Challenges abound. For one, most large companies sport five to 10 CRM applications. Secondly, these systems are diverse, including call centers and customer service centers, self-service Web apps, SFA, and customer-oriented analytics for e-marketing, cross-selling, and up-selling campaigns.
Finally, and perhaps most significantly, these systems all house their own data sets and definitions. Settling on a system of record, then cleansing all the data across applications to adhere to one set of definitions can consume a great deal of effort.
In 1999 Shell Oil Products in London mounted a massive data integration initiative as it meshed its loose confederation of 120 operating companies as part of its quest to present a united, global front to customers. The company used an in-house solution, Kalido, that has since been spun off into a separate software company.
Kalido acts as an intermediary layer between the back-end systems and a single interface, mapping customer data from the company's innumerable ERP systems into a central data model. The solution requires no manual coding and leaves the original data unchanged, according to Shell officials.
"With Kalido, it has been much easier to introduce change to our data models [post-integration]," says Jim Smitheman, management information officer at Shell.
"Our data models keep track of all these attributes for our customers, like the market sector they operate in," Smitheman explains. "We can cut and dice the data to discover, for example, why certain oil lubricants are more successful in this country over another."
Finding a solution
Approaches to CRM integration vary from using EAI or messaging middleware in order to bridge best-of-breed applications, to one-stop-shopping for every piece of enterprise software, an approach advocated by vendors such as Oracle. Data warehousing is also in the mix, as is Web services, which have the potential to ease many integration headaches by using standard interfaces.
Putnam Lovell NBF, a San Francisco-based investment bank, is leveraging Grand Central's Web services network to integrate Putnam's Salesforce.com CRM service with an equities research and distribution system, says Rodric O'Connor, Putnam's CTO. Putnam's staff keep records of which client would be interested in specific research notes in the CRM system, which is linked with distribution via Grand Central. SOAP messages tell the distribution system when to e-mail research notes to clients based on the CRM system's data.
"We have no servers behind our firewall," O'Connor explains. "This is all like a virtual integration. It was actually very quick for us to set up," about one-third the usual time thanks to the SOAP-based interface, he says.
\#016YaYa, an online "advergaming" company, has made CRM integration a cornerstone of its revenue model. The Los Angeles company creates interactive online games to collect data for clients; one project for Chrysler engages potential automobile buyers with a series of online games tailored to certain customer demographics. During the course of the game, the consumer provides information that is extracted in real time and funneled directly into Chrysler's own CRM system, giving the automaker detailed data to use when targeting future campaigns.
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