Snow Boots and Bad Driving
I grew up with hand-me-downs. The winter boots were the worst of all. I had no problem with learning to play on my brother’s old trumpet. I was quite pleased to accept another brother’s old wet suit. But, sledding all day with winter boots that did not fit and were not all that insulated brought me close to frostbite on more than one occasion. I should have complained, but using things that were handed down from an older sibling was just the way things worked when you were the youngest of seven.
When you are running a global CRM program there are going to be countries that become the oldest sibling and there will be countries that become the youngest sibling. The countries in the middle might get less attention, as can also happen in a large family.
The biggest risk of this birth order situation in the world of CRM is that sometimes the hand-me-downs don’t fit very well. This usually works something like this. A CRM program starts with a larger well-funded country and the design is a bit too centered on the needs of that dominating geography. For example, the system is built to fit the U.S. postal code system and cannot accommodate other postal code structures. This situation can result in a couple of problems – either the later implemented smaller country has to use a workaround or extra resources have to be expended to get the postal code field correct. When this happens to a hundred small things the situation also leads to bitterness and resentment of the CRM colonialism.
Rectifying this situation is both easy and hard. It is easy to build your CRM program to begin with a global design approach. It can be hard to satisfy everyone during design. Ultimately it boils down to regional differences. Some differences are real, like postal codes, and need to be taken into account. Some differences are not so real. I have seen many situations where there was a strong perception that things were very different between countries. However, on closer, objective examination – primarily focused at the process level – it has been shown that differences are negligible and can be easily worked out.
Sometimes differences are based on maturity of the business. Some countries have been at it longer than others and have developed further. I think that it is best to build the CRM approach to fit the most mature businesses and let the developing regions grow into it – much like the hand-me-down thing. I have also seen that some geographies have different personalities. Some prefer structure and discipline and some prefer to keep things pretty flexible. It can be a simple solution to build the system to enable the discipline and then allow the rules to be broken in those regions that take it a bit looser. Having just spent a week of driving the Amalfi coastline in Italy I have a good handle on this dynamic. The EU has agreed on many driving and traffic rules, but they get fairly ignored in this region.
On the other hand, sometimes differences are substantial. There are regulations or market size restrictions forcing business models to differ. Some geographies sell directly and some sell through distribution partners. These circumstances demand that the processes and system be designed to accommodate. And, this can be harder.
On the less hard on of the continuum is the approach of satisfying differences by using the power of the technology to enable different access or different views. This requires more resources to accomplish, but has been a successful solution for many businesses working across borders. A more extreme approach, but one growing in popularity is to build the primary CRM system to satisfy the larger portions of the business and utilize hosted systems to accommodate the special needs of the minority. Sometimes one-size-fits-all is a bad approach. This hybrid CRM model can be more complex, but it ultimately has the best chance of satisfying the business in a global enterprise.
So, in conclusion, don’t force everyone where the same pair of snow boots. And, don’t go over the speed limit in Switzerland, but in Italy don’t expect to go below it.