London, Tuesday 5th February 2002 - Extraprise, the technology consulting company specialising in Customer Relationship Management, today announced that it has helped the OH&ES (Occupational Health and Environmental Safety) division of 3M accelerate the adoption of pan-European CRM. The strategy engagement undertaken by Extraprise centred on a common challenge facing large corporations -how to take advantage of experience gained from a successful regional CRM programme and ensure alignment on a pan-European basis without threatening the autonomy of each country operation.
"Having successfully implemented Siebel eBusiness Applications in our UK business, we were faced with a number of challenges: how to quantify the ROI of the UK implementation, how to share lessons learned with other regions and how to ensure a consistent approach is adopted across Europe while accommodating regional differences," said Catriona MacKay, European CRM Head OH&ES, 3M. "In a rapidly shrinking, increasingly competitive European market, it is extremely important for us to get this right. Therefore we enlisted the help of a CRM specialist who is familiar with our issues."
Firstly, Extraprise constructed a "transformation map" to help OH & ES clarify their European vision & strategy. Determining the gap between the "as is" state and the "to be" state was crucial in order to build the migration path. Extraprise then worked with 3M to build a "best practice roadmap"; combining Extraprise's experience with lessons learned by OH& ES' UK organisation, which had already successfully implemented Siebel eBusiness Applications.
"The UK took a very diligent approach to CRM - segmenting customers, identifying opportunities and making process and culture changes before implementing the technology," explained Mackay. "We wanted to ensure that other regions could benefit from the UK's experience without feeling they were having a UK solution imposed upon them."
The country regions were then asked to plot their progress against the roadmap. It became clear from this exercise what tools were available for reference/reuse and what the next steps were.
It was critical to the European centre of OH& ES to avoid a "not invented here" mentality in the regions, as this was perceived as a barrier to the adoption of a common solution for pan-European CRM. To avoid this, the European centre strove to gain buy-in by offering a full solution - a roadmap of what to do when, tools, templates, and evidence of benefits - rather than "just a system".
A key part of this process was to create an auditable, quantifiable ROI model. This was done by listing benefits of a common solution for each stakeholder group combined with key metrics from the sales process. The ROI model will be used to help regions within OH& ES to gauge success against pre-defined metrics, to draw attention to under-performing aspects, to inform adjustment planning and help prioritise future investment.
As a company, 3M has adopted Six Sigma as its single, global standard for quality auditing projects. "Demonstrable return on investment is a hot topic," noted Mackay, "and we're serious about using data to drive continuous improvement, so measurement is imperative."
The ROI model is being applied to the UK operation. Early indicators show that a third has been taken off the time it takes to familiarise sales people with new territories, management visibility of the sales pipeline has improved dramatically, and 3M OH & ES UK is now able to successfully conduct 'closed-loop' marketing campaigns.
"CEOs of many corporations have a vision for pan-European CRM - consistent processes, consolidated reporting, pan-Euro account management," commented Nick Rhodes, Principal Consultant, Extraprise, "but few have a clear appreciation of the migration path between today's reality and tomorrow's envisioned future. We were delighted to be able to help 3M OH & ES to accelerate the adoption of pan-European CRM."
Extraprise® is a leading systems integrator and business process outsourcer specializing in customer management. The company's "Insight-to-Interaction" (or "i2i") solutions combine data management, business insight, demand generation, and customer management. Clients use Extraprise services to make their customer insights actionable throughout their marketing, sales, and service channels. Solutions are available on premise and as on demand services at the company's hosting centers. Extraprise is headquartered in Boston with offices in the U.S. and Europe. Extraprise is on the Web at www.extraprise.com.
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