to locate the customer information directly in Siebel.”
Microsoft salespeople also use Customer Explorer to show customers how they can solve their own problems with access to information in line-of-business systems. “Customers get very excited when I show them how I can get all the information that I need, right at my fingertips, online or offline, without having to wade through non-pertinent data,” says Kehoe. “Customer Explorer is a great example of how OBAs help people access information and gain real insight from it. One customer just agreed to make a major migration from a competitor to Microsoft technology, precisely because of the type of integrated innovation that they saw in Customer Explorer.”
A Strategic Application
Compared with before, when the Siebel user interface was the only way to access Siebel data, Customer Explorer is reducing the time that salespeople spend manipulating that data by at least 50 percent, providing each salesperson with a few extra hours per week to focus on more important tasks. Given an average timesavings of three hours per week and a calculated rate of $427 in sales per hour for the average Microsoft enterprise sales professional, that timesavings equates to more than $64,000 per salesperson per year in increased revenue potential.
Because of the size of its target user base and potential business impact, Microsoft has transitioned Customer Explorer from an “alternate application” to a strategic one. It was recently taken over by a team formed specifically to manage and enhance it, including a full-time business owner, product manager, and software development manager.
In addition to the business benefits that Microsoft is realizing from Customer Explorer, the solution is having an impact on users at a more personal level. “My entire attitude toward my job is different today,” says Swanson. “A salesperson should be all over sales opportunities, but I used to dread having to enter them into Siebel. I’m now more productive at work and less frustrated when I get home. I have more time to spend with my family and to work out—I’ve even improved my tennis game.”
Swanson isn’t alone in his high opinion of the Outlook add-in. Says Stefan Damstrom, Product Manager for Customer Explorer, “Twice per year, we poll users and generate net satisfaction, or NSAT, scores for internal enterprise applications. The NSAT score for Customer Explorer is 131, which is the highest such score that we’ve ever seen. In contrast, the current NSAT score for Siebel is 46.”
In summarizing the overall business impact of Customer Explorer, perhaps Swanson puts it best, in an e-mail message he sent to Damstrom: “I can’t tell you what an amazing boost in productivity I’m seeing with Customer Explorer,” he wrote. “Not exaggerating, I’d say that it saves me three hours per week. Siebel was the bane of my existence, and I can’t thank you enough for creating this tool. It sounds silly, but it has changed my life as a salesperson.”
And what of Vadlamani, who took a risk by taking on the development of Customer Explorer before securing funding and while already burdened with a late, overbudget project? With the Siebel upgrade now complete and the future of Customer Explorer guaranteed, he’s off to work on a confidential new project which, as he calls it, is going to be “the next big thing.” And judging by the success of Customer Explorer, it might well be.
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