A Real-Life CRM Deployment Annecdote

One of the companies which I used to consult with prior to joining Microsoft had a very interesting conundrum a number of years back. This company just implemented a pricey enterprise-class CRM system, and mandated that all field sales staffs to input customer information (contacts, activities, etc.) into the system.

In reaction, the field teams objected loudly:

  • Most of them are already maintaining this sort of information locally on their notebook computers - in Outlook contacts, or in Excel spreadsheets. Obviously, they loathed to do what is seen as additional administrative work;
  • They found the new system's user-interface difficult to use, and did not want to invest time to learn it;
  • The new system was unable to support offline usage. 

After weeks of coaxing which yielded little improvements, the sales department had a creative solution to the impasse. The sales persons agreed to submit the required information monthly (in a Excel spreadsheet with a agreed-upon format) to a temporary staff who would then key in the data into the CRM system.

The Results Gap

The scenario above described what Microsoft calls the "Results Gap" - the disconnect that exists between people and enterprise Line-of-Business (LOB) systems such as ERPs and CRMs. Talking to customers here in Singapore, it is apparent that effectively integrating or surfacing data into and from ERP systems remains as one of the key challenges facing IT.

Enterprise LOB systems are great with structured business processes (typically represented as flow-charts), but ignore the fact that these only tell part of the story. The reality is most of these structured flows do not capture the "out-of-band" work done by people to support the business -- activities such as emailing, exchanging documents, phone conversations, workflow with other team-mates and customers, and so on. The complete business process is therefore an amalgamation of structured business processes with many ad-hoc, people-to-people collaborations. 

The Results Gap impacts businesses negatively:

  • Important data remains on end-user local systems, and are not synchronized back to LOB systems (where they should belong);
  • Unmanaged ad-hoc collaboration gives rise to data chaos (e.g., multiple versions);
  • There is reliance on a few power users for critical enterprise information

Enter the OBAs

OBAs (or Office Business Applications) are a new class of enterprise composite applications that aim to close the Results Gap by connecting people (with their messy collaboration) to structured business processes. 

The concept of an OBA is certainly not new -- custom solutions that integrate Office client applications with backend systems through web services, and commercial applications such as SAP/Microsoft Duet are all good concrete examples of OBA implementations.

However, the Microsoft Office 2007 System that was recently released will enable even more interesting OBAs while simplifying development.  Going far beyond Office 2007 Ribbon customization, the Office System provides many client and server platform services: 

  • Customizable user experiences on the Office client applications (Ribbons, TaskPanes, etc.),
  • Flexible OpenXML document format,
  • Role-based, personalize-able web portal (SharePoint Server)
  • Improved workflow, search, content and document management services,
  • New powerful server capabilities such as Forms Server, Excel Server
  • Built on .NET platform...

OBA Scenarios

With all these firepower, it's not hard to imagine the following OBA scenario for an Excel-based Expense Claims application where end-users fill in espense claims in an Excel "form". The form is routed according to defined Workflow rules for approval. Managers view the claims requests from within Outlook and take appropriate action. Final data is pumped into the backend ERP or Finance system, and the Expense Claims form is archived on a document server.  The Manager can generate an Expense report from within his own Excel application which pulls down the necessary data from the backend system, and then generates charts or pivot-table for analysis.

Other scenarios include Contract Management (integrate Finance & Document Management LOB systems with Word, Excel), Sales Automation (integrate CRM LOB system with Excel, Outlook).

OBAs In Singapore

I personally feel OBAs represent a very neat approach to solving many real-world challenges faced by enterprises. This translates to opportunities to many of our Customers and Partners (ISV and SIs alike.)

Meanwhile, check out the following resources for more information about OBA:

Up next, some follow-up on the first OBA Workshop held in Singapore, and more on OBA and SOA...