Jackie Palmer, Senior Product Manager: CRM Marketing Solutions, Infor

It is with extreme pleasure that I publicly congratulate Banco de Credito in Peru (BCP) for being selected as the Silver winner of the Gartner and 1to1 Media 2011 CRM Excellence Awards. Utilizing Infor CRM Epiphany, BCP was recognized in the Integrated Marketing category for excellence in integrating people, processes, and technologies to drive marketing performance and overall return on investment. As a direct result of their choice to implement CRM Epiphany, the contribution of CRM to sales rose from 15% in 2008 to 40% in 2010, helping BCP to increase their number of profitable marketing initiatives and sales totals as a whole.

Some things to note about BCP and their integrated marketing efforts:

• Founded in 1889, BCP is the largest Peruvian bank with more than 10,000 employees, 3 million customers, and 330 branches worldwide.
• CRM Epiphany Outbound Marketing and Interaction Advisor provide BCP with integrated campaign data from inbound and outbound channels.
• BCP customers now receive more relevant offers tailored to their particular demographic due to the robust analytics model in CRM Epiphany. 
• CRM Epiphany helped BCP lower their campaign cycle times by half.
• BCP’s credit card unit sales originating from direct marketing campaigns tripled since their implementation of CRM Epiphany in 2009.

On behalf of the entire Infor team, I send warm congratulations to BCP for being a true leader in marketing and partnering with CRM Epiphany to drive performance and profitability.

Interested in knowing how CRM Epiphany could benefit your organization?  Please post your questions and comments.

For full details and additional information, please see the press release.

Note:  The identification of a Gartner Award winner is not an endorsement by Gartner of any vendor, product, or service.

Jackie Palmer, Senior Product Manager: CRM Marketing Solutions, Infor

As a direct result of feedback from Epiphany customers, Infor is delivering new capabilities to improve the effectiveness of marketing campaigns with the release of Outbound Marketing 7.2.2, part of the Infor CRM Epiphany suite. The enhancements in this release give customers the tools to make marketing campaigns more timely, targeted and effective with advanced capabilities for lead management, event-based marketing and e-mail campaign creation, all while streamlining campaign development and execution.

Enhanced Lead Management
This release, users can take advantage of built in integration between Outbound Marketing and Infor CRM Epiphany Sales and Service to enhanced lead management capabilities. This automates the process of sending leads identified by Outbound Marketing campaigns to Sales and Service, along with the appropriate communication or offer and associated customer information (organization, contact, individual). Lead information is also automatically passed from Sales and Service to Outbound Marketing for reporting and analysis.

Improved Event Based Marketing
The Event Based Marketing module has been expanded to better accommodate events by new customers and data captured during events in external systems. Event-related campaigns can now be targeted to new customers who don’t yet exist in the data mart and can also leverage data on new customers that is passed in with the event itself. In addition, event-based campaigns to existing customers can combine data from the data mart or external data sources as well as data passed in with the event itself.

Streamlined E-mail Campaign Creation
Multiple e-mail content files can now be uploaded at one time either before or during campaign creation, making e-mail campaign creation more efficient. Other e-mail enhancements include:

• Alerts for data synchronization errors
• The ability to send campaigns from a single OM server to multiple EM servers

 To read about all the new features and expanded platform support in 7.2.2, request a copy of the Release Summary.

This announcement reflects the direction Infor may take with regard to the specific product(s) described herein, all of which is subject to change by Infor in its sole discretion, with or without notice to you.  This announcement is not a commitment to you in any way and you should not rely on this document or any of its content in making any decision.  Infor is not committing to develop or deliver any specified enhancement, upgrade, product or functionality, even if such is described in this announcement and even if such description is accompanied by words such as "anticipate," "believe," "expect," "intend," "may," "plan," "project," "predict," "should," "will," and/or similar expressions.  Many factors can affect Infor's product development plans and the nature, content and timing of future product releases, all of which remain in the sole discretion of Infor.  This announcement, in whole or in part, may not be incorporated into any contractual agreement with Infor or its subsidiaries or affiliates.  Infor expressly disclaims any liability with respect to this announcement.

Caroline Davies, EMEA Marketing Manager, CRM & WFM

Focusing on the future of digital marketing and customer experience, the next CRM Epiphany Panel of Peers forum will be held on Tuesday, March 2, 2011 in Madrid, Spain.  This one-day complimentary event is designed for marketing and IT executives who want to ensure they’re getting the maximum benefit from their Infor CRM Epiphany solution.

The Panel of Peers will feature a full day of education, innovation, and networking opportunities for Epiphany customers, along with the opportunity to exchange ideas with Infor executives, Epiphany product management, consulting staff, and industry experts. 

These are just some of the event highlights:

• Dedicated roundtable sessions for financial services, manufacturing, travel & leisure, retail, and telecommunications companies
• Business consulting workshops on customer value management, social media, and global marketing strategies
• Panel discussion on marketing techniques with Suresh Vittal, Forrester Research, and executives from Telenor and Bankinter
• Updates on Infor’s strategic direction in sales and service, marketing, and customer experience management
• Previews of the next generation of CRM Epiphany solutions

Visit the Panel of Peers website to learn more about the event and to view the full agenda.

Jackie Palmer, Senior Product Manager: CRM Marketing Solutions, Infor

At the National Retail Federation's 100th Annual Convention and Expo in January, Infor announced the general availability of CRM Epiphany Shopping Advisor. With this product, retailers and e-commerce service providers can deliver personalized and more relevant product and marketing offers to website visitors to improve the customer shopping experience.

Even in the midst of the biggest retail event of 2011, the Shopping Advisor launch has generated a lot of buzz in the media, including Retail Solutions Online, Internet Retailer, and CRMAdvocate. Why all the interest? Because consumers are now free to shop anywhere, anytime—and  retailers need more sophisticated ways to differentiate their brands, keep customers coming back, and convert more visitors to buyers.

With this new solution, retailers can improve the purchasing experience by automatically recommending products and offers to site visitors as they shop, based on products they view, search for, purchase, or add to wish lists or shopping carts. It also instantly accesses and uses relationship history data—gathered from all interaction channels such as recent store or catalog purchases—to deliver the most relevant recommendations.

If you weren’t able to visit Infor at NRF, you can see the new Shopping Advisor in action during the on-demand replay of the February 17 webinar. Please join us to see how you can create more consistent, personalized experiences wherever your customer shops—in the store, via smartphone or the web, or over the phone.

George Huhta, Senior Marketing Manager, Infor

Paul Greenberg, CRM analyst, commentator, and author, has finished compiling his annual list of companies to watch in the CRM market on his ZDNet blog. Only 33 companies out of 200+ candidates made the cut. In evaluating them, Greenberg looked at a number of factors: vision, technology, financial performance, market presence, and alliances.

In Part V: Different Strokesof his 2011 Watchlist series, Greenberg profiled Infor CRM Epiphany and our Interaction Advisor family of solutions. In keeping with the "different strokes" theme, he focused on the unique benefits of the Epiphany Advisor solutions as the "terrific interaction engine that could." Here’s what he says about the solutions:

"What makes these powerful is that they are products geared to a real-time
customer experience throughout an entire customer lifecycle, that takes all
channels into account AND, if that wasn’t enough, they capture and analyze
all the data that the interactions create.”

One of the "coolest applications," according to Greenberg,was the Infor CRM Epiphany E-mail Advisor that "takes live emails—meaning those sitting in your customers’ email in-boxes—and according to their online customer behavior adjusts the offers that they may be getting in that email."

Another key difference that Greenberg noted was the customer involvement in developing Epiphany solutions. He writes:

"It's interesting but Infor, in the submissions to the Watchlist, was the only
one who emphasized their use of Customer Advisory Boards to get feedback
on design of the UI and the functionality."

That’s just part of Infor’s focus on our customers. We’ve always known that we can’t deliver quality products without the input and assistance. Feedback from our Advisory Boards and Panel of Peers (next panel is in Madrid in March) is an essential element in our product direction and development. 

Of course, Greenberg notes some areas of improvement. He’s pushing Infor to “seriously step up” our CRM industry presence. And we agree. So you’ll see more visibility and participation from Infor and our Epiphany solutions in industry publications, associations, and events in 2011. Watch this blog and follow us on Twitter for all the details.

Guest post by George Huhta, Senior Marketing Manager, Infor

You get the power to serve your customers better by streamlining the complex process of collecting, consolidating, and improving opt-in customer data throughout your entire enterprise with Infor CRM Epiphany Data Advisor. Released in November, Data Advisor is the second module released in the Advisor family, following the launch of E-mail Advisor in August.

The optimized data can then be used by all CRM Epiphany modules, or other business apps, to create consistent and personalized customer interactions across all channels, including web, Smartphone, and email.

Epiphany user Peter Brugnatti, Associate Director, CRM, Bell Canada said: "Getting closer to relevant information helps us maximize each and every customer interaction, which positively affects our business and the customer experience." 

Want to learn more? Read the entire press release.

How have you been managing your customer data collection process? Do you gather all pertinent data at once or in snippets? Please share your thoughts and ideas on customer data collection by leaving a comment to this post.

Guest post by George Huhta, Senior Marketing Manager, Infor

The power to serve your customers better, that is—and to sell to them. But many of your customers may be reluctant to give out more info than what’s needed to complete their transactions. So you may lose valuable data and actions if you don’t have the right tools in place to capture it.

How do you strike the balance between requesting the multitude of details needed to flesh out a customer profile? Do you get it all at once, asking for a few bits at each transaction? Or do you observe their behavior from afar, still capturing everything you need to deliver high-impact offers at the moment of interaction?

Our on-demand webinar is the perfect opportunity to check out the new Infor CRM Epiphany Data Advisor. This online presentation will show you how you can create a consistent, methodical process for gathering everything you need to know about each customer over time. That way, you end up knowing what you need to know to give your customers what they want.

We’ll demonstrate how Data Advisor can help you:

• Automate your data enhancement process every time someone in your organization takes an order, answers a question, or provides support.
• Avoid seeming intrusive to your customers by collecting information thoughtfully, a little at a time, so customers feel that you're considering their needs.

View this webinar to see how Data Advisor gives you the power to know more about who your customers are, what they like, and what they're most likely to buy.

Guest post by George Huhta, Senior Marketing Manager, Infor

New technologies, new market entrants, and customers who want "more, better, faster, cheaper" are altering the telecom landscape at break-neck speed. Success today depends on understanding your customers and delivering communications, products, and services that best meet their needs while increasing their value.

To help you confront these market shifts, we’re tapping into two industry thought leaders, Don Peppers, founding partner, Peppers & Rogers Group; and Owen Sonnenschein, telecommunications industry expert, Infor CRM Epiphany. In this 1to1 Media webinar, they’ll discuss the need for telecom marketing organizations to define customer groups based on needs, value, and behavior to improve retention, cross-sell, and up-sell. They'll also explain how to use customer insight to deliver a consistent customer experience and build strong customer trust.

Your take-aways will be:

• How to define the "real" customer in multi-user accounts, and how to target each user
• How to integrate independent customer information systems
• Why you should develop a change-management plan to support customer-focused process optimization
• Ways to create targeted, relevant messaging that profitably improves up/cross-sell and retention
• How to deliver consistent messaging and experiences across channels, including social media

Register for this webinar to find out how your company can gain and retain a competitive advantage at every point in the customer lifecycle.

Guest post by Venson Kuchipudi, Sr. Director, Social Computing Strategy, Infor

I often get asked “What’s the difference between social media and Social CRM (SCRM)?”

The fact is that CRM is inherently meant to be a social interaction. However, to date, the tools and processes in place have largely been one way—from a company to its customers.

SCRM transforms traditional CRM into a two-way dialog where the customer is the driving force behind what the company does and how it does it. It’s a STRATEGY that’s often supported by new tools and technology, whereas social media should be considered as some of the TACTICS included in that strategy.

Mashable has a great post on why companies need to embrace Social CRM. Paul Greenberg, a leading authority on SCRM, states that Social CRM is "... designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide a mutually beneficial value in a trusted and transparent business environment. It's the company response to the customer's owning of the relationship."

Michael Fauschette, a leading industry analyst, also has a great definition: "Social CRM is the tools and processes that encourage better, more effective customer interaction and leverage the collective intelligence of the broader customer community with the intended result of increasing intimacy between an organization and its prospects and customers. The goal is to make the relationship with the customer more intimate and tied to the company by building a public ecosystem to better understand what they want and how they interact with the various company touchpoints like sales, customer service, etc."

Mashable includes a diagram from Jacob Morgan of Chess Media that nicely illustrates the SCRM process:

In essence, SCRM is a public customer ecosystem in which the entire company participates. However, the customer defines the process, channels, and interactions.

Ray Wang, a leading analyst, offers 18 use cases of Social CRM. In it he describes how SCRM helps companies discover important, external conversations by their customers and tie those back to business objectives and to existing CRM systems. In effect, SCRM brings more value to existing CRM systems and processes.

The reality is that SCRM requires organizations to change how they view and interact with their customers. For many, this social adoption is fraught with fear and resistance, but like any disruptive evolution it’s just an early hurdle to eventual adoption. Progressive companies are hiring Social Directors, Community Managers, and exploring the next wave of CRM tools. Eventually all companies will have to adopt some or all of these approaches to stay competitive in the customers’ eyes.

So are you adopting Social CRM strategies within your organization? What resources, tools, and technologies are you using to support it? How do you define Social CRM? I'd love to hear your comments.

Guest post by Clark Green, Director, Marketing, Infor CRM Epiphany

Smartphones have changed the way we communicate and interact on both a personal level and a business level. And with the advances in mobile technology and data bandwidth, it’s even easier now to envision how your sales force, or any customer-facing employee, can use mobile CRM to decrease sales downtime, improve customer service and retention, and increase sales effectiveness.

With a smartphone in virtually everyone’s hand and the power of these mobile devices advancing dramatically, your customers spend more of their daily lives interacting with the world on this handheld device. Consumers have become accustomed to having life at their fingertips and pretty much expect the same level of technology from the companies that they do business with.

According to a recent National Retail Federation survey,¹ roughly 27% of US consumers that own a smartphone will research and buy products this holiday season on their handheld device. Which means you need to meet them where they play and integrate a mobile strategy into your marketing mix. A number of vendors are building on the historically bare-bones apps and developing more robust mobile CRM applications to meet the needs of a sophisticated, integrated, and automated marketing strategy.

Imagine a world where your field sales rep has 24/7 instant access to customer information, and can leave a customer/prospect site, update the opportunity status on the smartphone, and have the rest of the company updated instantaneously. No more waiting for data uploads or the most current info. Not to mention the added benefits of streamlining sales and marketing activities, product up-sell and cross-sell, and cost reduction. It’s all right there at their fingertips.

The future is here! What trends have you seen in the marketplace toward integrating mobile CRM? What are your plans for adopting a mobile CRM strategy to mobilize your sales force? What challenges and/or benefits do you see for your company? Leave a comment to this post with your thoughts.

¹Thad Rueter, "A Cheery Holiday Forecast," Internet Retailer, October 18, 2010.