Having recently talked to several companies about their CRM systems, I’ve been astonished by the amount of people who said that their CRM wasn’t helping them to do their job better – and some even admitted having to come up with ways to work around it. And the one element of commonality about all these discussions was, that in their opinion, the blame lay entirely with the system.

Working in marketing for more years than I care to remember, I have used several different CRM systems. And while some were better than others, I’ve always found that they improved the way the marketing team operated with the insight it gave us to what was working and what wasn’t, being invaluable. Which got me thinking – have I just been lucky or is there a recipe for CRM success?

Now, I am not a CRM expert as I stated earlier, but I have been an end user for many years. Having moved to my current employer, Arrk, just over 6 months ago (who among other things develop CRMs for companies), it’s only now that I’ve seen the power that a CRM can bring to the whole company – for example I didn’t know that CRMs such as Microsoft Dynamics have Case Management modules! And even though I was already an advocate, I have found out that I haven’t been using it to its full potential.

There are several blogs/articles out there about the benefits a CRM can bring to a company. So, I thought I would take a slightly different approach, and because of the war stories that are out there, address a few of the reasons that I’ve come across as to why companies are NOT looking to invest in a CRM.

 

Excuse 1 – ‘I have used a CRM before and it was rubbish’

A previous bad experience is probably the most quoted reason why CRMs are dismissed. This goes back to my initial observation, where the system was being blamed for poor performance and not how it had been configured and launched within the business. Yes, there are CRMs on the market that may not be fit for purpose, but many are. However, they are a piece of software and should not be expected to work straight out of the box. Implementing a CRM should be considered as introducing a customer centric strategy, not a software tool. It needs to be moulded around business processes and should be a cross-functional initiative, not just seen as a sales or marketing tool. If your business does not treat the CRM in this way, it is doomed to fail – but is that the system’s fault?

 

Excuse 2 – ‘We need results now and can’t wait for it to be implemented’

The decision to implement a CRM should be to improve your business and not a knee jerk reaction to under-performance. But in fact, the preparation you should undertake before you implement a CRM will have an instant positive impact on your business too. The fundamental principal of a CRM is that it should reflect your customer journey, and the business processes for each element of the journey should be established and replicated within the system. By reviewing your current ‘as is’ processes and challenging their validity with regards to delivering the optimum customer experience, you will identify how they can be improved and can then implement these changes straight away. As well as preventing individuals from doing their own thing, an effective business process also standardises best practice, which results in a consistent customer approach – giving an uplift in customer experience which will impact performance.

Excuse 3 – ‘The sales team won’t use it as they think it’s just there to manage their performance’

This could actually refer to any user as a lack of adoption is probably the main reason why CRM projects fail. People can be suspicious of technology and systems, resulting in a ‘big brother is watching us’ mentality. This could be because employees see it as a way for management to use CRM stats solely as a performance ‘metric’ (again not the system’s fault), but also because end users have not been involved in the project from the start and the system has been delivered to them with minimal training and support. The focus then becomes what the system does and not why the system was introduced. If you take sales as an example, the CRM should enable individuals to be much more effective with elements such as lead scoring and next steps prompts supporting the sales process and increasing conversion rates. Gaining an understanding of what types of leads convert the best also opens conversations with marketing colleagues, as you start to work more closely together in refining your target audience. Including influential people in the project team that get to see the bigger picture and have some input into the design structure, will often prompt them to champion the CRM within their own team and help drive adoption across their peer group.

 

Excuse 4 – ‘We have people all around the country and out on the road, so it won’t get updated’

This is actually one of the major benefits of having a centralised CRM system, as it’s accessible through whatever device a user wants to use e.g. a desktop, laptop, mobile etc. Not having everyone under one roof is often the excuse given as to why multiple different systems, spreadsheets, scraps of paper etc are used to store customer data. This results in a load of duplication and customers complaining that people in the company don’t know what each other is doing. Worse of all it runs the risk of a sales person leaving and other team members not knowing what leads they were working on, where an opportunity is up to, or even who they were speaking to! People can now sit in their car, on a train, at home or in an office and have real-time access to every individual customer interaction and update the information there and then. Emails can be automatically synced against contacts and workflows can be introduced that alert people in multiple departments based on the outcome of meeting/call etc. Managed effectively, CRMs bring people together regardless of where they are on a daily basis, which can only be a good thing.

 

I am not trying to belittle the investment a company needs to make (both financially and resource wise) to deliver a successful CRM strategy, quite the contrary! I believe that like a dog, a CRM is for life and not just for Christmas. However, I have experienced first hand the benefits a CRM can deliver and am now aware that there is far more potential still to unlock. It would be great to hear your own experiences, the good, the bad and the ugly, and if you are interested, we have a free online CRM maturity assessment and other CRM related insights on our website that you may find interesting.

 

Richard Leech

Head of Marketing

The insurance industry has remained much the same for decades and, due to a risk-averse culture, particularly resistant to change. Before the advent of new technologies, it wasn’t a competitive market where new players could easily enter. That’s all changing.

Insurance has now become ripe for disruption by insurtech in much the same way as banking has by fintech. In fact, UK insurtech is thriving, and attracted $1.7 billion in investment in 2018. And startups are beginning to move in on the territory of insurance giants, who are themselves beginning to change their service models.

What is Insurtech?

Insurtech is a subset of fintech. It’s the technology that lies behind the creation, distribution and administration of insurance business. Smartphone apps, wearables, claims processing tools, online policy handling and automated processing are all insurtech. Insurtech is useful for collecting and analysing customer data to provide a better service.

If a woman is setting off on a backpacking trip to South East Asia, she wants her insurance in a few clicks on her iPhone, instead of having to trawl through lots of online forms or, even worse, ordering over the phone.
Someone travelling a short distance for two days deserves much cheaper insurance than someone on a week-long skydiving trip in South America. Startups can begin to offer insurance for just one hour for someone borrowing a friend’s car.

Big Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) are the current focus of insurtech, with the majority of invested capital going into these areas.

Impacts on the insurance industry

Insurtech will force the insurance industry to step up its game in terms of customer service and offerings. It’s no longer going to be a case of doing things how they’ve always been done.
The challenge is making sure that insurtech is attractive to consumers. This means delivering tailored products, rather than one-size-fits-all. Consumers also want their insurance products to be delivered through mobile.

There is a polarisation in insurtech between use of technology by incumbents to adapt their existing service offering to a changing market, and disruptive startups angling for market share. The common link is the consumer, who will choose between established players and challengers, or use a mixture of both.

Insurance companies are investing in startups to help them drive the innovation they seek, seeing this as an opportunity rather than a threat.

Advantages

Rather than settling for costly products that don’t really fit their needs, insurtech empowers customers to take control of their insurance. They can demand the products that really benefit them.

Insurtech can better reflect the nuanced reality of a consumer’s everyday life, rather than force them to fit in an industry’s narrow definition of their needs. Insurtech can also make the process of obtaining insurance much easier, as insurtech startup Digital Fineprint show with their software that fills out your insurance form based on social data.

AI technology can be used to provide a tailored service for consumers. It can quickly summarise and present the most relevant and useful products far faster than a human could. Insurify is an insurtech startup that uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing to make it easier for consumers to buy their car insurance online.

The IoT can provide insurers with detailed data about customers to help them develop and offer the right products at the right time. For example, tailored insurance for motorists can be based on data sent to insurers from their car. The most responsible drivers can benefit from a discount to their insurance.

Challenges

In the past and now, innovation has been partly stifled by the complexity of products and services, which few outside the industry understand, and consumers often find confusing.

Insurance is also not as exciting for consumers as other products which technology has already disrupted, and the insurance industry suffers from an image problem.

It’s difficult to market products in a way that lots of consumers find appealing, especially for the younger generation. It can be tough for people to think about some typical products such as life insurance.
Regulations will be a barrier for startups looking to disrupt the industry. The culture of the insurance business is notoriously risk averse, at odds with the agile and disruptive methods of startups.
On the other hand, companies must remain vigilant to ensure that data collected to determine insurance policies doesn’t discriminate against certain groups, and also maintain the privacy of users.

Wrap up

Despite the UK’s decision to leave the European Union, a recent report by Accenture reveals that investment in insurtech has doubled in the past year. Once market confidence recovers, insurtech will be back on its way to an estimated growth of £253 billion by 2021.

London is still the capital for fintech in Europe and major innovations will be happening there. We can look forward to a future where the needs of consumers determine the insurance products on offer, and technology makes the whole process easier. Even fun.

 

Working with insurance companies, we look to further the spread of insurtech that’s out there. Why not find out how we can help you by reading one of our finance industry case studies – Premium Digital Solution Accelerates Loan Applications.