The Front Office Process – First Call to Referral

The Business Process should be a seamless progression of actions, from the first sales call to the customer reference to friends. Unfortunately its easier to talk about than implement, because our traditional view of organisation is based on the command and control models originally developed for the Roman army. Worse, our business software is designed to support that model. This is a perfect example of ways tools to make business simpler actually make it more complicated.

I’m sure you’ve experienced the frustration – everybody has.

CRM solutions need to evolve to a new model. Not isolated functions, but integral parts of a serial “Front Office” process.

We’ve been saying this for a long time, and now have found an authority which agrees with us – none other than the mighty SAP.

“These vendors have sold technology in the past based on functions. Within five years at a minimum they will be marketed to you by processes. The vendor pitch, for example, will be based on a specific process like order to cash or lead to opportunity.” – is a direct quote from the official SAP blog post – CRM Meets BPM.

We disagree about which particular process. “Lead to opportunity” is what typical solutions do now. “Quote to Cash” is more like what’s needed, but still covered by most Order Processing systems.

We see the business process as embracing the entire customer/partner/vendor facing functions – what we might call “From first call to referral”. In other words all the activities required for turning people, who we don’t yet know, into customers who recommend us to their friends.

The word “process” suggests this is not simply a list of tasks. It’s a series of sequential (and in some cases parallel) actions, each with defined inputs and outputs. The sequence, dates and deliverables are all vital elements of the process, because they help us know when it’s working, and when it isn’t.

What might be the deliverables in our “First Call to Referral” process, for a services oriented business? Here’s just one example:

Milestone 1
Develop a value proposition, defining what our target customers need and we can deliver, with our resources and capabilities. Value the benefit to the customer, and our delivery cost.

Milestone 2
Research potential customers and build a list of “target” accounts, with contact details and background information we can build into our proposition for this individual target.

Milestone 3
First call to outline and validate the proposition, engaging the target and adding the opportunity to our “sales funnel”.

Milestone 4
Qualify the opportunity, ensuring the target can and will buy.

Milestone 5
Agree the Buy/Sell process, confirming the benefits to the customer.

Milestone 6
Negotiate commercial terms and sign contracts.

Milestone 7
Engage supply chain partners.

Milestone 8
Deliver in accordance with the scope.

Milestone 9
Confirm customer satisfaction.

Milestone 10
Receive referral from customer to new prospect.

Each of these milestones will have individual tasks, or “actions” associated, probably different members of our team, and also our partners. Each action will have a schedule of who will do what and when.

The list of milestones and schedule of actions together amount to a “plan” which can be “actioned” and “reviewed” at it progresses.

Plan Act Review is a continuous, virtuous circle of monitoring and adjustment. Together the “plan” and our Plan Act Review monitoring will ensure we reach that point of “referral”.

Any owner will recognize this as “business as usual”. The point we’re making here isn’t a description of how we manage businesses. It’s simply that the information systems we use don’t work this way.

In its post SAP talks about CRM and BPM – Business Process Management – suggesting CRM should be merely a function within BPM.

We absolutely agree, although we won’t talk about BPM. Our users aren’t huge corporations with thousands of staff to keep busy. They’re small businesses, with too much to do, and not enough time to do it. They don’t want to know about CRM and BPM.

They just want to be able to manage their resources in ways that help them win new business, satisfy customers and get referrals to prospects.

They need a way to “know” stuff about their targets, prospects and customers, “plan” what they need to do, and stay on top of relationships and schedules.

That’s why we built Front Office Box, and why it works the way it does.

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