IPG Salvages Failed CRM Implementation

Financial planning firm utilizes its revived system to improve performance and efficiency across all departments.

By Steven Lamb
Chief Financial Officer,
International Planning Group

International Planning Group (IPG), which provides financial planning services to global companies and high-net-worth individuals, has applied Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to improve the performance and efficiency of not just sales and marketing, but virtually every department within the firm. Our initial implementation of the software had been under-performing; we were on the brink of discarding it before an outside CRM implementer helped customize the system for our purposes.

Today, IPG's CRM software has eliminated paper files and inefficient faxing and scanning of records. Instead, an electronic system provides immediate access to important estate-planning information. By gaining a central and secure repository for all customer information and the ability to replicate information in remote offices, IPG can demonstrate:

• Accelerated processing of complex cases and, subsequently, faster closing of business.
• Better customer service and the ability to manage and update customers' financial and retirement portfolios.
• Improved auditing. (IPG has dramatically reduced the time and paperwork needed for IPG's Compliance Officer to audit every sale.)
• Improved sales forecasting.

Today, IPG – headquartered in Wellesley, Mass. – has offices in Boston, Toronto, Mexico City, Zurich, Hong Kong and Singapore. Distances and time zones make it very difficult to communicate between offices and complete processing for lengthy and involved cross-border estate planning. Each country and insurance company has its own rules and regulations for fiscal compliance and medical exams required for obtaining life insurance. Faxing forms back and forth is often, or at best, a 24-hour turnaround and with paper records it becomes very challenging to determine the status of any case.

Our need to obtain consolidated views of customer information has grown with the complexity of our cases. We might have a customer who owns a company and real estate in Japan, yet he has children in the United States and plans to move there himself in a few years. A paper-based system just would not allow us to manage the sales process, and subsequent servicing.

IPG's first attempt at automation – a home-grown database – failed. There wasn't enough in it to be useful, and updating it and checking for accuracy was time consuming and awkward. It wasn't current, it wasn't relevant, and it wasn't being used.

From that experience, we realized that we needed an off-the-shelf system, selecting SalesLogix CRM software. It had the basic fields and functions we needed and appeared to be the easiest to customize for our business requirements.

Yet the CRM integrator hired to supply the software and implement the system couldn't get past basic technical issues and synchronization of data at remote offices. Disgruntled, we then turned to Compulan (www.compulan.com) in the Boston area for their 18-year experience at integrating CRM systems.

At this juncture, we were about ready to discard our failed implementation, but Compulan reviewed the existing design and convinced us to stay with SalesLogix, that it would more than meet our requirements. They guaranteed us that they could salvage it and improve both the functionality and reliability. Rather than waste the money we had invested, we were willing to take the chance. That was two years ago. Today, the functional design of our SalesLogix system is so different from our original one, it's difficult to believe it's the same application. We have expanded our use of the system worldwide and it has been a major success. We learned that choosing the correct implementation vendor is as important as the technology.

Compulan helped to define and document the sales process that the system would accommodate, revamped the database, reinstalled the software, converted existing data, created numerous reports, and trained the IPG personnel to enter information and utilize the system.

Today, four principal groups use the system:

1. All sales agents, from IPG's Hong Kong office to its Wellesley, Massachusetts headquarters.
2. Implementation teams responsible for processing cases. (The implementation teams love the system, because it lets them see exactly what needs to be done at any moment to get a case approved.)
3. Service staff, who monitor approved customer cases and make ongoing changes and updates, as required.
4. The Chief Financial Officer (me) who studies case reports and also serves as the Compliance Officer, responsible for auditing sales. I can now perform compliance and internal audits without taking time away from sales people. They once had to gather all sorts of information, which I can now directly access from the system.

Reports built by Compulan allows sales to view pipelines, forecast revenues, and identify obstacles in the sales process, while helping management keep close tabs on business. For example, exception reports show managers all cases with medical-exam results recorded for 14 or more days, but have not yet gone for underwriting.

The SalesLogix system is constantly being refined and upgraded and sales agents are brought to the Wellesley office twice annually for training. We tried some online training, but found that they have much better focus and retention from live training.

For all the benefits that IPG has obtained from its CRM system, we still only use about 60 percent of its functionality. We intend to improve event scheduling and monitoring and allow salespeople to synchronize their appointments and calendars between SalesLogix and hand-held devices. New functionality will be introduced at subsequent training sessions.

We've come a long way in a relatively short time and intend to go further.