An Apple a Day Keeps CRM Failure Away Part 2 - A Bad Apple

In the past, you may have heard stories about CRM failures and disasters. CRM has been branded as an over-hyped, overpriced technology with poor adoption and little or no ROI. It’s rotten to the core. In fact, some people have even proclaimed that CRM is dead.  

In reality, CRM success is more of an apple and tree issue. It’s way too easy to blame CRM failure on the technology. Usually when CRM fails to meet expectations, the problem is not about the technology at all. It’s about the expectations.

Firms install CRM systems and suddenly expect them to solve world hunger – or at least help to feed all the hungry associates and other attorneys who need more work but have been unable or unwilling to focus on business development. End users are mesmerized by the dog and pony show and plan to implement all the bells and whistles all at once. The data is bad because the firm was not willing to devote the resources to cleaning it up ormaintaining it. There is no plan or strategy for success – and, as a result no success (shocker!). But it doesn't have to be that way…

Diving Into CRM Part 3 - That Sinking CRM Feeling

After you realize how much you have sunken into a CRM project – the time, money and, especially, credibility – it’s easy to start getting nervous. You dove right in and purchased the system, you started off with a smooth stroke on the installation, you had made several laps toward getting users installed, and then, something unexpected happened.

Maybe the attorneys didn’t show up for training. Perhaps secretaries planned a revolt after realizing that a lot of the work was going to be on them. The IT department got caught up in their other projects and was got behind on the installations. The data stewards bailed when they discovered that merging tens of thousands of duplicates for hours each day just wasn’t as glamorous as they thought.

Whatever may have happened, you are starting to feel like you are all alone in the CRM pool – and you begin to realize that you may be in over your head. Suddenly you get that sinking feeling…

Diving Into CRM Part 2 - Getting Into the Pool

It doesn’t matter how you end up getting into the CRM pool. Whether you step, walk, jump, dive or even belly-flop into the water, once you are there it’s sink or swim. Soon after you’ve taken the CRM plunge, it suddenly becomes very important to find a way to stay afloat. Once you have made the CRM investment, you’re committed, for a lot of reasons. (By the way, if you haven't done any of the following things yet, you need to - right away.)

You’ve spent a lot of time, money and, often, credibility. You’ve convinced the firm of the importance of purchasing a system. You’ve juggled budgets to get the money for the necessary software, hardware and staff. You’ve entered into a multi-year ongoing relationship with a CRM provider. You’ve partnered with IT to utilize some of their resources. You’ve hired an internal or outsourced data steward. You’ve had your data quality evaluated to figure out how much it will cost and how long it will take to clean up. You’ve put communication and training plans and incentives in place. You’ve committed to the change management that will be necessary to successfully roll the system.

  

Wow, have you gone off the deep end?...

A Happy New CRM Year

The way to avoid causing a CRM 'revolution' at your firm and have a truly Happy CRM New Year is to forget about all of the sweeping changes you resolved to make. Instead, you need to make only one resolution this year: to be a little better each day. I know, it's not very exciting - but it works.

It also makes sense. That's because CRM isn't an initiative or a project. It's a fundamental change in the way your firm thinks about and manages its most important relationships. As a result, CRM success requires an ongoing commitment. This means that it takes time. This means that you are never really 'finished.' This also means there is no need to rush. In fact, firms that do rush often end up failing, which costs them a great deal of time, money - and credibility. 

Many of these firms ended up failing because they tried to do too much too fast: They may have rushed to implement without a strategy or a plan. They may have tried to roll out before their data was cleaned and standardized. They might not have taken the time to gather and implement feedback from end users to customize or enhance the system. They may even have been one of many firms that made the fatal but all-too-common mistake of thinking that it made sense to roll out everyone all at once. Many of these firms learned some very expensive lessons – and several have ended up aborting their rollouts, only to later have to begin all over again later.Many also learned how important it is to get it right the first time because you don't always get a second chance at CRM success. Once CRM has failed, it can be extremely costly and difficult to regain buy-in from firm management and confidence from end users. 

So this year, resolve to enhance your chances of CRM success by simply trying to be a little better each day. Develop a strategy. Commit to planning. Focus on understanding and meeting end user needs. Automate processes to save time and effort. Communicate successes to drive adoption. Measure results to demonstrate return on investment. Find opportunities to provide value to users. Most importantly, don’t do it alone. Reach out for information, ideas and best practices from colleagues, peers, industry experts, vendors or consultants. Remember, we are here to help if you need it. 

Pounding Out Communications with the CRM Hammer

When it comes to issues with firm communications, the CRM hammer hits these challenges, well... right on the head. CRM is an excellent tool for helping a firm plan and execute marketing campaigns and distribute all types of communications.

First, CRM allows all of the professionals' contacts to flow into the system directly from Outlook, which means there are very few changes to their business processes and they don’t have to use – or be trained on – new software. Then, CRM systems provide tools to allow contacts to be more quickly and easily standardized and deduplicated. This ensures that contact information is consistent and complete and prevents multiple communications from being sent to the same recipients.

Finally, contacts can be easily categorized and added to lists. This allows the firm to segment contacts to make sure, for instance, that the firm’s alerts are sent to all Clients and prospects, while at the same time preventing them from being sent to competitors. Contacts can also be sorted by industry or practice to make sure that they get the communications that are relevant to their needs and interests.

Additionally, after each e-mail or other communication has been sent, an activity can be automatically associated with each contact so that the professionals and other users can simply open a contact record to see who received what, and when. And if you think CRM is great for managing communications, wait ‘til you hear how it can improve event management…

Data Quality Depression - Get Help…Somewhere

So what do you do if you feel like you are drowning in CRM data quality problems and you just can't seem to get help from within your firm – or if you don’t have months to spend manually cleaning and deduplicating your data?

One solution is to pay a data quality company to clean and deduplicate your data. During this process, data is typically matched up electronically against a postal database to append and standardize mailing addresses. The output generated is typically a very large spreadsheet of potential duplicate matches, which then must be manually reviewed and validated by someone on your team. After the review, data can be fed back into the CRM for deduplication. The entire process can take weeks or months and can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars or more. However, if you consider that manually standardizing and deduplicating the same data could sometimes take a full-time data steward almost a year, sometimes the cost and time savings can seem justified.

Alternatively, there are now outsourced professional data stewards you can hire to assist you. These data quality professionals can work with your team on a full-time basis – or just lend a hand part-time when you need additional support during a rollout or to assist with a project. You can hire one or several data stewards and have their help for as long or short a period of time as you need. While outsourced data stewards function as members of your firm’s team, you don’t have to deal with hiring or managing them - and the cost can be significantly less than hiring a full-time internal data steward.

One final note: while data quality depression can be serious, you don’t have to face it alone. Reach out to colleagues, peers or industry organizations for help. Additionally a CRM success consultant can often provide you with information, ideas and best practices. Feel free to call us anytime for data quality assistance or outsourced data quality professionals. But if you don’t get help for data quality depression from a CRM Success consultant, get help… somewhere.

Preventing Data Quality Depression - and Rolodex Rejection

So how big a problem is data quality depression really?

In the past, some firms neglected CRM data quality as a minor issue – to their detriment. In fact, poor data quality can become a serious problem, especially during an initial rollout because the attorneys can quickly lose confidence in the system if the data is a mess. After all, attorneys are trained to find fault – and when they do, they may jump to the conclusion that if the data is bad, the system is not trustworthy. Then adoption and usage will stall.

Additionally, until the data is properly cleaned and deduplicated, the value of your CRM cannot be fully recognized. Until the entire firm is rolled out, the attorneys can't leverage relationship intelligence to identify ‘who knows who’ relationships. Until comprehensive contact information is collected and compiled and contacts are categorized (how’s that for alliteration?), it’s almost impossible to accurately distribute mailings, invitations or other communications. 

As a result, the longer the data cleanup process takes, the more marketing and business development opportunities are lost - and the more time and money are wasted. So ultimately, if you don’t focus on data quality, you could end up with what many firms refer to their CRM system as: a glorified, overpriced rolodex. 

Getting the Help You Need for Data Quality Depression

Ultimately, at some point, you may realize that getting help for data quality depression is essential. Once a firm reaches a certain size, often around 100 users, a part-time data steward just can't keep up with the volume of data changes in most cases. Larger firms will likely require a full-time data steward. And as a firm reaches the 250 user mark, even one dedicated data steward might not be able to do the job alone.

The reason that data quality resources are necessary is that, no matter what you do, keeping up with data changes from hundreds of CRM users is a challenging - and ongoing - job. One reason is that an estimated 25 to 30 percent of data degrades each year. Think about it, people move, get promoted, change companies, get married – and a few die. All this leads to bad data.

Additionally, during an initial CRM rollout, having extra data quality resources will be imperative. If you consider that the average attorney has approximately 500 contacts - some senior partners may have thousands while new associates may only have a few - it’s not uncommon for a CRM rollout for a firm with 100 attorneys to quickly build a database of over 50,000 records. Of those, conservatively 25 percent or more may be duplicates. That means there could be more than 12,000 records that need to be standardized, cleaned and merged. If you assume that a skilled data steward can deal with about 250 records a day, it could easily take months to get the data in order, which is essential to get the professionals to trust - and use the system. This is assuming you have the internal resources... 

Dealing with Data Quality Depression - Don't Do It Alone

When it comes to data quality depression, it's important to know that you aren’t alone. There are literally hundreds of firms struggling with the same frustrations and issues. Often, the best thing you can do is to reach out for assistance.

Frequently, help is closer than you think. In fact, you can often find relief within your own firm. There are plenty of people with the right skills and, more importantly, some additional bandwidth, who may be able to assist you with recurring data quality tasks. Good potential candidates include secretaries, records clerks, word processors, paralegals or even your receptionist. Having a qualified pool of candidates is important because when it comes to enhancing data quality, the more helping hands - and eyes - the better.

You may also benefit from the ideas and best practices of other firms. You may want to consider joining – or creating – a data quality “support group.” Start a discussion group, arrange meetings, or just get together for coffee with people in your area in similar positions who have the same data quality challenges and headaches. Before making a decision about how to address your own firm’s data quality issues, find out what has worked for them, as well as what hasn’t.

Alternative Treatments for Data Quality Depression

If your data quality depression doesn’t seem to be responding to conventional treatments, fortunately there are now some alternative treatments available. One treatment that has been particularly effective for some firms is outsourcing your data quality.

If you aren’t able to hire full-time or permanent data quality resources, there are now outsourced data quality professionals available who can help you to get a handle on your data on a part-time or even full-time basis. For a very reasonable hourly rate, these professionals can assist your firm with individual data quality projects – or even serve as full-time permanent data stewards.

These trained data quality professionals will serve as members of your firm’s data quality team. They are knowledgeable about multiple CRM systems, and they are supervised by consultants or companies who are experts in data quality and CRM success. Your data quality team members will communicate with you on a regular basis and will also provide you with regular reports regarding data quality progress. And, because they are outsourced, you won't have to deal with the headaches associated with finding, hiring, firing or supervising them.

Ultimately, using these alternative data quality professionals can be an effective and affordable way to reduce your data quality headaches – and the return on your investment can be significant. If you’d like more information about data quality outsourcing options, feel free to contact us. We will be happy to help relieve your pain.

Just What the Doctor Ordered for Data Quality Depression

While the bad news is that data quality depression may seem to be an epidemic, the good news is that it is treatable – and it's rarely contagious. The treatments for data quality depression vary depending on the symptoms and the causes. As a result, your data quality specialist should diagnose your specific issue in order to prescribe a course of treatment specific to your firm’s unique needs.

For instance, if your symptoms include delirium caused by end users who do not seem to follow instructions or take responsibility for their own data maintenance, your data quality consultant may recommend a course of training (also known as a training course.) The focus of the training should be not only therapeutic, to alleviate the current issues by teaching users to best ways to prevent data quality problems, but also preventative, in order to avoid future relapses by emphasizing the reasons that long-term data maintenance is important to the firm.

On the other hand, if you are presenting with symptoms of stress and fatigue that seem to have been induced by a lack of adequate resources to do your data quality job, the consultant may first work together with you to create a compelling business case to take to firm management in order to secure additional monetary or human resources. 

If this initial treatment is unsuccessful, another equally effective treatment to consider would be to involve employees in other positions or departments to assist with data quality tasks part-time. Assistants, paralegals, word processors, records personnel, receptionists or even summer interns could be recruited to help prevent the spread or growth of data quality issues.

You should be aware that the selection of individuals responsible for data quality can be challenging and proper screening is crucial. Ideally, good candidates should have excellent attention to detail, a strong work ethic and some institutional knowledge of your firm and Clients. If the right individuals can be identified, their assistance can have an excellent prophylactic effect on future data quality problems.

While most cases of data quality depression often respond positively to one of these treatments, some cases seem to be resistant to these methods. In such cases, we often recommend an alternative therapy…

The Data Quality Doctor Is In

If you think you may be suffering from data quality depression, it can be helpful to see a specialist such as a CRM data quality consultant who is familiar with the causes and effects of data quality depression – and who is an expert in prescribing the right treatment for your specific problem.

The diagnosis will often begin with a data quality checkup, which is a complete assessment and analysis of your data quality situation. Your data quality consultant will begin by taking your CRM pulse by meeting with you and other key stakeholders and system users to ask a series of targeted questions designed to get to the heart of the issues. Questions will focus on issues such as end user participation, leadership buy-in, training, communications, planning, resources, technology and other potentially ‘sore’ subjects.

The consultant can also run tests on your ‘system’ to diagnose any additional potential problems with things like system configuration, contact categorization, information standardization and list management.

After a complete check-up, your CRM success consultant will then make specific recommendations to help take away your CRM data quality pain…

Diagnosing Data Quality Depression - Where Does It Hurt?

The potential remedy for your data quality depression will depend upon the underlying cause. To diagnose the cause of your underlying symptoms, you must first assess the situation and figure out exactly where it hurts. Potential data quality pain points may include: 

• A lack of adequate staffing to keep up with the data quality issues 
• Failure to dedicate adequate resources to data quality maintenance 
• End users and assistants who do not take responsibility for data quality 
• Incorrect configuration of your system causing an increase in the number of data quality tickets or tasks
• A lack of formalized training to ensure that end users understand and embrace their data quality responsibilities
• A lack of management support to encourage participation or provide resources or incentives for compliance

Rest assured, all of these underlying issues are quite common and totally treatable - and, once treated, there is a significant likelihood that you will make a complete recovery. The best way to pinpoint your pain is to reach out to a specialist ...

Recognizing the Signs of Data Quality Depression

Data quality depression has been described as an emotional state characterized by feelings of sadness, despair, and discouragement – often accompanied by a strong desire to bang your head against the wall… repeatedly. For your mental health, early detection of data quality depression is key and requires that you be aware of the signs or symptoms which may include:

• Difficulty focusing or concentrating on the same mundane and repetitive data quality tasks for 10 hours a day 
• A sense of impending doom each day when turning on the computer and seeing the exponential explosion of data quality issues 
• Feelings of worthlessness caused by ineffective attempts to beg, bribe or otherwise coerce users to comply with firm data quality standards 
• Intense frustration with professionals who use their BlackBerrys to enter hundreds of new contacts with only first names and mobile phone numbers or e-mail addresses 
• Dizziness caused by running in circles trying to get correct contact information from assistants 
• Energy loss caused by jumping through hoops to try to get the firm’s leaders to commit the necessary resources 
• A major pain in the posterior region caused by dealing with data quality 

Symptoms may be mild at first and may initially improve after consuming large quantities of chocolate or alcohol. However, as the condition worsens, the only hope is to seek a more effective - and permanent - remedy…

Dealing with Data Quality Depression

Nothing can be more frustrating than dealing with CRM data quality. But when it comes to CRM success, there are few things that are more important. While data quality tasks can seem monotonous and mundane, left ‘untreated’, a CRM database can rapidly deteriorate into a disaster, causing end users to doubt and distrust the data and refuse to use the system - and causing you to pull your hair out. 

The First Step 
The first step is admitting you have a problem – or lots of them. Your end users are out of control. The number of duplicate records is multiplying exponentially. You can't actually contact your contacts because the majority of them have missing or incomplete information. Your data standards are nonstandard – or nonexistent. The incomplete entries from BlackBerrys are getting worse each day. You're even starting to become paranoid that the IT department may be part of the conspiracy. (I promise, they are not out to get you). Then suddenly you realize that you have no idea how to deal with international addresses or phone numbers – and you feel you have nowhere to turn.

Left untreated, disastrous data quality issues like these can really… well… drive you crazy. Fortunately for you, there is a cure…