Module 4

I work for a company that sells multiple Microsoft business solutions, one of which is a sales and marketing automation software by the name of Microsoft CRM. This software not only keeps track of all the marketing information it also keeps track of current partner relationships. To learn more about this marketing software I interviewed the National CRM Director of our company, Tim Andersen, who is coincidentally my Father.

A brilliant engineer could create the most innovative and efficient product in the world, but without marketing, this product would make no money whatsoever. Businesses spread the word of their new product through strategic marketing. Now imagine a large company trying to keep track of all of their campaigns and potential clients with multiple organized folders filled with paper containing the information. Not only would this be a very large and cluttered office space, it would be very inefficient and time consuming going through each and every folder. If the marketing director needed to go on a business trip, he would need all the folders containing the information about clients and campaigns with him. How impractical would it be to pack up a moving truck every time the director needed to travel?

Now let’s say the director was a smart guy and uploaded all of these files into his computer. Now he could just bring his computer and this would be a semi-practical solution, but not very many companies have only one person in their company working exclusively on marketing. Most companies have a marketing team, which contains many members. These team members can’t just pass around the director’s computer, like a ceremonial pipe every time they need information.  This is where marketing software comes in. Marketing software gives companies the ability to effectively manage their lead generation and track the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns.

When speaking with my Father, he best explained the duties of his job by giving me an overview of what it takes to sell Microsoft CRM to a company and then implement and develop the marketing software to best fit the needs of a particular company. Because no company’s marketing software is the same, Tim and his team need to not only install the software and train the company on how to use it, but also customize the software to sustain almost any marketing function the company is in need of.

The first step of this process is called the Discovery. In this step they evaluate the businesses current systems and processes while figuring out where the inefficiencies are. This is done by interviewing all appropriate employees that will be using the system. The second step is estimating time and cost for implementing new systems and processes based off the discovery. Then they submit these estimates for approval to the client. The third step is when they begin and execute the approved project plan. In this step the developers write code to customize CRM for the business and write any extra code needed to fill in the inefficiencies found during the discovery process. After this step the customer is ready to go and contacts my Father for further needed customizations.