Post Merger - CRM Operations Onboarding

As companies continue to grow in an inorganic way, other companies with similar domain or operations focus are regularly acquired by mid-size as well as large companies. As part of my role to manage Global CRM IT Applications, I was lucky to see series of such acquisitions done by my company and understand areas C-executives typically worry post acquisition i.e. how to get a common customer view or a combined forecasting numbers after acquisition. As data sits in the acquired company systems, getting this data in parent company system is quite challenging and needs a well-defined strategy on how this has to be accomplished.

 

Some of the challenges which are common and come to fore for handling effective and consolidated CRM Operations are;

How to manage CRM Operations through a common system going ahead?

How to stop double entry in systems?

How to enable change management for on-boarded company employees for CRM tasks?

How to manage data and plan deduplication of the acquired company data?

How to see a combined Forecast through a master CRM application?

How to manage support operations of acquired company products?

How to take best of both the CRM company operations?

Identifying key goals to be achieved with onboarding and working towards it in a phase wise manner.

 

Ultimately it all boils down to, How to plan a complete CRM on-boarding for acquired company.

 

I plan to recommend here a strategy that can be adopted as a template across Organizations to effectively onboard acquired company CRM Operations and data in the master CRM application.

 

The approach taken for CRM onboarding approach can be a five step activity as below.

 

 

 

Step 1: Define Strategic Alignment

 

The first step is to understand, what are the key goals an Organization want to achieve as part of CRM process onboarding or consolidation in a single system. These have to be clearly articulated to plan next steps accordingly.

 

Some of the key goals which organizations focus on during onboarding are;

1. Having a common Pipeline and Forecasting view through single application
2. Having a common product and pricing approach
3. Having a proper cross-sell or up-sell focus from a single system
4. Unified customer support operations through single system
5. Unified Marketing operations for leads and Campaign management

 

Based on identified goals from concerned business stakeholders we should prioritize them.

Note, it's very important to prioritize and sequence the goals for smooth CRM operations onboarding.

 

Step 2:  Identifying common ground for alignment

 

Let's assume that after Step 1 strategic alignment discussion two key goals were identified for accomplishment. Let's say;

1. Having a common Pipeline and Forecasting numbers  through single application
2. Unified customer support operations through single system

 

The first step to find a common ground for alignment is to start with Accounts (customers) onboarding. A very important activity for Account migration is identifying business accounts. A company to be on-boarded can have thousands of Accounts and to plan a phase wise onboarding it's imperative to choose business accounts first. Step 3 in the blog will give more highlights on organizing business accounts. A thumb rule that can be followed for identifying business Accounts is ones having open and renewal opportunities associated.

 

After business accounts identification below mapping exercise should be done:

1. Process Mappings
2. Field level Mapping

 

Process Mapping:

Important thing to note is that the company onboarded complements your products, type of accounts and business operations. Example: A company in CAE products domain will always acquire smaller companies in similar domain, having similar products or technology where they fall short. Hence most of the CRM processes for Leads, Contacts, Accounts and Opportunity management and renewals will align.

Very important thing to note is there should be minimal deviation in processes when onboarding another company. Wherever we see deviation or improvement in processes (other company can have better processes) it should be taken as incremental improvements in last phase.

 

Field Mapping:

Field mapping is a next step towards CRM operations onboarding. It’s a very critical step and needs to tread cautiously. Both the Organizations (if they use a common CRM application or not) will have multiple fields or columns created in their CRM application and will wish to carry entire information in new system. This is not desirable and at the same time it should not be done too.  The way to go through field mapping exercise is by following ISD approach. ISD approach will help you plan appropriate fields and will have minimal burden on overall team for technical work.

ISD is defined as;

 

    

Let's go through these activities below:

I- Identify Important fields

 

This can be done by taking all the fields in respective object and identifying the usage of the field in respective object. Field trip is one such app that lists fields in Salesforce by their usage. After the commonly used fields are identified they can be marked with importance as High, Medium, Low. A field might be less used in terms of data populated but highly important in overall Salesforce process or rules. Hence a combination of field trip and order of importance will help you identify the fields to be only considered during any CRM onboarding process. I had prepared a detail template for the same and if you need it feel free to contact me and I can help share the reference template.

 

S-Shortlist common fields

 

After the fields are identified in above process shortlist the common fields first in both the Orgs. After the common fields are shortlisted verify other important fields that are must for your entity. Decide if these fields information can be mapped against any other identified field in parent CRM org. If not then it can be mutually decided whether to bring additional fields or ignore within the new parent CRM ecosystem during onboarding.

 

D- Define field retention

 

Post shortlisting of common fields and identifying other important fields needed, the other additional remaining fields can be planned for archival. These fields can be backed up for data in a common location as the information will not be migrated. In future if any data is needed the files can be reviewed with legacy ids and data can be referred. Ensure that legacy id of each migrated entity be available in new system during onboarding process.

 

 

Step 3: Organize Business Accounts

 

The key to successful onboarding of CRM operations is choosing right set of Accounts to be migrated as these are the customers. Since customers are the key around which entire business revolves its important you identify business accounts. The company operations to be onboarded can have huge number of accounts but not all should be migrated in one go. It has to be a phase wise approach. As companies which gets merged share common interests many of the customers can be same too when they are selling similar technology products. Hence one should always be practical about migration of accounts data.

 

The best approach here is to migrate accounts data in a phase wise manner. Accounts should be classified as Business and Prospect accounts. Business Accounts are the ones against which either a service contract or an open opportunity is in place. Prospect Accounts are newly entered and more of just qualified from being an lead and discussions are in progress to create an opportunity.

 

Business accounts should be migrated first so we can get all the revenue and realizable revenue/pipeline related information readily in the system. Organizing business accounts saves time for deduplication as the accounts should run through deduplication process before migration. Deduplication of accounts is key before migration as accounts can be common between both the companies as they deal in similar domain. Not doing a deduplication exercise will lead to a potential challenge of customer 360 degree view later as the pipeline and other reference data mapping to same customer will not be possible.

 

I will be writing a separate blog on planning customer data deduplication in a company. It will help provide better insights into this approach. As of now one should go ahead with a combination of deduplication tool and some manual intervention to identify duplicates. After this activity the other accounts can be migrated in different phases.

 

 

Step 4: Onboarding Plan and actual execution

 

A onboarding plan can be made as a 100 day plan drawing out what activities one wishes to accomplish in first phase and later going ahead with onboarding engagement.

Assume here that Company A is an acquired company and Company B is the acquiring Company. A sample 100 day CRM operations onboarding plan can look as below. The plan shown here is reference and first 100 day plan can be distributed as 50 day or  per company convenience.

 

 

 

Step 5: Incremental Improvements and Other data Migration

 

During onboarding understand the processes followed by Company A (acquired company) vis-a-vis Company B (acquiring company). It's very important to also identify process similarities and at the same time gaps and areas of improvement that can be imbibed from acquired company (Company A) into Company B. Yes, during onboarding process it's very important that acquiring companies are open to understand and  improve on areas where they fall short by taking a cue from acquired company operations. These areas should be considered minutely and incremental improvements should be made by adopting practices from acquired company in a time bound manner.

 

Ideally these incremental improvements should be planned at the end of engagement after key goals are addressed and relevant data is migrated.

 

Happy Onboarding.