User:Gmalpass/sandbox

Buyer Relationship Management
Buyer Relationship Management - BRM

People buy and organizations pay. Database/CRM users have all heard the statistics around new generations changing jobs more than shirts. They jump around, climb ladders quickly, are always seeking new challenges, getting pinched etc - and as a consequence, are incredibly difficult to keep up to. True BRM is a philosophical shift from an Account centric data model to a Contact centric data model. Becuase really, it's all about people.

What tactically are we suggesting:
 * While a contact will roll up to an account, more data is related/pinned to the contact
 * Contacts will never be deleted from the database, they may be flagged as (inactive) or (deceased)
 * When a contact changes companies - the lookup to the new account should be reflected
 * At the same time, the system should insert a record showing job history
 * All related items should link to the correct data - IE activity and opportunity history should link to both the original account and the contact that has moved

What is required: It requires some fundamental changes in a business system architecture:
 * A series of database triggers that insert records at change of the account
 * Much more vigilance around data quality and contact creation
 * Additional efforts in supporting systems to accomodate more contact level data - especially backoffice systems that typically only view billing contacts

What are the typical obstacles
 * Integration to the backoffice
 * Existing data - bad/duplication/too much/messy
 * Poor account data quality, or representation of billing entities on accounts rather than true account (a physical location, a business #, people working there)

It also requires a series of promises to the end users
 * one version of contact should be in the database ever
 * 0 duplicates of contacts in the system database

What are the longer term implications for businesses
 * Consideration around territory assignment and account assignment - should we change a rep on an account if a key decision maker changes companies?
 * Marketing automation systems, and how we market to people based on their history with us, not just related to current job
 * Data acquisition strategy