Marketers are beginning to understand the importance of leveraging CRM to offer a meaningful customer experience. The problem, however, is that CRM is no longer enough to set a brand apart from the competition. Now it is merely the norm. To build brand loyalty and grow business today, it is imperative to deliver a customer experience that integrates a host of digital, mobile, and social technologies that seamlessly integrates into the lives of customers.
This concept was the focus of the 2015 Gartner Customer 360 Summit, which combined new strategies and technologies to bring new customer experience and CRM capabilities to a new level.
During a session titled, “Resco: Mobilizing Bayer CropScience,” Ralf Zickler, a consultant at Bayer AG, and Ivan Stano, the COO of Resco, offered attendees a look inside how Bayer implemented Resco’s innovative platform to mobilize a new approach to CRM.
When Bayer, the multinational chemical and pharmaceutical company, realized the need to significantly advance the CRM initiatives of Bayer CropScience, the company’s seed research and crop protection division, it relied on Resco to better understand and engage customers.
Because Bayer CropScience strives to dig deep into the myriad of issues facing farmers, many of the company’s representatives spend an enormous amount of time in the field. In an attempt to truly understand the challenges that must be overcome, they gain insights by working on-location and directly with local farmers. But until recently, many of Bayer’s CRM capabilities were not practical for this environment.
Remote locations made for very long synchronization times, and outdated systems were not user-friendly. Therefore, most Bayer sales reps avoided using the system. And this presented a problem for the brand, as mobilizing an agriculture division required an advanced approach that engaged a global community of farmers both in the lab and on the ground.
“We really needed to have a usable solution in place, with direct feedback and fast synchronization, and with off line functionality since in some areas of Brazil, for example, we still don’t have a network,” Zickler said.
After weighing a number of different options, Bayer selected Resco because of its abilities to implement the type of CRM system that would solve the particular problems it faced. In short, Bayer needed an advanced CRM system that was mobile-ready, but still simple, seamless, and streamlined at the same time.
“We wanted a ‘light’ approach to our mobile app, so we really had to decide what we needed and what we didn’t,” Zickler continued. “We wanted everything that needed to be entered into to the device, to be entered onsite, not back in the office. Also, we decided to only use selective data, and not complete customer profiles. This meant including one year of customer activities, for example, instead of 10-year histories. Anything more than that would only increase the synchronization times.”
In less than 100 days, Resco succeeded in modernizing Bayer CropScience’s obsolete legacy CRM systems. And in the process, Resco helped drive business through an array of smart mobile features, including location services, updated notifications, GPS & navigation advancements, and more.
Bayer’s story effectively demonstrates why brands cannot take a “one-size-fits-all” approach to CRM. By designing and implementing the right system for the right environment, Bayer CropScience provided the tools for sales reps to conduct successful customer engagement and improve the customer experience in the process.
About the Author: Mark Johnson
Mark is CEO & CMO of Loyalty360. He has significant experience in selling, designing and administering prepaid, loyalty/CRM programs, as well as data-driven marketing communication programs.