[Kevin Price]: Welcome back to the price of business. I am your host Kevin Price. We call it the show that never ends because it continues 24/7 at PriceofBusiness.com. Be there or be square. Be there or be poor, that’s what I say. Hey, one of the guys who’s helping you not be poor is Walter Rogers. He’s with Baker Communications. He is keeping you in the know. I love the stuff that he’s doing. It’s innovative, particularly when it comes to Customer Research Management. If you’ve got a tickler system or a rolodex…Goodnight! Shame on you. It’s time to get into the 21st century. That’s what we do every time we have my friend Walter Rogers on. Welcome to the program.

[Walter Rogers]: Thanks Kevin, I appreciate it. How are you today?

[KP]: Doing great, thanks. So tell us real quickly, first of all, why don’t you let the audience know what Baker Communications is all about.

[WR]: Yeah, and I’d also like to introduce my guest today. I’ve got Ken Bouton on the line and he’s the group vice president from Business Wire.

[KP]: Hey Ken. Good to talk to you.

[Ken Bouton]: Good morning gentlemen. Happy to be here.

[KP]: Good, good, good. I’m sorry, go right ahead.

[WR]: Yes, and Ken is going to have some great perspectives for us on his particular CRM implementation. And for those of you don’t know what CRM stands for, it means Customer Relationship Management, which is really a way to get a 360 degree view of what your customer’s behaviors, purchasing behaviors are and how to best interact with your customers. And Ken’s been actually working on a project for 2-3 years. Is that about right Ken?

[KB]: That’s correct, that’s correct. An ongoing project.

[KP]: And Business Wire, just for the record, Business Wire is a PR website?

[KB]: No, we’re a news distribution service.

[KP]: That’s what I mean. You’re exactly right. You’re kind of like PR wire or one of the other new distribution sites.

[KB]: Correct.

[KP]: Got it, got it. And one that we’ve used, just for disclaimer’s sake. And we love. Congratulations.

[KB]: Thank you very much.

[KP]: You bet. You guys do great stuff. So go right ahead. Walter, I’m sure you have some questions. I will bring in some of my own. Go ahead and get it started though.

[WR]: Yeah, no, that’s terrific. The reason we really wanted to have Ken on the line today is, as I mentioned, he’s been working on a project for 2-3 years now, really implementing and standardizing a CRM across Business Wire globally and what’s particularly unique is that they had part of this consolidation effort, 25-30 different CRM systems that they were using. And so you can imagine that creates a little bit of confusion. So, Ken just tell us a little bit about why you guys decided to go through this consolidation process.

[KB]: Well I think having 25 or 30 disparate databases is sort of a band-aid approach to approaching a global sales operation and we recognized that. While it may have been effective at the local level, it wasn’t consistent. In other words, some offices used it very effectively and some not at all. And within those offices using it, how they were using it was also inconsistent. Not surprisingly, those offices that were using it effectively performed better and produced better results. In and of itself it was pretty apparent we needed to standardize the process and consolidate the data to an enterprise level. Aside from that, none of the individual databases were in any way aligned or synched with our company’s financial database so the individual databases spread across the world were very prospect centric. That’s fine in and of itself but didn’t provide any data on client metrics that would be very helpful in terms of spend or history or contract status, etc. Everyone from the front line sales to management needed to access multiple spots of information which is not efficient nor therefore effective.

[KP]: Got it, got it. Yeah so, in terms of the transformation process what did that entail, from going from the earlier model to the new model?

[KB]: Well, the implementation was sort of divided between a technical and a non-tech process. The technical people having the actual CRM tool and the non-technical people providing insight into what it needed to include and how it would work. And that was about a year long process. We had a project management team that represented sales and sales management, sales support conveying to these tech portion of the team what we knew we wanted and things that we learned we needed to have by gauging and soliciting input and feedback from specific people that were on the front line. I think ultimately, we had a very good understanding of what we thought would be effective and would be very well aligned with the day to day sales processes that people were implementing on the front line, but the technology platform that we had in place wouldn’t support it sufficiently. Sort of no matter what we tried to do or spin, it was the proverbial square peg-round hole effort. It didn’t work and it wasn’t adopted. So we changed and we kept the underlying data that had already been consolidated. We created our own proprietary user interface to access and navigate that data and simply put, we re-skinned it, as our lead tech person likes to put it, and made it a much more user friendly tool that made the sales processes more automated, easier, and by extension, more effective.

[KP]: Right.

[KB]: And we continue to tweak as necessary.

[KP]: And you know, part of my burden you know, Walter and Ken, is to take this down to where the person out there who’s listening, who has some background in business, but their expertise isn’t in the CRM arena. So why don’t we spend a little time bringing the importance of this down to where it meets their needs. Walter?

[WR]: Yeah so, I mean I would say that the importance of having a properly configured CRM that meets the sales process is, you know, what’s going to make the difference between adoption and not adoption and what’s going to make the difference between whether or not a company like Business Wire receives the value and output that it intended to get when going into a project like that. Because one of the things we know for sure is that sales people are going to follow the path of least resistance. If you give them tools and processes that are more complex than what they were using before, they’re surely not going to adopt them and they’re going to surely fight you every step along the way. If however, you look for ways to streamline the process and look for ways to eliminate work or make it easier for them to get their work done, whether that be in managing a process start to finish or producing specific pipeline reports or what have you, then they’re going to see the value in it and they’re going to adopt it and in fact, Ken maybe you can talk a little bit about the pipeline management process and how you guys saw an opportunity to really standardize across the company.

[KB]: Well yeah, I think that’s a good granular example of some of the benefits of the…we’re realizing…One of the things we’ve learned as we adopted and started looking at some of the metrics that we could analyze now was that had a fairly wide ranging and inconsistent interpretation at both the management and at the front line sale level of what the sales pipeline meant and how individual prospects should be slotted or measures in that process. And the CRM has enabled us to very much streamline that effort and to gain a more meaningful and objective view of what’s in the pipeline and what new business may close within, sort of, uniformly applied timeframes. Essentially we’ve applied benchmarks to specific sales processes or activities, whether that’s a meeting or a webinar or whatever the case might be that will dictate the movement of a prospect within that sales pipeline or a defined consistent, measurable sales stage or cycle. So, it gives not only management but the individual sales person the ability to, I think, get a more meaningful, significant, and probably more accurate interpretation of where the business is going to be coming and from the sales standpoint how you’re going to meet your quotas and move forward.

[KP]: Got it, got it. We are talking both with Walter Rogers from Baker Communications and Ken, I’m sorry, your last name?

[KB]: Is Bouton

[KP]: Bouton. And you are with Business Wire . You can learn more of course about Business Wire at Bussinesswire.com. Walter, your thoughts wrapping up here pretty close to the end of the segment here?

[WR]: Yeah and my thoughts are that, you know, congratulations to Business Wire for recognizing this 2-3 years ago and beginning the journey of standardizing on one system on standardizing on one set of terminology, on one set of pipeline metrics because that’s what makes a difference these days between winners and losers. The bar is just too high, the competition is too tough to have sub optimized systems. I really appreciate Ken joining us on the show today and giving us his perspective and thoughts on that.

[KB]: Yeah, thanks for having me.

[KP]: Ken, let me ask you real quickly, so you were using multiple systems and you needed to consolidate into one? Is that how you would basically describe it?

[KB]: Yes, we had one of the sort of…pioneers, I think, in the CRM system software application called ACT which is an off the shelf software that enables you to, on an individual, non-enterprise level, create a Customer Relationship Management system. So we had individual ones throughout all of our offices throughout the world and we brought them all together into one.

[KP]: Very, very good. Hey, when you start saying stuff that I know, then I know that the office is getting it too. That’s good stuff. ACT is very important, but like anything else, how it’s optimized is crucial and apparently the work that Baker Communications did helped do just that. Thank you very much. How do people get in touch with you at Baker Communications, Walter?

[WR]: They can reach me at 713-627-7700.

[KP]: Give that number one more time please.

WR Yeah, you bet. 713-627-7700 or they could of course see our website which is Bakercommunications.com.

[KP]: Yep, and make sure you check out while you’re at it Businesswire.com. I’m telling you right now, phenomenal tool for your PR and news distribution needs. Thanks very much gentlemen, appreciate it.

[KB]: Have a good day.

[KP]: You bet. Alright, when we come back we’re going to wrap up with more information about what’s going on for you and your business, information exclusively at Priceofbusiness.com. Make sure you also check out Walter Roger’s great articles that he accumulating there at Priceofbusiness.com. Phenomenal information, keeping you informed. And that’s what this program and CNN650 is all about.