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Integrating CRM: No Pain, No Gain
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June 13, 2003
By Lori MacVittie
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Integration & Customization
Immediately after we installed each product, we attempted to import our customer data into the SQL Server each product uses as primary storage. (None of the vendors support DB2 directly.) We met with varying degrees of success. All but Epicor let us import existing contacts in different ways, but the nomenclature used for primary contacts varied from "customers" to "people" to "contacts."
Epicor requires the use of DTS (Data Transformation Services) within SQL Server to import data--a truly tortuous process. After spending several hours trying to develop DTS scripts, we decided to move on. Epicor offers professional services to assist with this initiative, and it would be wise to use those services despite their additional cost.
There is no way to just dump data into the databases that support a CRM system. Although most use straightforward table and column names, the linking between tables and the unique identifiers in each table will trip you up. The web of primary and foreign keys, identifiers and sheer number of tables that must be modified is sticky. You'll have to use the software tools that come with the product, hire professional services to assist or, if you're masochistic, enter the data manually.
When a CRM vendor says its product is "out of the box," you should immediately translate this to, "It installs quickly, and if you do things our way, you can be running within hours." Only Soffront CRM does not claim out-of-the-box functionality. While that may sound like a detraction, it's a benefit. Soffront's requirements make the customization so flexible that you can support any business model without getting a migraine. This model takes longer to deploy than the rest, but we liked having full control of the layout and being able to define the forms based on our own database schema.
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This is not to say that we couldn't customize other products. Epicor and Microsoft offer some codeless customization, though both require programming to really extend and customize their systems. Microsoft also provides some basic layout capabilities and a browser-based method of removing and adding fields. ACCPAC offers similar customization, including a way to add new fields to tables, add them to existing entry screens or create custom screens.
The beauty of these products lies not in their ability to manipulate fields, however; it's hidden in the way each database's linking mechanisms connect customers to products, orders and data sources such as e-mail messages and even chat sessions. Despite the difficulties that arose from these complicated database schemas during the data-import phase, we appreciated the products' abilities to make sense of such tangled data webs.
We found CRM systems' primary support for B2B relationships frustrating. The B2B terminology often can't be modified, which means that we were stuck choosing "account," "contact" or "people" to describe what we call "customers." Our sales and customer-service staff could adjust to the jargon, but it would require time, training and a temporary decrease in productivity. We'd like these applications to offer some level of light customization, to enable a smoother transition for our users.
When the smoke cleared and the last echoes of our swearing had dissipated from the lab, we chose ACCPAC's CRM solution for NWC Inc. We were impressed with its customization and general functionality. Its feature set provided everything we required at a reasonable price. The customer-service portal was more than acceptable and required fewer modifications to our infrastructure than Microsoft's product. ACCPAC also supported our B2C model better than its competitors. The only software more flexible in this regard was Soffront's, but the base product does not include a customer-service portal--an unfortunate Achilles' heel.
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