Introduction

My history with CRM

some 20 years ago, I started my small Customer Relationship Management (CRM) business in Vienna. Since then, I have been involved in a number of CRM implementations across the globe and in various roles. My first role was within a small company in Vienna, where I was delivering CRM solutions to banking clients together with Hewlett-Packard. As my career developed, I spent a period of time being a mentor and trainer, teaching CRM classes across Europe.

Before long, I was working with Microsoft International as a CRM senior architect in both a sales and delivery role for the EMEA, APAC, and LATAM regions, which took me across the world, working with people from multiple countries. As a CRM architect, I've participated in a number of CRM implementations, at some 200 companies, in both pre-sales and delivery roles as the lead architect, designing both some very successful solutions and some not-so-successful designs; solutions of each category will be detailed throughout our journey.

Most of the companies I was engaged with were global companies with operations in multiple countries and continents. Within these companies, I've acted primarily as the CRM lead architect, but sometimes the focus has been put more on a dual role as the architect and/or the project manager.

In a nutshell, all these CRM implementations had common elements, including improving process efficiency and reducing operational costs, along with improving customer interactions and experience across the company, and often across different markets. But these engagements also had some differences. As you will learn in this book, every organization has to implement its own unique sales process based on its vertical, products, industry, culture, strategies, and market position. The one key element we need to know before we start is that what works for one company will often totally fail for another, and throughout this book, we will explore a wide range of good examples that reflect this idea.

I have worked with the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank (SPDB), one of the largest banks in China. This bank specializes in commercial banking and operates as an international hub for the Asian region. Likewise, I've been engaged with Barclays, a British-based bank, and its CRM projects in the UK.

My experience also involves the retail sector, and both universal and private banking. This included working with the Société General in France, where I collaborated with both the corporate and investment banking arms on credit cards and wealth management business. My experience is not limited to just Europe or Asia; it also extends to Central America, where I worked with the Banco Industrial Guatemala, one of the largest retail banks in Central America with a network of more than 1,600 service points throughout the region.

This book is all about storytelling and sharing some of the best, and worst, experiences that I've encountered and learned from as an architect throughout my CRM journey.

You'll find that most of the stories are from the financial services industry, as this has been my primary industry focus for the last 10 years and most of my clients have been from the financial services sector. However, don't worry; all of these examples, as you will see, can be applied to other industries.

I will not disclose customer names or any confidential data in this book, for obvious reasons, but all the stories we explore are real, involving real clients, real customers, and real-world impacts.