How Can a CRM Help the International Institute of Finance to Facilitate Its Strategy - Case Study Example

What is IIF selling? How can a CRM help IIF to facilitate its strategy? How is it better than what IIF is currently using? International Institute of Finance (IIF) is selling packaged knowledge, knowledge space and knowledge events focused around this very knowledge to its clients. The clients of the IIF are banking and financial institutions (investment bankers, insurance companies, security firms, trading companies, export credit agencies, multilateral agencies and pension funds) around the globe. Some examples of packaged knowledge sold by IIF are published reports, timely country specific reports, updates, exhaustive studies on Basle Accords, reports and findings to monitor global corporate governance, policy positions to suit member interests, extensive database of historical information and near term forecast of key economic variables. IIF has a robust Knowledge space in the form of its website which is used to provide above packaged knowledge in part of full to public and members. Knowledge events include briefings, meetings, seminars, conferences, workshops, staff visits to information sites, collaborative efforts to bring together global financial lenders, etc. Firstly, CRM can help IIF to handle the increase in its membership base (from 150 in 1996 to 20,000 in 2001). CRM will handle list of members with appropriate information, such as contacts, areas of interests, history and other related information. So IIF can create groups and subgroups of members, classify them by various parameters, send them adequate promotion information, and notify them about potentially interesting events. Although IIF does not have revenue goals, all these improvements will raise quality of services, members’ satisfaction and loyalty and facilitate work of staff of IIF. Secondly, CRM can provide staff and members of IIF access outside of the office that increases flexibility and mobility for both staff and members. It is true that top managers of banking and financial institutions travel a lot, so access to IIF knowledge base via Internet from anywhere on Earth will be very useful for them. Thirdly, CRM will provide ground for interaction of members with potential members, for example, via newsletters, online discussions, publications, meetings and other forms of communications. So marketing to potential members will be supported. The proposed CRM is much better then Access database, what IIF is currently using. To begin with, use of Access was limited to IIF premises; its traveling staff could not access it in travel. Also, it had limited versatility in that it abruptly aborted when accessed by more than five users simultaneously. Then, membership-billing system was separate and membership department sent bills manually to members. Similarly events department had to collect events registration details from IIF website and re-key it in the Access database system. So Access database does not meet current needs of IIF. The new CRM must meet managements strategic objective to have robust activities even with incredibly increased client base and offer members a comprehensive user interface. More importantly, the management wanted an integrated view of CRM, billing, accounting and events management alongside making its databases accessible to mobile staffers and public-members or non-members. The new CRM included not only all of the above in its design but also had the capability to handle increased staffers research efforts warranted by dynamic economic scenarios in emerging markets. The value of designing the system with an open architecture Before talking about open architecture, I would like to mention that an architecture-first approach would really help in the situation. An early focus on the architecture results in a solid foundation for the 20% of the stuff (requirements, components, use cases and risks) that drives the overall success of the project. Getting the architecturally important components to be well understood and stable before worrying about the complete set of different features should make rework rates to decrease or remain stable over the project life-cycle. (Royce 2002) From the other point of view, open architecture technologies enable CRM integration across systems, but are not sufficient for a complete solution. The flexibility to communicate with other systems is necessary. However, open protocols do not allow total communication. In fact, using only open or standard protocols could limit an ability of the CRM to integrate with a variety of systems and technologies on the market today. So the question is, what architectural elements of the CRM should be open and what elements should be custom. Whether or not an open architecture standard is necessary for integration is generally questionable, but ability of integration with other systems can offer great opportunities to IIF CRM. Open architecture will provide the proposed CRM system with open standards and interfaces that help to integrate membership management system, events management system and payment processing systems into the existing intranet and external website. IIF wanted to have a flexible system, which can handle multiplier growth in global contacts’ numbers, as well as be of immediate use to mobile staffers to update, add and schedule meetings with contacts while on move. Integrating different functional modules mean that logical linkages would be established soundly and in related manner such that whenever a module needs to undergo a transformation; the same can be achieved with little design disruptions in others. Therefore object-oriented design for ensuring functionality of reusable software libraries was proposed. This was intended to be flexible and platform independent. Just to ensure that no vendor specific restrictions are placed on the integrated system in future, non-proprietary solutions such as Java, XML and XMS were proposed to be used. While JAVA is highly versatile with a goldmine of privately documented and freely distributed applets and software products; the XML and XMS would have ensured seamless integration with website making databases available to mobile employees through palm-pilots or web-enabled phones. The modules relating to members, events and payments will be flexible to variety of output queries and will accept inputs of substantial data. Open architecture also enables addition and deletion of fields from database structure and relational links. So, IIF CRM get following benefits of open architecture: ease of installation, ease of integration and communication on networks, lower cost of integration, lower cost of upgrades, streamlined network and systems management, more competitive system development and more choices for end-users. How should Quateams resolve the outstanding issues with the CRM development? User interface and search engines are issues that were tested successfully and are not outstanding. User interface was found to be simple and intuitive enough to be usable by an average staffer. Similarly the search engine had the versatility to answer variety of searches broadly classed into basic, simple and complex. The test usage on each of these search types revealed that results were fully functional. However the database connectivity was posing an access time problem. In order to resolve language differences between Java and SQL and to make their communication smooth an open source data framework called Castor was used to serve as an intermediary. The major outstanding issue was that the sample CRM emergent out of the use of above software was slower in accessing and retrieving from the data bases by a substantial margin. As against the expected and predicted response time of 3-4 seconds the system was responding after 6-10 minutes indicating a major response problem. Apparently the problem lay with the intermediary program, Castor. Quateams had the options of either making Castor workable or to find an alternative to Castor or even to rewrite the user interface in a language, which obviated the use of any intermediary program. An alternative intermediary open source program called Hibernate that had not been tested or used ever by Quateam, was very versatile and it had a successful conjunction with Java and a number of databases such as SQL, DB2, Oracle, SAPDB etc. However learning curve for integrating this software implied devotion of 50-500 man-hours and the additional time that would be required in bridging Java with SQL using Hibernate. It is preferable that Quateams take on Hibernate option as this is the only option where response solution appears feasible. Moreover in other options explicit man-hours related costs are involved whereas in this option the man-hours consumed would be an investment in the Quateams learning curve. Use of Hibernate would also allow CRM to have options of database software like DB2, Oracle or SAPDB. Taking all these points into consideration, I would recommend Quateams firstly to try to increase parameters of the server hardware: number of processors, their speed, volume of RAM and hard disks, and others. If this does not help, another solution would be attraction of Hibernate expert, who have sufficient experience with Hibernate and will be able to transfer the CRM to use Hibernate. Also the expert will train Quateams’ staff and produce recommendations to developers. Attracting the expert will decrease possible time delay with minimal additional expenses. Although Quateams was not in a position to hire a fix-in specialist, they may hire the expert by temporary 2-months contract. Another outstanding issue related to security and access. While employees had obtained the benefit of accessing the system even when they are mobile the question arose if website users and members should be freely allowed to create and update profiles resulting in flagged updating of the databases too. Changing member organizations structures through merges and acquisition activities, large member employees turnovers and large number of new contacts warranted that such free access should be provided. Otherwise the database would remain stale and defeat the very objective of having a CRM. This would also adversely affect event activity of IIF as stale contact details would be again of little use in event management. Thus such access should be allowed. However it would be preferable to request profile verification from members principal delegate through electronic email. All such automatic profiles may be assigned a provisional status and the system should have the capability of recognizing e-mail verification from the principal delegate and revise the status to final. What would you recommend Yost to consider when implementing the CRM? Since customer reports are at the heart of the CRM, it must be carefully evaluated by Yost if 13 standard reports take sufficient and adequate care of customer needs. It is often the case that software developers have relatively less understanding of customer needs than managers of the organization deploying software - in this case IIF. After a logical assessment of new reports to avoid repetition and carefully vetting the value added metrics more customer reports can be added. To ensure that manual portion of customer correspondence is as easily and as swiftly accessible as the electronic counterpart, even the manual correspondence should be scanned, digitized and stored in profiles. This would ensure speeded up sharing of such letters between the three departments and ensure better tracking and event management. Security and access issues have already been dealt with in above paragraphs. Prior to implementation it must be ensured that readiness of IIF is assessed. Apart from hardware readiness, it is the user staff from IIF that is a major issue. They should be included as experts in the CRM creation, because they are people who better know system’s requirements. Also, it is essential for IIS to develop in-house system administrators for which the training should be intensive and focused on the CRM security. In this project Yost as a project manager is greatly constrained. He generally has a great deal of responsibility with little or no formal authority, like a staff person. Yost is given responsibility for planning, implementing and completing the project, but little authority for marshalling the necessary resources. I think Yost should implement various testing methodologies, such as tests for functional; stress, and regression testing that include manual, ad-hoc, and automated testing elements. The results of these tests answer the question how project goals are achieved and what part of the project is going wrong. The earlier Yost detects troubles, the more time he has to take appropriate measures to fix them. Once the system is ready, what are some creative ways in which IIF can use the CRM to fulfill the companys objectives? After implementation, CRM can be upgraded to have more web-based client offerings based on Web services technology. For instance, instead of having physical events IIF can have web casts that are focused and are provided in definite time. Also, Web feeds (RSS or Atom) import of IIS news and other information can be implemented. Web services technology provides a unified mechanism for information supply via Internet. (Newcomer, 2002; Eckles n.d.). IIF is a provider of commercial information, while other companies may request and obtain this information using mediator and special network protocols. Web services provide a layer of abstraction above existing software systems, such as application servers, CORBA, .NET servers, messaging and packaged applications. Web services work at a level of abstraction similar to the Internet and are capable of bridging any operating system, hardware platform, or programming language, just as the Internet is. (Cerami 2002). Also, more methods of accepting payments can be integrated in the payment module. But for this object-oriented structured interface for payments accounting should be designed and created at the first stage of CRM development. Later, integration of the payment module with accounting system of IIF is possible. This will give IIF possibility of making accounting operation without numerous manual entries of data that saves the time greatly. Web based feedback will be obtained from members about use of the website. The feedback will possibly provide IIF with some critics, but may give some useful ideas about possible new opportunities. Then, the website can be linked to websites of major financial institutions of the world to look for new members. At the same way, IIF database can leverage from the databases of close institutions in a WAN. What are the risks associated with this? How can Yost manage these risks? The risk is related to three areas in project management: clarity, size and complexity of the project. Clarity is concerned with the ability to define the requirement of the system. It begins from user requirements, so poor or wrong requirements lead to bad CRM design and development, and cost of mistake increases at each step. It is impossible for Yost now to create the requirements over again, but he can review the requirements if they are clear enough and in what extent they are fulfilled. Big projects are riskier than smaller ones (budget, components, functional points and so on.) IIF CRM is a big project, so it has more places where things can go badly. There is a difference between large and small projects: mistakes made on the design phase of large projects cost more expensive. But only very experienced company with at least two successfully finished projects can avoid design-phase mistakes in some extent. (Brooks, 1995) Castor Wrong decision with Castor is a vivid example of a mistakes made on the design phase. The only thing Yost can do here is to make sure that increasing hardware part of server or implementing Hibernate helps the situation. Unawareness of the Quateams in the scope of activity of IIF may lead to the lack of early risk resolution. This can be not so much the result of the project life cycle as it is on the focus on early paper artifacts, in which the real design, implementation, and integration risks intangible. The risks had to be taken into consideration in four distinct periods of risk exposure, where risk is defined as the probability of missing a cost, schedule, feature and quality goal. From the other point of view, early in the life cycle, when the requirements are specified, the actual risk exposure is highly unpredictable. I recommend Yost to test the system on a part of real data from IIF Knowledge base to ensure that the system meets the needs of IIF’s activity. The increasing dependence on IT in all aspects of business means that managing the risk level of an IT project is critical to a generals managers job. Highly complex projects require good communication among team members, which helps them to operate as an integrated unit. For successful project finalization Yost should understand that transfer from Castor to Hibernate should not be treated as separated activity that has to be scheduled for it. Instead Yost should make it an integrated part of program development that is done in the time it needs to be done. Works Cited Boehm, Barry, 1976. Software Engineering. IEEE Transactions on computers. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society. Brooks, Fredrick P. 1995. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering. Reading, MA: Addison-Wessley. Cerami, Ethan (2002). Web Services Essentials. New York: OReilly Eechambadi, Naras & Ortiz, Melissa.Creating a CRM Business Case.Retreived May 12, 2006 from www.quaero.com. Eckles, J. (n.d.). Look before you leap: The challenges of implementing web services for integration projects. Jayeckles.com. Retrieved May 19, 2006 from http://www.jayeckles.com/research/webservices.pc Fairley, Richard E. 1985. Software Engineering Concepts. NY: McGrow-Hill. Graham, Steve, Toufic, Daniels, Glen, Davis, Doug, Nakamura, Yuichi, Neyama, Ryo, Simeonov, Simeon (2002). Building Web Services with Java: SOAP. Informit.com. Retrieved May 19, 2006 from http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=26666&seqNum=1 Mahmoud, Qusay H. (2005). Securing Web Services and the Java WSDP 1.5 XWS-Security Framework. Sun Microsystems, Inc. Retrieved May 19, 2006 from http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/WebServices/security/ Newcomer, Eric (2002). Understanding Web Services: XML, WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI. Boston: Addison-Wesley Professional Royce, W. (2002). The Case For Results-Based Software Management. InformationWeek Retrieved May 19, 2006 from http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=6502386 Read More