Solvis Consulting, LLC

Managing International CRM Projects

By Jesus Hoyos

During the last 15 years, I had participated in many CRM projects in Latin America.  Many of these CRM projects were deployed by Latin American and U.S. multi-nationals implementing many technologies and programs.  Two typical characteristics of international CRM projects are the ability for the CRM software to have multi-language capabilities and roll-up forecasting for different countries or regions. What this means? Well, many CRM projects focus on functionality that take advantage of easy configurations such as business units, multi-region reports, multi-level security, role-based access, collaboration within opportunities and territory management, among others. 

Unfortunately, many international projects do not take into consideration the other parts of CRM: people, data, metrics and local culture. I have compiled a list of areas to take into consideration when deploying an international CRM project, especially in Latin America.

20 areas to consider for your International CRM Project:

1. Consider in-country and region cultural differences. Doing business in Medellin is different from Bogotá, and doing business in Perú is not the same as doing business in México. There are many business and cultural differences in Latin America. Do not make the mistake of thinking that all countries and regions in Latin America are the same.
2. Address Formatting. Many CRM systems are design to only manage US and Canadian addresses. You need to consider the different address formats for each country. Look for local address validation software or services in each country. The same goes for Name (First and Last Name, Company Name) formatting for both personal and company names – your dup logic needs to take into consideration Portuguese, Spanish and English names.
3. Use local Project Managers from you own company and I strongly suggest you use a Program Manager that is from Latin America. This will help you assimilate the local cultures and business practices.
4. Make sure you have a realistic budget for processes, technology, training, change management and data conversion. Your budget must include travel expenses. Webex and Gotomeeting  are all good, but you need to have a lot of face-to-face meetings in Latin America.
5. Internal Politics. Make sure you have an excellent change management process to manage internal politics. Politics will kill your project if they are not well managed.
6. Geopolitical risks. Make sure you have developed scenarios and what-if situations for all kind of economic or political situations.
7. Design your CRM program and software globally but deploy it locally. Your strategy needs to be aligned with all business units. I have seen projects failed when one business unit is customer-centric and the another one is focused 100% in cutting costs.
8. Make sure you have standard processes that can be adjusted to the realities of each country.
9. Make sure that the functionality deployed can be changed quickly. You do not want the local business unit to wait six months for new functionality.
10. Involve all type if users with conference room pilots to get their feedback and buy-in.
11. Many CRM practices in U.S. are not really best practices in Latin America.Best practices some time are bad practices when deployed in many countries. Make sure you monitor all processes and functionality to make sure if they all make sense as best practices.
12. Validate the differences between SaaS and OnPremise for your deployment.  I have seen SaaS software to be more successful with international projects. No software, database or hardware to worry about.
13. Do not push your CRM projects to the countries. HQ and the local business units need to buy-in the project and a good change management process need to be in place.
14. Select 2 or 3 business units or countries to run pilots. Compare results, made adjustments, re-deploy. Have a phased approach after you get the final results of the pilots.
15. Training, training, and training. Have local companies do the end-user training. Use your software vendor for the technical training.
16. I think you heard this one before – “Start with the early adopters or power-users”. I will recommend the contrary, start with the employees that will give you problems with change management or adopting the CRM strategy. You need to start early with the late adopters, then bring the early adopters to close the loop with change management.
17. Support. Needs to be local and in the local language. Use HQ or area regions for Level 2 or 3 support.
18. Your CRM software needs to consider the different definitions for customers and segments for each country or region. But make sure you at least have a base definition for reporting purposes.
19. Communicate, communicate and communicate. Employees need to know the details of the implementation and strategy. Not knowing creates dissatisfaction between business units and countries.
20. Data & Information sharing is a must, especially when your customer base is the same across business units.

In summary, you must be sure you apply project management standards to manage your international project taking into account my 20 suggestions. You must also understand that international CRM projects are risky and complex, but if you keep your project simple and consider the local nuances and business practices of each country, you will at least have won part of the battle. 

Many companies will try to standardize functionally and processes - this could help your project fail. Just make sure you have the basic functionality and process are covered, and then allow the business units or countries to adjust them to their local requirements.

Twitter conversations about crm and project management.

This post was originally written for myCRMCareer.

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Congratulations to Marco A. Cruz!

Congratulations to Marco A. Cruz - winner of the Grange Prize Award!The Grange Prize is a Canadian and International Internet Award that recognizes the work of two Canadian and two international photographers, awarding CAD $50,000 to a winner chosen through an internet public vote. This year they had 2 Mexican photographers. Marco A. Cruz was the winner!

Early in the year Marco A.Cruz contacted us to help him with his Social Media presence and CRM activities. Marco had already a site managed by himself with a focus on documental photography. Marco realized that photography and the internet go well together and he needed to expand his presence in the Internet to promote his work and must important start conversations about his work and in this case, Mexican photography.

Marco is a clear example of using personal branding, social media and CRM to promote his work and engage in conversations. For this, Solvis prepared a Social CRM Strategy based on Marco's core values and objectives to promote his photography.  We are in the process of developing a case study but here are some of the tactics that we used within the defined strategy:

1. Optimized Wordpress to better manage his blog content
2. Made changes to the navegation menus at his website
3. Created a Facebook strategy for Marco A, Cruz, the photographer
4. Established presence on Twitter
5. Used tools like HootSuite, Mr. Tweet, Search.Twiiter and Tweedeck to manage conversations, followers and tweets
6. Used different Google tools to understand conversations around photography
7. Had a plan to measure conversations and some key metrics
8. Used ZohoCRM as the CRM tool with a Landing Page
9. Zoho for Project Management

Marco's blog is http://www.marcoacruz.com/blog/.

We are extemely happy to contribute to Marco's efforts and expand his precence in the Internet via Social Media. Our work is not done yet, we are now moving into the next phase to help Marco with other social media channels and tactics.

More: How Solvis can help you with your CRM and Social Media Strategies

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Digital Days in Colombia with Mass, Indexcol and Google

On Thursday, May 21st, Jesus Hoyos, was one of the speakers at Digital Days in Colombia. This event was organized by Mass and Indexcol with the help from Google. Mass and Indexcol are both Internet and Digital marketing agencies in Colombia. To be part of the Digital Days social networking group go to Revolucion Digital.

Image by luc legay via Flickr

Colombia's constant growth in the Internet is impressive - 17 millions users in the internet and 4.3 millions in Facebook. Jesus had the opportunity to demonstrate real-time conversations via Facebook and Twitter while he was speaking at the conference and demonstrated how to measure Social CRM via conversation tools and CRM applications. The event had more than 200 participants from all types of industries.

More about the event (Spanish):

1. Fotos y Tweets de Digital Day en Bogotá con Indexcol, Mass y Google #crmlatam #ddcolombia
2. Cifras, tendencias e información de como los Colombianos usan la Internet #crmlatam #scrm

How to reach Latin American Customers using CRM

Image by Sam Kelly via Flickr

By Jesus Hoyos

Miami is well known as the hub for doing business in Latin America as well as the center for many Latin Americans to shop at the many stores in South Florida. It is well known that many Colombians travel to Fort Lauderdale over a weekend to buy for special occasions. Many Mexicans shop at Miami malls during Thanksgiving, especially on the famous Black Friday.  This trend is evolving, since many Latin Americans have U.S. forwarding mail boxes in order to shop at Amazon.com or Target.com. For example, they purchase a Wii or Playstation using a Miami address and once the shipment gets to Miami, it is then forwarded to the final destination in the region.  One clear case is also the customer experience, I know many of my friends shop online at Victoria Secrets or Bath & Body Works, and are anxious to have local stores in many of the countries to be part of the in-store customer experience. There are more than 1,500 friends in Facebook requesting that Victoria Secrets opens a store in Puerto Rico.

What this means for your business? It means that your online and brick-and-mortal strategy needs to include the differences of targeting Hispanics and Latin Americans.  Differences? Yes. Targeting Spanish speaking customers is not only about messaging and branding, but about segmentation, targeting, execution and campaign follow up (and the Long Tail). Your on-line and off-line campaigns should be appropriately versioned to different Hispanics or Latin American segments. Spanish speaking audiences are not identical and geographic differences play a large role among the different audience groups, such as cultural traditions, country of origin, and the Spanish language.

The challenge is the diversity among all the Latino audiences. This can make it very difficult to achieve your marketing goals, especially if your company does not understand this diversity. The diversity gets complicated when you need to understand that it is the same language but different cultures, Latin Americans living here with work visas vs. 2nd or 3rd generation of Hispanics, bilingual vs. "Spanish only" as the main language, tourists visiting, or simply anybody from any country that buys on-line. Each country or Latino group has its own identity and with their own nuances.  You even have regions within countries that have differences in lifestyles and industries, such as Mexico City and Monterrey, or Buenos Aires and Cordoba. Puerto Ricans in New York have differences from Cubans in Florida or Mexicans in Chicago.

Many companies have taken the blanket approach of using the “Se Habla Español” strategy.  Who are you targeting when you use this approach in your direct mail, email marketing, web site, store and call center?  --- If your business is using the “Se Habla Español” marketing strategy, are you targeting 2nd generation Hispanics, Latinos traveling to the States, Mexican or Argentinians living in their respective countries, Puerto Rican living in the States or the island, or John Davies, Hispanic living in Miami? --- I used to get many promotional emails from a major hotel chain in both Spanish and German. I figured out that I was getting the Spanish email since my first name is Jesus, and the German emails since my last name has its roots in Germany.  I also get many Spanish promotional materials at home, but I rather get English promotions, but as of today, nobody has asked me my preferences.  They are assuming that I want my promotional materials in Spanish. It is a mass marketing strategy. “Se Habla Español” is a mass marketing strategy. One size does not fit all Spanish speaking customers; there are distinctions in marketing all Hispanics (in the United States) and Latin Americans (from México to Argentina, including Brasil).

Tweets from Sapphire 2009

Jesus Hoyos, Solvis Managing Partner, had the opportunity to participate at Sapphire 2009 in Orlando as a blogger. Follow here his tweets from the conference this past week. Also go to his blog in Spanish about his meetings with SAP Latin America Executives and customers.

Neighborhood America wins its second consecutive CODiE Award for 'Best Social Networking Solution' for enterprises.

Our social network partner, Neighborgood America, wins its second CODiE Award.



May 7, 2009 - Neighborhood America announces today that it has won its second consecutive CODiE Award for 'Best Social Networking Solution' for enterprises. The company accepted the prestigious award Tuesday evening in San Francisco at the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) Summit, emerging from the competition as the recognized leader in the enterprise social computing industry.

More here

If you are looking for Social Networking solution for your enterprise contact us.

CRM 2.0 Services  
How Solvis can help with your CRM initiatives?

Jesus Hoyos to participate in CRM Webminar

Our Managing Partner, Jesus Hoyos, will participate in a CRM Webminar sponsored by Oracle Latin America and Netmedia. Jesus will be part of a panel that includes Mónica Mistretta, General Director of Netmedia, and, Ricardo Cárdenas, Director,CRM Oracle América Latina.

When: May 19th, 9:30 AM, Mexico D.F. time

Register Here (Spanish)

CRM Certification - 2009 Latam Tour

Solvis Consulting is proud to be a sponsor of the CRM Certification - 2009 Latam Tour. The certification is organized by CustomersForever, BPT Partners and El Centro de Formación Profesional de Call Center & CRM. Last year, the 2008 Tour had 100 participants and the seminars were held in Lima, México, Córdoba and Buenos Aires.

The Professional Certification in Applied CRM Strategy based on Paul Greenberg's book, "CRM at the Speed of Light". It is also available in eLearning format and the seminars can also be given just for your company.

Why You Should Attend

Learn to:

Create customer driven strategies that improve long-term customer equity and shareholder value Identify, acquire, service and grow profitable customers Deploy a set of 'best practices' for evaluating and implementing CRM process and technology innovation Design and optimize the customer experience that delivers the maximum value for value received Create organizational strategies and action plans that enable CRM success

Who Should Attend

The training seminar is designed for executives, managers and professionals in:

Sales Marketing Customer Support CRM Industry, Technology and Services CRM Consulting and Professional Services

The seminar has instructors from the region, including Jesus Hoyos (www.crmenlatinoamerica.com) and other Solvis' partners.

For more information go here.