Question 1

Interviewer: First of all, thank you very much <Participant 1> for consenting to do this. So we are
doing this qualitative research on effectiveness measures of CRM system
implementations.
The first one is what successful strategies you use to design, develop, and deploy your CRM
systems?

Participant 1: Okay. Lets see. So Ill talk about this in the context - when I say I, I mean we
because there were a lot of people involved in doing this; so Im going to probably say I a lot
and it wasnt all me - with regard to design, I think its first best to note we brought in an
implementation consultant for CRM to help us with all of this because it was new to us. It took
multiple years to implement out CRM system. So the implementation consultants really helped a
lot with the design of how do you want the tool to work and what are your business
requirements surrounding it to develop the process. That was really invaluable because
otherwise we would have spent a lot of time guessing at how to do things in a tool we didnt
have any experience with. WE selected the CRM tool called Siebel which is Oracle CRM tool.
We started our implementation with basic options available in the system.
So that was part of the design; the other part I would say is we had a business process
reengineering team look at how things were being done across multiple sites to come up with a
single common process so that we were designing one process not three. So thats, I guess,
maybe the key points around design, if were talking about the CRM application and not the
infrastructure, correct?

Interviewer: Correct.

Participant 1: Okay. The development process was probably more of waterfall model than
anything. It might have become agile more towards the end of the development phases where
we would first develop requirements, then wed go back and develop an automated process,
and then as we got feedback we would tweak it a little bit. But it was probably that waterfall first,
agile right towards the end to tweak and try to get a working process.
And then I guess towards the deployment, we developed everything locally and then had
to migrate it to a whole different infrastructure environment, which created a whole lot of
challenges because we had no visibility into that environment. We could have done things to be
more successful in our deployment even though we did implement on time as we had planned,
but our struggles were that the people implementing it in that other infrastructure had no
previous experience with the application, and the people we had hired to be our integrator had a
lot of experience. So really the success was that they had the ability to talk someone through
the very basics of the application to help them implement it.
We adopted waterfall project management methodology in the beginning and leveraged scrum
methodology late on, that helped a lot.

So I think Ill stop there. Is that enough information or are there any other questions
about that?
Question 2

Interviewer: Lets go to the questions. I maybe figured Id ask follow-up questions. Next one
would be how did you measure the success of your CRM implementation?

Participant 1: Well, so the initial success was just implementing on time as we had planned. I
think the real success is measured in how effective is it in handling the work youre expecting it
to handle. And for that we really started looking at - oh, so I should step back - the ability for us
to measure the success really came out of we had three sites doing the same type of work in
three different systems. And when we put all of this together into one with everyone using the
same system, it was much easier to measure success. We looked at how the efficiency
improved after implementing the CRM solution.
So now we could start looking at metrics and statistics across the three sites to
understand how they were accomplishing work to see if we were accomplishing work more
efficiently compared to how our other systems did it with metrics of how productive people were.
Not to say that they were immediately more productive, but as they got comfortable with the
system over six, eight months, we could see whether they were being more productive.
So the two measures were really the success of the project initially, but the second one took
time to measure staffs effectiveness and efficiencies in using the new system and the
processes. Another important success for us is less down time for the system as this tool
combined multiple tools in one.

Question 3

Interviewer: What major issues and challenges have you faced during the CRM system
implementation?

Participant 1: A couple of our big ones - we had three different sites in three geographical
locations in the country doing the same type of work. A major challenge was trying to get them
to all agree to do work the same way, using the same process. That was probably the biggest
one from the business side.
From the technical side, as I mentioned, we had development happening locally in one
environment with the ultimate production deployment happening in a different infrastructure
environment with different support staff. Trying to get them to understand what to do via the
phone - because there was no ability to access the environment or even see a screen-sharing
of the environment - major technical hurdle to try to get them to understand what we needed
them to do, what we needed from them, and what they needed to then kind of execute.
So those were probably the two biggest challenges we faced.

Interviewer: There could be security issues, too, right?

Participant 1: Correct. Because we were dealing with treasury information, security was also a
very big component of the project; how to protect the data and the environments where the data
was stored presented a whole other set of challenges.

Question 4

Interviewer: How have you addressed these challenges?

Participant 1: The big things we did, and as I mentioned, on the business side, we established a
group to review process changes across the three sites to collect feedback, we also - I dont
think I mentioned - we had what we called a Change Champion Group, which was a small
group of people from each site that were corps members that we really looked to to go help
champion this new process that was coming and everything that was happening with their use
base. So that they were not hearing it just from the project team that was implementing, they
were hearing it from their own people.
So that was a big thing we did on the business side; we also developed newsletters, we
tried to inform people what we were working on as we worked through new processes and what
we were doing, and again that was communicated with the same message across all sites. We
didnt let each side craft their own message.

Interviewer: Did you get any help to alleviate these challenges?

Participant 1: Yes. From the business and the technical people, helping to do that interpretation,
and some of the coordination, or getting people on calls, or helping with testing and interpreting
business requirements. Yeah, there was a central group to do that, which probably helped
address the business into technical development process.

Question 5

Interviewer: How has the application of these strategies improved the performance and
profitability of your bank?

Participant 1: So the CRM strategy has really helped improve the ability of multiple sites to
share the work across the sites, because its now all going into the same tool. And so the ability
to access information, that barrier has been removed, which has allowed our bank to actually
contribute more support and complete more work that initially was only going to the bureau of
the fiscal service. So its opened up the ability, really, to allow staff to do more, to learn more,
and to process more work when we have down periods, maybe less work going on; since we
have staff here, they can now contribute to getting the work done. Which, my understanding is,
has really helped the overall business area across the organization to be more efficient with
getting the work done, and in catching up with backlogs of work that have been in place for
years.
Interviewer: Did this help you to look into the application and clear goals, which is the process
that is not needed.

Participant 1: Right, thats true. So its really helped from the efficiency perspective and the
ability to push work through the queue more. Profitability is somewhat relative and not as big of
a focus for us. I will say, though, I believe the tool helped us become, in a sense, more profitable
because of the workload sharing. We had staff to meet a certain level of demand, and if that
demand were to drop off we still had all the people doing less work. The bureau was having
more work to do and not adding staff.
So really the ability to spread the work has allowed us to utilize staff more efficiently,
which I have to believe in the end creates profitability because you dont have a backlog of work
that youre paying people overtime to complete. Youre now spreading the work and utilizing the
staffs that arent busy, so youre saving money over time. Potential customer satisfaction, if you
want to get into less specific dollars, but kind of that goodwill perspective of being more
profitable. Youre doing a better job in meeting your customers expectations.

Question 6

Interviewer: What strategies can managers use to maximize from the CRM system resource
implementation?

Participant 1: Again, were getting into areas where Ill give my opinion. So I think in utilizing this
CRM system, managers have been able to distribute the work better, utilize staff better, allow
staff to learn new types of work to do because its open and available. So I think the return is
being able to effectively utilize staff, look across sites to understand maybe where work is done
more efficiently, and shift that type of work to a certain group of people.
The other thing that really did help managers understand better was the volume of work
- how many phone calls, how many emails, how many paper mail cases were coming in - and to
really look across the site and use common metrics and statistics for all of that information. That
helped them understand the email volume and where they could maybe shift that or add the call
center staff in Minneapolis to help the staff in Parkersburg. Without a tool that has all that in one
place, again, youre only managing your staff and the workload you have; you cant effectively
get the work done in the most efficient way.
So I think thats the biggest return - I guess the other thing would be we now have one
system that tracks all customer interactions, whereas before a customer could have called the
toll free number, and either site didnt understand or know about that interaction, which would be
frustrating to the customer. Now you have all those communications in one place so you can
look through the history of when a customer has contacted you. Again, youre probably going to
spend less time trying to have the customer tell you what their problem is when they can see the
whole picture now.

Question 7

Interviewer: What are your experiences with the top management in supporting CRM initiatives?
Participant 1: So we worked with executives at both sites of the bank that were involved at the
beginning of the project. Top management can sometimes - whats the best way to say this -
they can oversimplify things and make it sound like an easy process, like, You bought this tool,
just put it on a server and lets go. Its going to be better and everything will be tracked. But
theres a lot of detail and that goes into making sure you get things tracked in the right way, that
you capture all the interactions in the right way, and that you process them all correctly so that
that really does come to fruition.
So I think top management is great at having a vision and a strategic direction; its
helping to educate them on the intricacies of developing processes that will help that vision
come true that is probably one of the bigger things that you can do, is taking the time to educate
them. Again, they set strategic direction and vision, but theyre not always in the weeds or
familiar with the weeds and how to really get the work done. And that was part of our experience
here; there was some knowledge of how to really get things done, but sometimes things took
longer than they expected. So it was really helping them understand and educate them along
the way.

Question 8

Interviewer: How does your bank maintain and support the CRM system?

Participant 1: So the things weve done to support it, we created a group called the CBAF, a
Central Business Application Function, to help be the liaison between the business area and the
technical staff, to help develop business requirements in talking with the users and then
conveying that to technical staff to develop. And then we have a technical group here that
supports the application and does all the development; they then work with the people that
support the ultimate production infrastructure and move code from one environment across the
wall to the other side and implement it.
So I believe there are still business groups that are kind of key people in the business
areas that help coordinate that work with the CBAF. The CBAF coordinates with the developers
and then they also focus back - sorry I should say the CBAF also helps ensure testing is done.
Not just their own testing, but getting the users involved with the testing to make sure that
whatever enhancement or change is being made meets their expectations. So that CBAF is a
key group to help with the coordination effort, but of course the technical staff - and all the
different roles there, the technical role is to help make it all happen from architecture to true
development to integration points and other products that are in place. We have a support
system maintained through remedy where we log the issues and prioritized so we can address
them accordingly.

Question 9

Interviewer: Is there anything else you want to tell me, other work strategies you use to
implement CRM systems effectively?
Participant 1: Im trying to think quickly. Nothing I havent mentioned. I guess I would reiterate:
hiring an integrator that understood the application was probably our key to doing it effectively.
When you buy something new or want to put a new application - and even if you had an existing
CRM application that functioned differently - the whole key is understanding how to make that
new tool work most effectively for you. And without that system integrator, I think we would have
implemented a tool that would not have been effective or successful, probably. So to me that
was probably the biggest key in making this whole thing work. Also we had a thorough plan for
training Siebel to our CSRs which helped very much.

Plus, the other thing I would mention is because we were trying to work with three
different sites at the time, everyone had the right answer, and by bringing in a system integrator
that had the expertise of the application, they had no personal bias for any site. They could give
an objective opinion on, I understand what all of you are saying, and heres the best way to do
it. Which could have been just like one site or maybe a hybrid of them all, but they gave that
objective opinion that helped us get to the right and best process. So it took politics out of the
picture.

Interviewer: How did you come up with the one particular system integrator?

Participant 1: We went through an RFP process to select them, which required them to provide
a lot of information around their experience of implementing CRM systems. We also then did
onsite interviews with each of the three finalists, so that wed met all of the key people they were
going to assign to the project. So we had their executives there but we had a project manager
and we had an organizational change specialist, so that we could talk with the people that we
were going to have assigned to us face-to-face and understand them and their strategy. So that
was probably very helpful, too, in picking an integrator that we felt comfortable with. And that
selection process included people from all three sites, so it was a collective decision; it wasnt,
again, one site making a decision that would then be enforced upon the others.

Interviewer: Okay. So one final question is if you were given the chance, how would you have
done differently, the same implementation?

Participant 1: A couple - well, I think theres a couple. One thing we would have done differently
if we had to go back and do this exact implementation over again, we would have brought
people in-house from where we implemented- so we would have brought all people hereat one
single location where were doing the development much earlier and probably more often to
help them understand the application, the architecture, how it was set up to run effectively in our
environment, so that they would be more prepared to implement it in their environment. We
learned that once we added the client letter application - when we brought the client letter
people here and they understand our environment and our security and architecture - they were
much more able to help us solve the problems we had with the integration, with our CRM
application. So clearly that was a lesson learned that we would have brought them here. There
is cost to that, but we even in our post-mortem felt the cost would have offset the benefits we
would have gained in implementing. I guess thats maybe the biggest one I can think of.
Interviewer: Thank you. I will reach out to you, if I need any clarification or follow-up questions.