SPEAKER_03 0:02

Welcome. You are listening to TRM.gov, where you will hear from TRM Executive to overseen some of the most interesting and complex TRM implementations. Your hosts, David Montreal and Kiro Whitey, will be bringing you real stories with real insight. Follow along on social media for updates on new episode releases, exclusive content, and much more. Enjoy the show and thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Welcome to the CRM Success Show, where we do a deep dive into CRM success and failures, delivering real stories with real impact. Where we chat with the most influential voices in the CRM space today. And I'm Kira Whitzi. And today we are talking with Rebecca Meyer, who will be telling us about her time with uh Kelly More Paint.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

Fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

Great. So Rebecca, we're going to start off nice and easy for you today. Would you mind telling us a bit about your background and company? What you do as a business and just set the team for us in terms of basic project history?

SPEAKER_04 1:20

Yes. So at Kellymore Paints, which by name, they were a paint manufacturer and retail seller throughout the United States, mostly in the West and the Southern regions. I was the head of IT as vice president, overseeing all technology throughout the entire company, whether that was applications, infrastructure, hardware, or security. And during that time, uh we did a lot of different really exciting projects, including a CRM project transition.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

Fantastic. And that's going to be a big, big part of the focus of the conversation today, as you know. So would you mind telling our listeners, you know, um the context in terms of TRM? Uh, which DRM did you uh inherit when you joined the business? Um, and which GRM we're gonna talk about today?

SPEAKER_04 2:14

Sure. So when I stepped into the organization, they had a Salesforce platform installed. They had had it as a legacy for over 10 years. I had come from an organization that had used Salesforce, was heavily integrated with it throughout all of their systems and part of their backbone of applications. So it was very natural for me to step into Kelly Moore with Salesforce already, part of their uh ecosystem. However, after spending a little time with the organization, you know, the head of sales and marketing and other departments, and diving in with people and their job functions throughout different levels to see how technology was really a partner within their job on a continuous basis, I noticed some gaps, uh, which, you know, long story short, to the end, led us to a transition between our sales force over to sugar CRM. Uh many steps in between and a lot of decisioning and thinking along the way, of course. But uh, you know, at the end of the road, that's where the finish line led us.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

Right.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Um, so before we jump into it, why don't you tell us like um when you got like how Kelly Moore used um right uh your CRM, right? And then right, what were the problems specific, like right that that I guess why you were brought on, right? What were the problems you were facing that you were brought on to tackle, right? What was your um I guess what was your mandate, right? What were you brought on brought on to fix?

SPEAKER_04 3:54

Yeah, so I wasn't necessarily brought on to fix the CRM. Um, they were quite happy with Salesforce as it was for the most part, but I think it had been a long time since anybody had really opened up the hood of that car and taken a look at the engine to see where there were some opportunities. Uh, you know, they had installed it in fairness 10 years prior, really as a reporting system. It's important to know that CRMs may have different requirements based on the type of business and more importantly, how the organization wants to interact uh on a continuous basis with that technology, including CRM. So when I got there, everything on the surface seemed okay. But I started to dig in, you know, pull back the layers and ask enough questions that we really started to discover there was more we wanted out of the system. And from that journey, we actually did, you know, work with uh you know a variety of different CRM uh companies, you know, applications to see what was more right size for us. Because I think the most important part for anybody who's accountable for technology for an organization or who uses technology to not be married to a single you know application, but more married to what are we doing today and what do we want to do tomorrow and how is that technology going to serve us? Uh, and do we have the right technology to get us from today to tomorrow in the manner that we want to, you know, to have happen? Does it match our strategy? We were discovering it wasn't. Um, we did work with Salesforce to discover if we could go forward with that. Um, but every step forward we took, we started to realize that it was just not a right size for our business and for how we wanted to use a CRM system. Again, I came from a company that used Salesforce and very efficient, effectively, but they had a totally different business model. They had a different way of managing customers. So it was important to find a CRM that was more right sized for Kelly Moore versus trying to take something that was already in place and massage it into a state that would work um for the organization's needs.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Awesome. So you said um that it was more of a strategy thing. So so can you just tell us a little bit more about um what that strategy was, I guess, and how it changed from what it was before, right? You think they were pretty happy with it. Um I guess you came in and kind of reevaluated what it should do, what the strategy should be. Um can you take us a little a little bit through that process, right? What what was the shift in strategy uh specifically and and where you felt that you can best use CRM, right? Kind of you know, take advantage of that strategy and really, really push your your business goals uh forward. And I guess that would kind of like what are the business goals that the strategy is trying to accomplish.

SPEAKER_04 7:06

Absolutely. So really the the biggest piece of the system they were using was you know the reporting aspect, and we already had several other applications, such as Tableau, that was supporting that size, you know, that side of the business needs. Um, the other pieces of it were some homegrown custom applications we had built out that we wanted to transition into a different direction and to tear it down and rebuild it. Candidly was a very expensive uh you know path within our strategy, but it met what we believed were our needs of the business. So it was more cost effective to rebuild elsewhere than it was to tear down and rebuild there. There was also uh, you know, just the factor that Salesforce brings a plethora of features to the table, and that is fantastic for its technology. However, if you're an organization that's not going to utilize those, then you're paying for things that essentially are just, you know, you're leaving on the table. Uh, one of the things that was different about the Kelly Moore business was uh was the type of consumer that we had and who we really leaned into. And that was painting contractors. Uh, that was the majority of the business sales. So you couple that with the fact that those contractors had a you know a much shorter runway of projects that they were communicating with us about to plan out the business. Salesforce is exceptionally good, in my opinion, at being able to go much further out into the future than what Kelly Moore's customers were providing us. So we didn't necessarily need that very strong piece of the application, which allowed a bit more simplicity in what we did need. There was also some concerns over the UI that had been both, you know, through Lightning as well as some of our customizations that had gotten candidly a little messy over time. So we wanted to navigate away from that. Uh, we found that with sugar, I have to put off the comparison there, um, they were more in-house with their SIs. Uh, you know, you can obviously always go outside of them to get an SI, but they had a really strong department of developers and PMs that partnered with us, and we had a high level of confidence that those partnerships would take us on our journey faster and more efficiently from a lot of different angles. It was also a system that we were able to absorb a lot of the configurations in-house through their partnership versus what we were seeing with Salesforce at that time. So that's a lot of the differences we were seeing that kind of led us into that other direction. Again, the main focus for us was the fact that we were utilizing that customer data, which you know, as we know, data is gold, in a much shorter time frame, which didn't mean we needed something as robust as Salesforce, which is really good at that longevity of you know customer management and all of the facets that go along with it.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

Just to interject there uh for a quick second, um Do you know why Salesforce was chosen in the first place? Um I know it's pre-ulted time, but but could you could you was it ever shared and kind of passed on like you know, this is the reason we went with Dow Sports initially?

SPEAKER_04 10:39

Uh rumor has it that uh there was a you know a few people in the organization that had joined at the you know senior level and they had used it at another company. So it was real simple. I and that's sometimes the challenge with technology is I've used it in place A, I'm now at place B, so let's just move it over because I know it. And that's one of the biggest hurdles in technology is that user adoption and you know being able to actually understand it enough to make use of it. So I think that the path forward was to go with Salesforce because it's what we it was the known within technology, which can be candidly a little scary for people who maybe aren't technology enthusiasts like some of us here.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

I mean, it makes sense from an ultra-conversionary perspective. Um like putting CRM aside, right? You know, if you're gonna pick a programming language, like you gotta have a compelling reason to learn um, you know, a completely new platform and a completely new tech stack, um even if the other stack is you know somewhat better for the task at hand. Um that's my opinion. But anyway, in general. So, all right, so let's get back to it. So the decision is made. Um, we're gonna move off. You're gonna go to sugar. So what was that plan of attack, right? How did you tackle, let's say, okay, you gotta assume you gotta move your data over um and it gives some kind of budget, some kind of timeline, right? Did you do it in phases, right? Did you tackle regions? Um can you tell us a little bit more about that? Um, but just to set a little bit more context, um my my understanding based on what you're saying is that your target was hitting contractors that would convince their clients to buy Kelly Moore paints. That's kind of how you operated, and that's how you structured the CRM? Or were you targeting both end consumers directly? Right.

SPEAKER_04 12:43

So end consumers were not necessarily in the, you know, the retail customer, if you will. You and I going buying two cans of paint to do our bedroom over the weekend. It's not necessarily those customers that were the main focus of CRM. It was the the contractor side of the business. And it was a blend, right? There was obviously the contractors that had, you know, negotiated specific pricing that would always come by paint from Kelly Moore. There were also the contractors that would open up bids, right? Uh, if they had a large project and we would go bid against our competitors to see who won. Um, it really was a blend of different types of inbound traffic from the contractors in terms of projects, uh, which honestly wasn't part of our scope to consider on rollout. Rollout was more about how we were using the technology. Our customer-specific pricing and the UI that allowed salespeople to put that into the system was a custom configuration, both in Salesforce as well as Sugar. And that was something that went for all of our for all of our customers, uh, and it was a direct connect back into some of our other applications, such as our POS. So we kind of had to plan a one slide, you know, one-size rollout. We were unable to, uh, due to other technology uh limitations with other applications, we couldn't do, say, a regional-phase rollout. So rather go that direction because once we launched, we had to kind of move forward with it. We decided to uh take a look at the platform. Um, obviously, during you know, the the sales pitch before contracts are signed, you're getting a glimpse of the technology, you're getting a good feel for it. Uh, you're not getting 100%, nobody ever does, but you get enough to know that this is the right direction for us. Once you sign contracts and kick in the PM, that's when you start to really dig into the details. And we actually had decided early on to partner with a few of our, we call them business, right? Anyone outside of technology is our customers in the company. Um, so we had partnered with certain people, certain, you know, SMEs, if you will, key key organization members who were going to sit with us on this journey. They were on every call, they were our advisors, our guides, and they were the ones who started to really look at it with us throughout the project to decide, you know, essentially tear it into buckets. What's the most important, what's the medium, and what's the it's nice to have, but it's not necessarily a day one. So we decided to go with an 80% rollout, if you will. We put you know a plan in place to roll out 80% at launch with a plan to roll out the other 20 as we went forward into a duration of time. We had a very quick rollout as well. That's kind of important to note. Um, we candidly didn't give uh enough runway. We were warned, uh, but we were very aggressive. And part of that was, you know, contractually driven, like many companies. You want a nice cutover and not pay for a technology longer than you need it. So, in our drive to marry it up, we created a very short runway. So we in some ways had to move forward uh with partial baked, but I believe that a partial baked rollout is always smart because you don't want to put something out 100% to find out you missed something. And there's brilliant people throughout the entire organization that you can't tie them all up every single minute of the day for a project. So they won't get their eyes on it really in full until you've rolled it out. So that was uh that was our strategy, right? Was to roll it out knowing we would have some changes, and we baked that into uh our SI costs uh as well as our timelines to the executives and the board.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

So it sounds like uh you were up for a sales for contract renewal, and you're like, we're not starting that clock, right? Because it'll hit you for a full year, I guess.

SPEAKER_04 16:56

Exactly, exactly. And they were they were very kind uh to be honest. You know, they offered shorter contracts, they knew we were uh dissolving the partnership. They they really did, even up to the end, partner with us to help us on our transition because they understood, Salesforce understood, that it was a fantastic technology. It was just a little bit more robust than we would ever be able to take advantage of. So we needed something a bit more right-sized for our organization. And candidly, sugar was on a journey to explode their um application into areas that were very, you know, were more competitive out in the marketplace. Um they they were on a journey of growth and development. So we essentially all three of us crossed paths at just the right time. Um, so we knew uh as an organization at Kelly Moore that adopting sugar didn't suddenly create limitations. There were still many facets of that technology we still weren't taking advantage of, but we also knew as a company as we grew that sugar was going to grow and mature the application with us. Um Salesforce was just already a little too a little too big for us at that time.

SPEAKER_02 18:10

Uh I'm um, you know, we want to transition into kind of talking a bit more about the journey um with the maybe the directive or or maybe a timeline to do it to do a uh a partial launch uh in a moment. But um I I think you know just the context for our our um Yeah, but it was about you know three to four years ago, right? That that we're talking about that initial was taken into account of different self-called to triple CRM, correct?

SPEAKER_04 18:38

Correct.

SPEAKER_02 18:39

Yeah. Um so so I'm curious at the at the time, um, you know, are you able to share uh what other kind of TRMs you are evaluating uh alongside uh triple CRM um, you know, at the time.

SPEAKER_04 18:55

Yeah, so we did evaluate a few. Um I would say that the most memorable one was dynamics. We did uh look at them. Um we were opting to explore some uh applications that Oracle uh partnered well with, as that was also one of the core applications within our existing tech stack. So we were looking at what they could bring to the table as well. Um again, uh Sugar had a combination of factors that were just right for us at the time, which made our answers pretty easy which direction to move towards.

SPEAKER_02 19:33

Perfect. Um and then I I guess um to want to talk a bit more about um you know the the journey and the challenges. You you you I think you you hinted to a couple um, you know, the timeline was perhaps, like I mentioned, um ambitious, but but um you were able to kind of do a um uh kind of an 80% type rollout um in terms of of completion. Um I I guess you know talk talk talk to a bit more about that journey. Um what worked, what didn't work, um, any surprises we weren't expecting um you know during the the rollout and the migration? Um were the with the moments we had to pivot um and and quite the change uh direction. Was it always your plan to do a partial rollout? Or was that something that just given the timeline coach we had to say, okay, we can't do a 100% full rollout? I know you mentioned the benefits of that, but initially was that the the plan from the get-go, or was that something due to the timeline restriction?

SPEAKER_04 20:43

That was always the plan from the get-go. Uh I think it's again, it's it's a smart play for technology to never try to achieve 100% at rollout because inevitably the users will get their hands on it and they will find uh you know areas of opportunity that you're going to have to address. So whether you claim you're rolling out at 100% and you have a phase two baked in, we had always planned on a phase one and a phase two. Uh, we did end up with a phase three. So, what I would say is partnering directly with sugar, um, and they had their SIs, you know, their sugar employees that were PMing and developing and partnering with us throughout the journey was the most important piece. Um, I would say that we maybe were, as you know, at Kelly Moore, we were underestimating the magnitude of our custom application and the demand it would create. We were trying to create something unnatural within the CRM system, and it was something that sugar had not necessarily done in the magnitude that we needed it done. We had technology limitations on our side, uh, you know, older applications, if you will. That needed to integrate in you know, as opposed to doing APIs, which Sugar has available. Um, many companies do. We did not necessarily have that on all of our existing tech stack, so that created limitations, and we had to pivot over uh a few times. Um, we had planned on using Boomi as our integrator, which we did. Uh, that was uh our choice of integration throughout our entire company pre and post uh project, but where we had to pivot is we had higher hopes we could have the APIs operating in an earlier uh stage, a limitation on our side, not necessarily on sugar's side. The other thing that you know we had to pivot on was some of our desires for how we uh you know how we enable pricing throughout our entire tech stack. Um we had planned on doing it directly into sugar, but again, it was the you know, it was a miss on the magnitude of what this really brought to bear and how this data flowed between the various systems within our tech stack. So through that we had to do uh one, you know, we had to do some runs of that out of process, if you will, outside of the sugar system before we could actually push it all the way through the sugar system. Again, these are you know, candidly, these were unnatural things for a CRM system, um, unnatural for sugar, but it was something that was always in our wish list to do, and we had uh very optimistic, high hopes we could make it happen on a very short runway. Um, I think it was once compared we're no we're no longer on a runway, we're on a launch pad in a helicopter. Uh and that's literally what it felt like uh at times. But I would say overall, you know, one thing that comes to mind that was pretty amazing at a pivot. We had planned on doing a direct data load in, and we had tried for about a week, and this, you know, it was just failing because the number of records we were trying to push for. So we actually took a step back, and their their team at Sugar, no extra cost, just stepped up and said, Hey, we've got another tool, we can get this done in a couple of days, and it won't crash anything. So that was something we saw time and time again where Sugar would step up and they would pull in their, you know, the you know, behind the curtain people that, you know, were just mag, you know, magnificent geniuses and get us to the other side of a problem, as much as they had you know the capabilities of doing. Of course, everybody has limitations within their technology, but it really felt like a partnership as we were going through our journey, and that was something um and will always be something I think everybody should consider when deciding on what application they're gonna go forward with. Um yeah, so that was uh I hope I answered your question.

SPEAKER_02 24:57

Yeah, you did. Um, I I think um good uh I user doctrine uh is is one of the big challenges that we uh uh when I try. And and um uh felt involved and included uh the project. Um and and uh in those departments, in the overall project, which is an ensure an A2 uh go live.

SPEAKER_04 25:48

Yeah, so that's a great question. I've been on both sides of the fence uh when it comes to technology, right? I've been the recipient of new technology and learning how to use the application. I've also been the one rolling it out uh and in charge of doing it many times. I would say that uh an interesting story. So we were in negotiations with sugar, and that you know, every company that you talk to always tells you their success stories, right? They've got to post it on their website, you can read up on them, watch videos, and I asked a very important question. I said, you know, I really want to talk to somebody who is not a fan of yours with the technology that had major breakdowns throughout the process of getting the application launched. And they very kindly accommodated me with two different customers, and I got to speak with both of them. And one of them said that the failures of rollout weren't necessarily the technology, but their underestimation of that change management piece of it, that the the user adoption side of it and the lack of champions, that they didn't grow throughout the process. So, really, I can't take credit for that piece of the strategy I had to bring some of these people to the table with us throughout the journey because it was already called out that that was a big opportunity. CRM is, you know, CRM systems are robust. Uh again, I think people in technology can underestimate the ease of using a new application. For us, our salespeople weren't sitting at a desk, you know, 24-7. A lot of them were out, they're running and gunning, they're in their cars, they're on their app, you know, their phones, they're on their iPads. Um, so they didn't necessarily have that desk time to really sit and call us for help or anything. We had to make sure that that rollout was as smooth as possible. So we actually put more into our budget uh for the project to accommodate for additional training. In fact, I think we went up by 3x of the dollar amount, and we built a very, you know, a very strong plan with sugar uh to get us through that. Several weeks of, you know, phone a friend straight to sugar, right? Straight to the PM I was working with and the developer I was working with, not you know, not support staff, right? That was critical. Building those champions, though, was very, very important because they became the people who helped answer questions as we went forward. Uh, some of your users will only, you know, really absorb a piece of the application, and then there's other aspects where they may not necessarily need it day one to day, you know, 30. They're going to forget the day one training, so they'll need somebody on that day 30 to give a phone call to. Uh, our department was always available for it. We actually tracked all of those tickets to see, you know, the back-end you know metrics and to see if our KPIs were being met in terms of a successful rollout. I would say that uh, you know, it was successful in you know, large part because Sugar partnered with us, gave us great training ideas, and we had those champions throughout the organization that not only gave our technology team and myself that guidance of, you know, we come to a lot of crossroads, right? It's like a tree going from the trunk all the way to the top leaf when you're uh putting together a project and you know going through the rollout of it. So we could stop at every branch and ask somebody that question, you know, do we go left or right? Do we, you know, do we make it blue or pink? Do we have the drop down, you know, go 50 feet long or go 50 feet wide? And all of those little things helped us deliver a very solid product for the organization.

SPEAKER_02 29:38

Fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 29:40

Yeah, so you said um you had these measurable KPIs, right? Can you tell us um a bit more about those? What were your core KPIs? Um, which ones went like really well, which ones maybe not so well, um, but more importantly, then maybe not so well is like what was like surprisingly difficult, let's say, to achieve, um, and maybe why and what you learned from that or what you would have done different.

SPEAKER_04 30:06

So budget, right? CFO holds the checkbook. So that was one of our biggest KPIs was making sure we came in within budget, which we did. Um, the other thing was timed rollout. Again, we if we went off of Salesforce and onto sugar, but we didn't have our uh, you know, our pricing um modular in you know actually rolled out correctly and feeding into our other systems uh for the basic pricing, that was going to be a huge problem. We no longer could update pricing for some duration of time. So that was a KPI. Did we meet or miss the target day? Um the other piece, uh, because we did have sugar market as well, so sugar market, sugar sales play nicely together. I think when we talk about CRM, we're very focused on the sales side of it. The marketing piece is also critical. Uh, there were some expectations out of our marketing team for some forms that we needed to have very easily accessible for both customers and the organization. Uh, so that was a large KPI, was our marketing transition. Um, I would say that another large one that uh we had, which we we had a bit of a miss on. Um, we all were very excited about sugar. Uh and we heard a little bit of what we wanted to hear, that we could do anything we wanted to with it. Uh the reality is you can't, right? I mean, every application has uh, you know, they have it built on, you know, some sort of base platform. You know, you're not able to just, you're not, you're not building it from the ground up. And I think that people outside of technology may not completely understand those distinctions, and people in technology may not be always forthcoming about what those limitations could be because for us, it's an already listening in the back of our head, we don't even think about it. Um, it's just part of our DNA. Whereas that's something that we maybe fail to recognize in other people that's not part of their DNA. So when you say you can do anything you want with it, we already know those there's some limitations, right? At some point you got to pick. And some people on you know in the business side may not be hearing it the same way. So that was a communication breakdown that did lead to some expectations we couldn't deliver on. We were able to provide solutions, they were uh great solutions, but it maybe wasn't always in the the vision of what the uh the listener was expecting. So but I I feel like we we were able to overcome that.

SPEAKER_00 32:40

Um but there were you know obviously disappointments lead to additional conversations, so so um so some of our our listeners are not very familiar with sugar. Sugar people is people think is open source. I believe it is open source, but there is a company. Um and there's I guess an on-prem edition, cloud edition. If you go through the can you tell us a bit about how that works and which one you chose and why?

SPEAKER_04 33:12

Yeah, so we went with sugar serum uh cloud. Um we we did this afternoon.

SPEAKER_00 33:17

And that means hosted by the sugar CRM company.

SPEAKER_04 33:20

Yes, yes, that is correct. That's that was our a bit more of a traditional um it it honestly you Salesforce and Sugar, they they operated and we engaged them in an identical manner.

SPEAKER_00 33:33

Yeah. Uh any particular reason why not self-host? Wouldn't it have been cheaper?

SPEAKER_04 33:40

Um it it just part of our business model, um, and it was a journey that started long before I had joined the organization, was to try to push that outward. Uh, there was a belief um that you know you could then form MSAs and put more accountability outward. So I think that speaks more to the structure uh within my team and the belief within the organization that was quite deep-rooted for for many years before I joined. So there's benefits on both sides of the fence, right? Um, I think that what we were able to eliminate by going with sugar was the external SI need on a continuous basis. Um, it was uh easier for us, not saying for everyone, but for us to manage the components in-house that were needing that continuous massaging. Uh but yeah, we we did choose to have a bit more of a traditional let them host type setup.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

So it sounds like you had more of a um general mandate to move a lot of stuff out to the cloud and less internal infrastructure, not necessarily pertaining to this particular project.

SPEAKER_04 34:55

Yeah, we were 100% cloud-based for the tech stack.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

So Loomi also, obviously, right. Okay, so um how about can you like give us a success story or a particular use case that really really highlights the impact um of this project, right, to the organization?

SPEAKER_04 35:15

Uh let's see here, a big success story. Um you know, honestly, it was our sales team. They again, user adoption, it it's it's kind of you know, everybody wants it. Once they get it, they almost hate it. And it's not because it's good, bad, or otherwise. It's it's change, right? 80% of the people on the planet don't really enjoy change. Um, so once you get past that, it's what what is the feedback? And what we were hearing, well, yes, there were people who, you know, wanted something a little different, right? Um, in terms of I want the button on the left side versus the right side, we would hear things like that. But the true breakdowns of the technology, not delivering what was needed, um, diminished greatly. So our ticket count was down by comparison. Um, we also were able to do things through this project, um, such as have more of a direct integration to our POS system. So with Salesforce, and again, this we probably could have redone all of this with Salesforce had we gone through the journey with them, um, but we had uh you know a lot of you know hook and ladder to get information throughout all of our various systems. When we went forward with sugar, we were able to have that processing with a back-end algorithm within sugar, um, ran a double check, if you will, to make sure it was authorized uh to keep it short, to then allow it to go directly into our POS system for pricing. Previous to that, we actually had a team of people processing paperwork. So we weren't able, you know, we were able to eliminate a lot of steps that were taking up people's days. Um, and then we were able to take that team who was the back-end support for sales, um, you know, put them into a different path to help contribute towards the organization and our strategy of growth. So it really allowed us to simplify some of the more manual processes within the organization. And that's because we were on a journey of operational modernization. We wanted to really lean into technology to perform some of the more basic functions rather than a person. Uh, and we were successful with that. So it wasn't very specific, uh maybe, but it was the probably one of the best things that did happen to us throughout this process.

SPEAKER_00 37:50

Right. So you did a lot of general process improvement um at the same time, automation um and really made the best, made people essentially more productive, right, and more efficient. Exactly, yeah. Okay, um, anytime you had to like pivot in the middle of the project and like we're just going down a bad path with graph change direction. And obviously not with the whole project, but with like particular components or anything like that.

SPEAKER_02 38:19

You had mentioned the integration tool, right, with Dell Boomy, I think. Um any any other examples of the other than that one, I guess.

SPEAKER_04 38:27

Sure. Uh yeah, we we had to pivot quite a bit. Um, I think that when you do try to launch a new application, especially when you consider you you as an organization, depending upon who you are and what you do, most of the time CRM is considered one of your top-tier applications, very robust. Um, so when you try to you know speed down the runway as opposed to jog comfortably, you're gonna have to have a bit more of an you know an agile kind of process about you. You're gonna have to be willing to pivot frequently. So we did have a lot of little pivots along the way. Um, one of the largest pivots we had outside of the ones I've already mentioned uh was simply the fact that we had to um reverse some of our rollout steps. And I'll be candid, it caused us problems. In hindsight, it was one of our post-mortem uh review items that we should have just paused as opposed to try to put one foot behind the other because we tripped later on as a result. So the idea was when we brought some of the users to the table, they wanted to see more than hear about what the application could do. So sugar kindly put together a mock-up, if you will, and then the team was supposed to take it back and redline it. Sounded simplistic enough. Um, unfortunately, the sugar team built it out and we took more time to review it than we should have. And they had to keep moving on their journey, right? They had to keep moving the project forward. So by the time we got to a stage further down the road to say, hey, we want to change, I'll call it XYZ, for example. We want to change XYZ, that had already been very well baked into the code of customization, right? So we had to choose do we tear it apart and restart because we're out of time, or do we just try to keep putting a few band-aids on it? We put some band-aids on it, and then we put more band-aids on it, and then eventually the first band-aid fell off, and it it caused a little bit of a mess that we went back later to fix after everything was already rolled out. We that's where I said earlier we had a phase three come about that was an unexpected uh phase in our process, and that's what phase three was about was trying to dig under some of those layers and see candidly what the heck happened and how the heck could we fix it. Um, again, in hindsight, try not to plan a run down the runway, right? Try not to plan a sprint, try to plan more of a marathon in the process and take a little bit more time up front if you are gonna bring those champions to the table throughout your journey to make sure that you're really discovering what those business requirements are and digging a little deeper and explaining exactly what's gonna happen when we start moving that forward. So I would say that that was probably one of those examples of where we had to change directions and create a phase three.

SPEAKER_02 41:43

I think I think um in terms of of the lessons learned, that's that's one um, you know, in particular uh a great example. I I think um the key takeaway I think is really understanding um your business requirements, right? And and investing a little bit more time up front to get those right. Would would you agree?

SPEAKER_04 42:06

I would agree, absolutely. Um, and have a better, have a really good understanding of the you know, the the amount of data that the system can hold and produce back out in a in a rapid, you know, we're real-time, you know, instant expectation kind of society right now. So you have to get a really good understanding of what what will that look like in the application. Um you know, we were asking the application, the CRM Sugar application, to do things that really were more of a tableau function. Um, and we were on a journey to try to, if you will, reorganize our data flow to allow Tableau to produce a little bit more of those reporting views uh versus coming through sugar. But the really cool thing about um sugar is that there is a function where they can replicate to another site. So essentially you'd sign on to sugar as a sales rep, and then you'd click on a report that was actually coming from Tableau. So you would then sign into Tableau, but now you're seeing those reports in the Sugar UI, right? But they're really coming from Tableau's back end. So I would say that that was really one of the most beautiful features. If I had a list of top three out of the application, was the fact that you could be in one while still using another to leverage right that that data analysis and and pull megadata into something of a more data actionable uh view.

SPEAKER_02 43:46

It's pretty pretty cool. Um, Maz, I know data is your uh what you live in and breathe. So are you aware of that kind of feature and any other kind of platforms out there?

SPEAKER_00 43:58

Oh, I mean I mean Salesforce. Particularly recently, they've really been pushing, right? The data side, data cloud has now been a heavy push. So CRM Analytics, which it purchased in 2016, now it's called CRM, is essentially a native DI platform, embeds everywhere throughout it. And of course, with the acquired Tableau, so now that also can be pretty easily embedded. Um yeah, it allows you to take like native actions, so you can from the dashboard schedule phone call. So the integration with uh with BI and and uh and Salesforce is is really top-notch nowadays, um, not so much back in 2020, I think, um when you purchased this. Is that that's even probably before Salesforce purchased uh purchased Tableau. Um so yeah, so yeah, that's actually one of one of the really strong points with um with Salesforce. I I will say though that that with Sugar, I think the platform's a little bit more open, but I haven't touched it in good 10 years. Um and when I did, I think I was playing with the on-prem version where I could where I could uh like really get into the code and like change it, right? Because I think you have access to almost like the whole code base, which obviously Salesforce, you don't. Um but I mean you're right, you could build lightning components and whatnot.

SPEAKER_02 45:19

I think we're definitely seeing a bit of a revival um of of Twitter CRM, especially from the the you know the access and and insight that I I get from you know business candidates. Um and this leads on to quite a nice question for you, Rebecca, is is um you know, as more and more businesses reevaluate their tech stack, uh their CRM of choice, um very a lot more conversations I'll have this year have been with debt stack going through that process, um, renewal licenses going up at the end of a five-year agreement and cost of licenses to uh TRM players going up, uh being unaffordable for a lot of customers. What would be your advice? Um, other than really nailing down the business requirements, but but um what would be your advice for other CRM executives um that are embarking on selecting a new CRM? Um and kind of like if you were in their position today, what would you wish you had known uh about the CRM selection process?

SPEAKER_04 46:27

Um I think that the important part is to have your partnership with the other executives, right? And have them really on board to make that transition and really understand what are their tolerances for a little bit of pain. Um, I I've never seen a technology flip out and transition, if you will, that it was just smooth as butter. There's there's always some sort of hiccup, whether it's large, you know, large, medium, whatever. But with that being said, you have to make sure that you're moving in a better direction, right? You definitely don't want to put something in place that you then have to backtrack, which I have seen happen. Um, it's very expensive, it's very taxing on the organization. So if you're gonna embark on the journey, um ask a lot of questions, ask a ton of questions, talk to their customers, talk to people who've been in business, like I did with sugar. You know, I want to talk to the people who love you, I want to talk to the people who aren't that happy with you, you know, whether it's through their fault or your fault. I don't care. I don't want to just hear about the success stories. And I think that, you know, that's really an important key uh key component of the journey. Um, I I perhaps would say that uh, you know, maybe overestimating um in a very positive manner how quickly things come together. Uh I wish somebody had maybe said, you know, beforehand that, hey, read the room a little bit, right? These people, uh, they're gonna have more questions than you may have time for, which is going to stretch out the timeline. Make sure you've accommodated for that. I didn't have enough time. Uh, you know, um, it was, you know, 14-hour days for months, um, and hoping people would, you know, do 14-hour days with me. Um, so I I wish I had been told that, you know, whatever your change out is, bake in a little bit more time. It's always going to be time that's the killer in a project for the most part. And you can overcome it through, you know, through money. Um, but I had a fixed budget. So I'd say that that was that was something I wish I'd known. And my advice to everyone is make sure you truly have people on board ready to take that journey. Um maybe bake in a little bit more into the budget just in case you run into a hiccup and and roll, you know, roll with the changes, be willing to pivot. Um understand it's you know, it's it's a journey. Um, it's not necessarily something that's always mapped out perfectly from day one. Be willing to go through that journey and accept those surprises if they come up.

SPEAKER_02 49:13

Yeah, I I think um you mentioned something that really resonates with with me and and Matt. Um and it and it's the exact reason why we we combined both podcasts together, right? It's um and it's something we don't hear often, but it's it's it's the good and the ugly. Um, you know, who are your contest stories and and who are the people that it didn't go up so well for? And why was that um, you know, actually get that kind of 350 assessment of um the pros and can't? And I I think good luck to to you. I mean, I I don't and and also to CRM. Uh let's chat chat them out as well because um how many other uh CRM businesses would say sure is a few clients we've got the job with or or are not our biggest advocate um and go call them. You know, I think I think that's you know credit where credit's true. I I don't think many CRM cool uh you know software companies would would do that, right? And and then you know getting kiddos on your side for actually taking that initiative to to uh be proactive and understand uh you know the negatives, right? Maybe things we don't want to look at when we're going through that uh extensive process as it is already, we just kind of already decided what if we're a boardable system. Do we then want to have elements of doubt about that system after spending months deciding that's a system of choice? Um so yeah, I I think that's um you know really, really insightful. Um the the last question for me on that section is is um, you know, uh just around kind of your overall satisfaction and happiness with the outcome. Um, you know, if if you you know have a little bit of time to reflect uh on a scale of one to ten, ten being super happy, um, you know, one being, you know, disaster, where would you where would you rank um your transition to sugar CRM?

SPEAKER_04 51:06

I would have to rank this a nine. Um, you know, I always think that there's a little bit on both sides of the fence that was missed to to get you to that 10. Um, but I feel like it was it was a nine for us, um despite any challenges that we've had. I've been through a lot of application transitions, so it's possible that some of that's just my compare and contrast uh throughout history. But yeah, I I felt that it was uh it was a good transition overall at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_02 51:37

Fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 51:38

Awesome. So um just a bit more forward forward looking and and the CRM the CRM space is right, it's rapidly evolving uh across the board. I think all the major vendors are are putting a lot of innovation. Um so uh in terms of just the RM in general, like what trends or innovations are you really excited about and you think you're gonna really, really be a big impact um in the near future? Like where do you see the industry going?

SPEAKER_04 52:08

Well, I mean, for me, I think that you know, data is everywhere. I mean, there is so much data out there right now. It is incredible, and and that's great, right? But then you leave it to, you know, well, what do we do with it? You pull it into a report, right? And then you put it in front of a human who's gonna sit there and spend forever reading it and going over it. So I think where CRMs are winning and other technologies candidly, is when they take that data and instead of expecting it to be pushed out and then pulled back in as a decision, that they have, you know, they have it built internally into their system to make it, you know, actionable data. That's how I like to think of it. You know, that data is fantastic, but if you can't create an action and help give direction for someone, such as, you know, customer A needs to have a phone call. Have you noticed that their sales have been dropping off? Versus customer B, you called three times last week, but their sales are fine. You know, trying to use some of that, you know, the AI, you know, to generate actions, to put it simplistically in front of a salesperson. Remember, salespeople are on the phone, it could be in their car driving, they're negotiating. I mean, they are some of the busiest people in an organization and probably the least likely to be in front of their computer unless you're talking about the people on the manufacturing line, right? So when you take that into consideration, you need a very simplistic tool that gives them what they need when they need it rapidly. Um, and is, you know, has a nice, beautiful UI. I think it's very, you know, when I've looked at a plethora of applications across different uses throughout an organization, it's something that seems missed in a lot of them. Just that that UI for the user, they need to easily find whatever it is they're looking for. So I think that the CRMs that are going to win in the space are those that consider the UI, consider the simplicity uh of trying to produce answers. And then, of course, the actionable data, you know, do something with all of this data to give direction versus give a report to somebody.

SPEAKER_00 54:23

Yeah, so just a quick point on that. Um, wholly agree. Um, one of the biggest mistakes that impact user adoption is you're working, you're building a system, management has reporting needs. Like I'm talking senior, senior management, right? They have reporting needs, they're the ones also paying the bills, they're the ones who control the budget, um, and there becomes a heavy focus on meeting their reporting needs as opposed to meeting the user needs sometimes. So sometimes that they, you know, they want to report on X, Y, and Z, and that doesn't really add value to the end user. And then the end user feels like they're doing busy work just to generate reports that maybe somebody looks at and they don't know why. Um, and then that kind of ends up adversely impacting you know user adoption because like why am I doing this? Right? So it it's a it's a heavy balance between um the user needs and the uh management level reporting needs that doesn't necessarily impact the user directly. Um the best way to get user adoption is to build a system that makes the user's life easier generally. Um that's been that's been my experience at least.

SPEAKER_04 55:34

I would agree. Um if you count up the number of people who are using the system to drive the business versus the people who are reviewing a report, I guarantee you it's usually a larger group of people. So if that is the group of people that's struggling with the system and they're spending 10 minutes on something that should maybe be two minutes, you're now wasting eight minutes explode that out by the number of users who are in that system. Um that's that either leads to an overspend on salaries, right, to accommodate for that, or worse, it leads to user frustration and the component of their job that they just can't stand. So they either avoid doing whatever it is they're supposed to be doing in the system, which to your point, if it's not, you know, if it's not being put in the system, data is key. If it's not going in, then the executives don't know what's happening. Um, so that leads to that breakdown, but it also leads to, you know, just people who are frustrated with their jobs and possibly a higher turnover rate. Um, one thing that I think is really important for everyone to remember is the executives and everybody below have a role within an application and within CRM. So you have to include everybody when you go on the journey. Um, I candidly was talking to salespeople who'd been with an organization with the organization for a couple of months. I talked to a few who came from some of our top competitors. Why not? Uh, how did they use the CRM? What did they love about their previous CRM system? Talk to the upper management. What is it you want to see? What actions do you want to drive in your employees so that way we can shape the system to do that? Um, and then of course the executive committee. Um, you know, what type of data reporting do you want to see? But we were fortunate we had Tableau as part of our tech stack, so we were able to shift some of that outward and keep it a little bit separate. Um, we had a lot of limitations on what data we would show to different levels of people within the organization. So there were some of those things that we had to account for. And sugar, much like Salesforce, was able to do that for us, which was important. So a CRM system has to remember that you have to have user-level profiles, otherwise, you know, your executive is probably able to see information that certain, you know, say entry-level employees using the system shouldn't be seeing. Um, so allowing that to be easily updated by the technology team is a critical point. Um yeah, so I I would agree. I think that companies sometimes focus too much on one area of use as opposed to it's it's an organizational application, it's not a departmental level application.

SPEAKER_02 58:24

I really, really, um, I really like that. I think that'll be the the quote that summarizes um to today's today's podcast. Um an organizational application, um, I think is an important thing to keep in mind. And um, you know, I think I think with that, uh, with those words of wisdom, um, you know, Rebecca, we we would just like to say uh again, you know, thank you uh so much um for telling us a bit more about your CRM journey with Kenny More Paint. It's been uh an absolute pleasure uh to have you join us today. And and I I know um you know we've learned a lot just through through this conversation today, but I I know our listeners will uh definitely also benefit uh immensely from a different perspective uh on the CRM market um you know that you've shared with us about Twitter. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_04 59:17

Absolutely, thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 59:19

Well, thank you for joining us. It was an absolute pleasure.

SPEAKER_02 59:22

And for for our listeners, uh, you know, please don't forget to subscribe to the CRM Success Show for more episodes featuring phenomenal leaders like Rebecca, uh, who have taken the future of CRM. Uh you can follow us on LinkedIn, YouTube, and social media uh for the latest updates and exclusive content. Uh remember CRM success and failures. Uh, we're about to look in the real stories and real impact. Give us a follow. Thank you.