Evergreen investments: Mobile CRM

1. EVERGREEN INVESTMENTS: MOBILE CRM (A)
CASE ANALYSIS
ICT FOR ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS
AKSHAY BORHADE, 4007/20

2. AKSHAY BORHADE, 4007/20 EVERGREEN INVESTMENTS: MOBILE CRM (A)
ICT FOR ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Evergreen Investments have been using the Legacy CRM (Onyx) since 1999 to integrate
email, lotus notes, expense reporting and various other features. However, wholesalers, the
prime sales personality, reports displeasure since its inception due to number of
impediments (looking for a dial-up connection). Effective CRM mechanism has been the
basis of the success for the mutual fund firms in the US.
Wendy Irwin, the main liaison of IT in Evergreen decided in 2004 to address the problems
faced by the wholesalers by introducing a mobile CRM. Firstly, Pyxis was the supposed
mobile CRM to be introduced. But, due to financial constraint the plan was not rolled out.
Introduction of PDAs was the sound in the air amongst the employees which took care of
the core problems interpreted by Irwin.
With the increase in the IT budget the plan of independent mobile CRM with Pyxis was
implemented and developed. Few testing with the help of consultant, Pyxis engineers and a
wholesalers was carried out.
WHAT DO YOU THINK EVERGREEN WANTS TO ACHIEVE WITH ITS
CRM?
Evergreen Investment was one of the America’s 25 largest mutual fund companies that is a part of
financial services industry, often referred to as “Wall Street”. Many of the best and the brightest minds
are employed by top companies in the financial services industry like Merill Lynch, Citigroup, JP
Morgan. There was an intense rivalry in terms of number of mutual funds and even highly targeted
funds fought for “shelf space” or advantageous placement to prospective customers. So marketing
was the critical success factor for any firm in this industry. Further, it being a service industry rather
than a manufacturing industry, the role of marketing and customer-relationship becomes all the more
important.
CRM helps in collating the client information and displays it as per the needs of the user and hence
ensures effective and up-to-date database management. It requires prior training as the steps
includes following:
 Enter the data of the client (Create the client database if the client is new)
 Noted down the meetings and interaction conclusion with the client
 Enter the detail of the transactions with the client
 Update the transactions and payments done by the client
 Keep track of important events of the clients (for designing tailor-made offers)
With CRM, Evergreen wanted to have comprehensive customer information to tailor its service,
sales pitch, presentation etc. so as to strengthen its client-relationship. There was customer-
information collection, maintenance and analysis post every interaction with the client which helped
Evergreen employees to carry out CRM activities. Further with wireless technologies, Evergreen
aimed at transmission of live customer feeds and thus gain better insights and provide better
service.

3. AKSHAY BORHADE, 4007/20 EVERGREEN INVESTMENTS: MOBILE CRM (A)
ICT FOR ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS
Thus, with CRM, Evergreen is trying to achieve competitive advantage in its industry and also to
compete strongly, innovate the service offering and adapt to changing external environments. It brings
clients information quickly for e.g. wholesalers don not have time to analyze background information
about the client. However, with the CRM system, the internal sales consultant can bring the
information about the client to the wholesaler.
However, few problems were faced during the entry of the customer data, while on road (with low or
no dial-up connection)
IRWIN’S APPROACH
I don’t think this approach is a good one.
INVOLVEMENT OF WHOLESALERS
The best approach would have been to involve the wholesalers into the decision-making process as
the wholesalers are the ones who are the end-users of mobile CRM. It is clear that the wholesalers
are not satisfied with the current CRM system as they found it quite time-consuming and
cumbersome. Probably, they themselves have good idea of how to change the system and Irwin
should try to sink in their recommendations as well. With Irwin’s approach, some of the employees
may trust or just get frustrated as normally happens when employees are faced with uncertainties
and ambiguities. Getting the confidence of her employees should have been her priority which
would have made her approach more credible having more opportunities of better decisions as
employees might come up with unique suggestions.
EXTENSIVE PILOT TESTING
There has been no extensive pilot testing of the new mobile CRM for the expectations from the
CRM. Irwin hoped that the mobile CRM effort would change the perception by making it more
convenient to enter the required data on the go. The company had no experience to back this hopes.
ADDRESSING EXISTING PROBLEMS
Irwin addressed only those problems which were visible to her through the as she rode with some
wholesalers. However, the problems interpreted may only be the periphery of hordes of problems
under them. She needs to have a deeper look into the operations of the wholesalers and internal
consultants to get a comprehensive gist of problems. Active interaction with all the wholesalers
(instead of couple) would have been better.
WHAT REACTION DO YOU ANTICIPATE TO IRWIN'S IDEA?
EMPLOYEE TERMS
The noise in the room during the presentation of the case was clear signal that the employees were
not pleased by Irwin’s idea. Employees were clearly frustrated with current CRM as they considered
it to be a “tax on their job”, time-consuming, etc. Also, sales force were hardly satisfied with the
CRM mechanism as they complained that every time they need to scribble down the details of the
interaction on the back of the business card and then enter the same in the CRM. Also, the presence
of dial-up connection was a pre-requisite to make an entry into the system. This clearly suggests that

4. AKSHAY BORHADE, 4007/20 EVERGREEN INVESTMENTS: MOBILE CRM (A)
ICT FOR ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS
the employees are too sensitive to the inefficiencies of the CRM implementation and would like to
have their grievances catered to.
Since Irwin decided to change the CRM implementation without consulting with the employees,
there is going to be a negative reaction when the idea is presented initially. Employees would
definitely have some suggestions that they would like to voice over and not considering them might
leave the employees less motivated and even more frustrated. However, if Irwin is able to present
the idea and put across the benefits of the new initiative in a manner that answers all the grievances
of employees then I think that the idea might accepted eventually. As it is the case with any
technology, the adoption curve is such that that are few early adopters and the number increases
gradually. Similar might be the reaction to Irwin’s idea.
TECHNOLOGY TERMS
Needless to say there are more advantages to the mobile CRM by Pyxis. To note down, few are the
following:
 New CRM keep wholesalers connected and up to date with the CRM system wirelessly
 The most current client, sales information and CRM data are always available
 Wholesalers can input and update interaction data from anywhere, even on the road, at
anytime
 Interaction data inputted by wholesalers will be instantly transmitted to the Onyx system
 Wholesalers can update CRM application several times throughout the week so they have
more time to work for other internal job on Friday
 Blackberry is light and convenient for travel
 It can be used both as a Laptop and as a mobile phone
 It enhance a prompt communication with either internal or external parties
 E-mail can be read and responded back almost instantaneously
 It enhance the relationship with clients
 Wholesalers can easily retrieve relevant information about their clients.
 The price is reasonable.