The Sales team wanted to increase revenue. Senior executives favored buying a CRM solution but IT suggested a process review first. A process difficulty assessment was completed and the problem processes identified. The team worked with business areas to implement improvements over six months, tightening controls for revenue generation in the areas of contract pricing, financial review and contract renewal. The process improvements addressed the business problems and created consistent processes without the need to purchase a new CRM application.
Sherri Adame creates efficient business processes and identifies appropriate business intelligence. She works in the healthcare industry fine-tuning sales and quality processes and implementing automated solutions, always emphasizing the business process and making them more efficient.
The objective of this project was to complete a business process review to assist the development of a CRM strategy before choosing an application. The goal was to find the most difficult business process and improve them within six months.
The team assembled to enable this project included the VP of Marketing and two marketing managers, the Director of Finance and a financial manager, the Director of Sales and one sales and one operations manager, two divisional Sales VPs, a legal counsel, an IT analyst and a consultant.
A five-step plan was created. It included:
- Identify the difficult business process
- Determine process improvements
- Identify and assign process owners
- Implement quick hits to improve processes
- Develop a plan for continuing process review
In identifying the difficult processes, a mandatory survey of business process questions with a rating system was distributed, with a scale from one to five, with the five having the most difficulties in completing the process. Individual responses were not disclosed to ensure honesty.
The second step was to determine the process improvements. The responses to the survey were tallied and a flow chart for the difficult processes created. The results were presented at an all-day meeting. The problem processes were discussed during the morning and the afternoon was used for brainstorming improvements and assigning priorities.
The third step was to identify and assign the process owners. One team was assigned to manage the overall process and future process improvements. The process step owners were assigned a team to manage the individual steps. Roles and responsibilities were reviewed and assigned for the processes and the steps within the processes.
The forth step, implementing the “quick hits”, began with reviewing the brainstorming results. Tasks were assigned and a timeline created. Standard operating procedures were agreed upon and the results, including roles and responsibilities, were published on the intranet.
The fifth step was to develop a plan for continuing process review. The overall process was the revenue generation cycle and the sub-processes were in marketing strategy development, sales strategy and sales plan development, and the pricing guidelines.
No new technology was needed for this. All the work was done using special spreadsheets.
The revenue generation cycle was greatly improved. There is now better communication between Finance, Marketing, Sales, Legal, and Sales Operations. New processes for customer proposals and proposal review were developed. New pricing guidelines and the yearly review process were determined. Contract maintenance was improved with specific reports developed to review contract expirations to expedite the processes. Pricing margin targets for expiring contracts were developed. The process were tightened and streamlined.
The project was a success because the right people were chosen to implement the plans. The owners were given control to implement process improvements and assign accountability. The results were published and the existing technology was used in a better way.
The lessons leaned were:
- A CRM application was NOT needed to tighten control or improve the revenue generation cycle.
- A business process improvement project clearly identified the business requirements for IT.
- The existing technology base worked and could be re-used in a new way to better meet the business needs.
All it took to markedly improve the business process was to look at them in detail, work with the process owners, and then fine-tune what was already there. According to Adame, despite having the diverse teams, everybody worked to identify the problems and create usable solutions.
