I spend lots of time in the board room discussing the impact of CRM with prospective customers but I also get to spend time visiting existing customers to discuss everything about CRM after the fact.  I get to see things post implementation and some of the immediate impact.  And then there are some of the companies that are five and six years removed from their first deployment of CRM.  When you see some of these installations and how some firms have really embraced the concepts of Customer Relationship Management it give me a sense of making a difference.  But who cares about how I feel.  The users, managers and executives of these companies feel great and they show off what they have done with a sense of pride and accomplishment.

In recent discussions with one firm the COO told me about how they had posted record profits three years in a row and how they have been on a hiring binge during this year when many are making tough decisions.  Wanting to know the origins of the results I suggested that the market must be really "rocking" in his industry.  He said that that there had been an uptick in his line of financial services but said that the solution that they put in back in 2007 was killing his competitors.  I asked for an explanation.  He said that timing and response and not necessarily price were the keys to winning in his game.

When prodded to explain how the system did anything to help in those areas he said that the combination of two things related to the system made all of the difference.  First, he mentioned that the system itself with the workflow engine and the notifications and business rules made it very easily operationally to run a deal through the cycle.  More importantly, he added, is that the changes made in the first two years at the suggestions of employees helped to accelerate many processes and cut the time to process a transaction in half from two years ago.

I was curious to see how long the process used to take in the pre "CRM" days.  He said, "I can't even remember back that far but I know it was brutal.  Everything we do today is completely electronic and every handoff is handled in the system.  In the old days we could take a call and they might have two teams of people working on the same deal. It might take a few days to even get the right documents out to people and then there was a huge file that made its way from department to department.  When someone would call in for a status everyone would run around looking for a file like it was a scavenger hunt.  The entire process of pricing and funding a deal was normally ten days to two weeks."

Talk about an eye opener.  When we went through the discovery process several years earlier they mentioned various pains and desires but we didnt' get into the particulars of the impact of exactly how long these tasks took to complete.  The customer was surrendering to technology out of despearation but with no real ROI expectations. I really started to smile when he told me how long the end to end process takes today.  He said that if they get documents back same day they can price and move to closing the following day and fund on day three.

As we wrapped up our conversation my customer explained that his competitors live in the "old world" and still live in the world of working deals from start to finish in two weeks.  He explained, "They just can't compete and when people are dealing with money they don't want to wait a long time.  So now the brokers in the industry bring their clients to us first and our competitors only if their clients force them to shop around.  Life is good when you get to see the deals before everyone else.  As more people find out we continue to grow."

Talk about a happy customer.  He deployed a system and his employees embraced the technology and made it a part of their culture to look for constant change and improvement.  I love hearing stories like this in the midst of tough times because that is when the strongest companies thrive.  It is a beautiful thing when it all comes together.