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  CRM: The UNAPEN Strategy

A Best-of-Breed Approach
by Brian Kish

UNAPEN’s involvement with Contact Management software during the 1990s was through custom development, consistent with our business model as a Custom Development and Professional Services provider. As the decade drew to a close, CRM products became more prevalent and our focus shifted to implementing existing products. It was clear base CRM functionality was becoming a commodity. In early 2000, as the popularity of CRM grew, so did the number of requests for customizations to accommodate financial services, particularly the Investment Advisory Community. With that, UNAPEN set out to provide a CRM product for the industry—ClientLogix™.

Robust Client Relationship Management functionality was already available—such as Multidimensional Relationship Management, Workflow Automation, enhanced Opportunity Management, Client Service Center, and Customization capability. When UNAPEN decided to create a CRM solution specifically tailored to investment managers, we made a strategic decision to BUY NOT BUILD the base CRM platform. Duplicating this CRM functionality and developing the necessary technology layers to support Microsoft integration, Citrix, peripheral devices, third-party integration, remote services, synchronization and internet support would have been difficult enough. Once built, keeping up with the technology upgrades, standards and changes associated with the technology industry would have taken an army. This effort is clearly more suited for a Software Manufacturer, not a solution provider whose mission it is to provide leading edge Financial Services software and services.

Our strategy was crystal clear—buy the basics and focus our resources to continuously build and evolve rich value added state of the art financial services functionality. In addition, as a CRM practitioner, develop and mature all CRM related best practices to avoid the failures that had plagued the CRM industry. We called this our Buy, Extend and Perfect strategy. This strategy explains why so many of our competitors are so far behind ClientLogix with regard to functionality.

In our search to buy, there were many choices ranging from Seibel and Oracle to SAP and SalesLogix. We chose the SalesLogix platform from Best Software as it clearly was better suited for the Small to Medium size business (SMB) market. It offered extensive Client Relationship Management functionality and a rich development environment. To date, this selection could not have worked out better as Best Software is now Sage and is the leader in providing CRM to this market segment (SMB). By the end of 2005 SalesLogix was installed in over 7,000 sites and was the winner of numerous awards for its ease of use and high levels of end user adoption.

Sage has delivered on their commitment to providing leading edge CRM solutions. With their 7.0 release they will be introducing real-time Interactive Dashboards, Full Featured Mobile CRM, Enhanced Marketing, Integrated Service and Support and .Net Customizations.

By not being preoccupied by core CRM, UNAPEN has been able to maintain its focus by developing and enhancing a rich set of Financial Services features that lay on top of SalesLogix. This is an elaborate set of customizations that make up ClientLogix, one of our flagship products, a solution for the Asset Management community. By exclusively developing on requirements that serve this community, UNAPEN is extremely proud to be one of the first to introduce CRM Dashboard technology that provides Business Intelligence to offer managers multiple 360° views of assets under management. We were one of the first to offer bi-directional integration into Portfolio Accounting Systems and to offer complete automation for quarterly performance reporting.

ClientLogix can also help you manage the complex relationships commonly associated with the Asset Management industry and analyze who has influence on assets. It tracks and summarizes assets at the Consultant, Sponsor, Branch, Broker, Advisor and Portfolio levels. It can gather asset classes, ROR, market values, holdings & transactions from leading accounting systems. ClientLogix is a tailored solution, solely focused on Asset Management, and resides on an award winning CRM platform.

As for CRM Best Practices and project execution, our mantra is to never stop improving. Our implementation and adoption practices have evolved into a repeatable “cookbook” process that allows us to carry forward all of the wisdom gained from prior experience. A thorough understanding of our clients’ needs is achieved up front. Everyone acts and thinks differently, even in the same industry. Our implementations are properly scaled to the needs, capacity and ambition of our clients to ensure immediate benefit and long term growth and value. Not every aspect of the vast universe of CRM must be implemented in order to achieve value and success. Adoption criteria is negotiated and strived for throughout the engagement. Training, mentoring and access to Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are a constant.

The future looks bright. UNAPEN stands ready to take advantage of the next release of SalesLogix (7.0). We are completing the upgrade process of our current client base and soon will begin the development cycle for the next release of ClientLogix. This past release (3.6) had over 100 Client requested enhancements. And without the burden of core CRM development, we look to do more of the same with this next release as well as continue to improve on our user adoption techniques and best practices.

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