Recently I began working with a client on the deployment of a Customer Portal into his Dynamics CRM application. I felt many of the topics we discussed would be valuable to share with other people who are considering deploying a web site which allows customers to make requests of their business. Not only do you need to define the technology which needs to be deployed to enable these capabilities, but you need to understand how these requests from the customer will be routed and integrated to existing business processes. This is a collection of the some of the questions which were a part of the planning sessions:
What technology will you deploy?
The technology you choose to deploy will vary based upon both the enterprise applications you currently own as well as serve the needs of what you are about to deploy.
What content/records will you expose to your customers?
After the customer has logged into the portal, a logical question we asked ourselves what types of records would the customer be able to view. Some of the records types which would make sense to be accessible within the portal include:
• Account Record
• Contact Record
• Addresses
• Orders
• Invoices
• Knowledge Base Articles
Not only is it helpful to determine which records your customer will be able to see, but also the status of these records.
What functionality do you want the customer to be able to accomplish on the site?
Once you have decided which record types you’ll be exposing to the customer, a logical next step will be to define exactly what the customer is capable of doing and/ or requesting. Some topics worth discussion include:
View/Update Customer Profile
• View/Update Customer Profile
• Update Bill To & Ship To Addresses
• View/Update Contact Profile
• Request a Service Call or ask a question
• Place an Order or edit an existing one
• Request a re-printing of an Invoice
Request to be contacted by various departments within the company
Will a request for data change be stored and reviewed prior to acceptance or automatically be fed into your CRM and/or ERP Application?
For any bit of critical data that you intend to allow updates to via the portal, you need to decide if automated updates will be allowed without a review process. Allowing the customer to update critical information such as billing address, credit card information, and “ship to” addresses on orders or even canceling orders without your knowledge can cause serious issues.
Will this newly introduced functionality change any existing business processes?
You need the ability to present/show the current processes in a logical way to the business and then integrate the implications of deploying the portal within these processes. Bottlenecks and issues should arise and discussions of responsibility need to take place, as well as the system of notifications and
What Alerts or Notifications will take place as a result of the customer taking actions on this portal?
Once the request has been made within the Portal and the data elements of the request have been captured, it seems appropriate to notify people in the business that need to act on the request.
Workflow
CRM Workflow capabilities will really come in handy to automate some of these process steps. Virtually any combination of data elements within the Objects can be checked in order to route the appropriate request to the proper person, team, or queue as necessary.
What will be your Security/Access Plan once the portal is deployed?
Last but not least, you’ll always need to consider security access to the portal. Some questions which arose during our discussion included:
- Will there be one access code per customer and all contacts at customer use same Login ID?
- If multiple people use the same ID, how can we trace the specific individual who made a record change or who placed the request?
- How much of a maintenance issue would it be to issue Login IDs for all contacts at your customer?
How will you manage active, canceled, and shared IDs?
Remember to consider the number of potential portal users per customer when making these decisions.
It ALWAYS has to be about the Customer!
My last thought is that we must always be wearing the hat of the customer and understand that the purpose of the site it to strengthen the relationship with the customer and to server their needs better. Never build a web portal which will complicate the sales and support procedures already in place and confuse the customer.