Constituent Relationship Manager, or CRM, reflects the totality of our experience with our constituents. For many organizations, however, only the tip of the CRM iceberg is ever realized. Organizations find themselves using their CRM solely for contact and relationship management (e.g. a glorified Rolodex), and not the deeper levels of opportunity and program management, business system integration, process automation, engagement journeys and marketing, or business intelligence.

In this post we consider the totality of the CRM iceberg – not just the tip visible to most at the surface. We will also consider some of the key barriers preventing organizations from realizing the full depth of their CRM.

Depths of CRM

Most organizations have at least realized the core capability of CRM – to manage contacts and relationships. Organizing accounts and contacts, and the pattern of communication with and among them, is the starting point for all that follows. If you have not mastered adoption among your stakeholders for these purposes, start here – at the top – before going any further. We have defined an additional five levels of CRM usage.

Opportunity + Program Management

Opportunity Management refers to all of the transactions through which you engage your constituency. This may include donations, tickets, registrations, lending or other commerce. Representing your organization’s financial relationships is the next level of CRM usage.

Program Management refers to how your staff executes its mission. As it relates to CRM, program management is reflective of communications, engagement, and service delivery. An effective CRM ultimately begins to demonstrate the depth at which your organization is engaging with its constituency.

Integrated Business Systems

When we think of a business system, we should consider all the tools in place across an organization. This includes the day-to-day applications such as email, video conferencing, phone, and website. It also includes all of those systems that may appear tangential to constituent management such as the general ledger, project management software, and document-sharing tools. All of these systems are in place to ensure effective management of the organization and the delivery of its mission. Therefore, they should all have an integration with the CRM to ensure the totality of the constituent experience is being captured.

A simple test as to whether your organization is operating at this level of CRM is to consider what happens when you send an email from GMAIL or Outlook. If you need to copy and paste that message into the CRM for a record of the communication to exist, your organization is not here yet. If the act of sending the message automatically catalogs the communication with the relevant accounts and contacts – and perhaps open opportunities – your organization is at least beginning to operate at this depth.

Process Automation

Process automation represents the effort to take known patterns of communication and make them more efficient and impactful. It assumes that contact information is reliably stored and organized. It also assumes that opportunities and programs are managed in the system with sufficient detail to identify patterns. Such detail is typically captured through business systems integration where information is aggregated consistently and accurately beyond what manual efforts could realize.

At this depth, an organization is able to make conscious decisions around processes that will better the organization. For example, they will be able to see where there are drop-off points in engagement and can find solutions to streamline those efforts and reduce attrition. Process automation represents an effort to allow your system to help you – to prompt action at critical moments, to focus efforts on highest probability outcomes or to otherwise improve your daily output.

Engagement Journeys + Marketing

Effective engagement or marketing to your constituents does not require each of the preceding levels be mastered – though, it does require they be met. Perhaps the oldest truism of an effective ask is to make the right ask, in the right amount, at the right time. Knowing what that means requires that people and relationships, opportunities and programs, and patterns of interaction be available. Any organization can hit send on an email to a subscriber list. But, only some organizations can effectively map a constituent’s experience over an extended period of time – an engagement journey – and properly steward that relationship by offering an outstanding experience.

For us, the concept of an engagement journey represents the totality of the constituent’s experience. It means knowing all that is happening and using that information to engage deliberately with your constituents.

Business Intelligence + Master Data Management

At its deepest, CRM should provide intelligence on how well your organization is able to serve its constituents. Such “business intelligence” ensures the organization’s strategy aligns with the work occurring at all levels of the organization. It empowers an organization by leveraging all aspects of revenue and program management and how they interact across staff, systems and processes.

Master data management (MDM) represents the combined technical effort to ensure that this information comes together in a timely and accurate manner. Additions and modifications throughout the system come together to ensure the data has shared meaning.

Barriers to Reaching CRM Value

Presenting CRM as an iceberg provides two powerful metaphors. We have explored the first in detail where the “tip of the iceberg” refers to the limited value many organizations see, without ever fully realizing its depth. The other is the iceberg that, if hit at high-speed, sinks the ship. This second metaphor points to the barriers organizations must overcome to realize the depth of CRM – without colliding into it.

We see three major barriers to CRM and they all relate back to having the capacity to get the work done:

• Finding + retaining talent. In the current economy, staff can be presented with new job opportunities at a dizzying pace. And, no sooner does someone on-board than they might be confronted with a new opportunity.
• Growth outpacing professional development. When growth happens at an aggressive, albeit messy, pace there is little opportunity for staff to expand their skills at the same rate.
• Deep + occasional needs. The cost of hiring a full time advanced resource is prohibitive for what is an occasional (though critical) role.

These issues may not arise on a daily basis, but they keep your organization from growing on the platform, and ultimately lead to frustration with your systems. To avoid staying stagnant, organizations may consider an external partner to manage their CRM. As a professional administrator, your partner does not face the same challenges and can prepare your systems for growth. Read more about CRM barriers in our post: When to Consider Outsourcing Administration.

Summary + Conclusion

CRM has the potential to bring your entire organization together: to connect your constituents and their engagement across programs and revenue generating activities – and to align the technologies through which you encounter them. That togetherness enables your organization to work better through process automation and by improving the engagement journey your constituents experience. And ultimately, this information can provide the business intelligence to best inform the strategies through which you deliver your mission.

In this post, we have described what CRM can look like beyond the tip of the iceberg and into the depths below the surface. In future posts we will dig into how to realize this model including the tools and technology that empower your efforts.