Customer Relationship Management

When working through any major technology or system transformation, a consideration of the organisation’s readiness for change is as important to the success of the implementation as any consideration of the technical aspects of that transformation.

The term 'change readiness' refers to the will or desire for change within the organisation.

Change usually involves three aspects: culture, people and processes (JISC INFOKIT – Change Management). The process aspect will be dealt with in the Process Map section. In this section we will look at the way in which the culture and the people within an organization can impact on an organisation’s readiness for change.

In the past there has been a tendency to concentrate on the processes part of the diagram.

But even when the processes are right, cultural forces and people’s behavior can be such that they hinder the implementation of change and jeopardize its success.

The Culture of the Organisation

Before looking at the influence of culture on an organisation’s readiness for change, let us first of all consider the actual culture that might be found within HEIs and FECs.

The JISC infoKit ‘Creating a Managed Learning Environment’ identifies three types of culture that can exist within HEIs and FECs within the UK. It describes the characteristics of each culture in the following way.

Collegiate culture – commonly found in the older universities – particularly those with a research focus.

Innovative culture – found in some new universities and colleges and in externally funded research or enterprise centres of older universities

Working with the culture of the organization

Of the three cultures identified as being present in HEIs and FECs, the one that may present the greatest barrier to change and innovation is the collegiate culture. The innovative culture, by definition, has a built-in readiness for change. Change initiatives within a bureaucratic culture may experience some resistance but its pattern of strong strategic management is likely to be sufficient to drive the initiative forward. In contrast, the collegiate culture, with its many subcultures and its history of autonomy and consensual agreements, can be stubbornly resistant to change.

Working with the collegiate culture

In general, professionals and technical staff will resist changes which they perceive as threatening their core values and practices and which have a negative impact on individuals and which diminish group autonomy (Pennington, 2003). Those seeking to implement change in HEIs, he suggests, should take account of some of the following cultural features:

The sharing of data wasn’t a problem at the time of implementation because the system was only being used by the Student Service Centre (SSC) to record interactions, no sensitive data was being held and no-one else could access the system. However in around 2004 we started to roll the system out to different areas of the university. At this point questions were asked about security. Most areas were happy that personal data should be seen / shared by the system but certain areas wanted tasks and notes created to be private. Privacy of tasks and notes within the Oracle CRM system is something that is provided out of the box, however it only works at an individual level, whereas the data being recorded needed to be shared amongst teams. To resolve this we had to implement some VPD (virtual private database) coding but there were still only a small number of areas requesting this.

Our main issues with security arose recently whilst working on implementing the system into our business school, some areas of which are extremely protective over their contacts, and don’t want people in other areas of the business school seeing them, never mind other faculties. This caused issues because in the first instance they wanted these contacts hidden from everyone, however it is not advisable to do this because if someone can’t see a contact is in the database they will just create it again leading to duplication. Senior members of the business school were also concerned that data was being kept private that should be shared, and a business decision was made that only ‘High Value Customers’ should be secure. A new policy was implemented so if the contact is a ‘High value customer’ a request can be made to senior management who approve or reject the request. If data is secured it was agreed that the contacts name will still be displayed, but any contact details (address, phone numbers, email addresses) will be hidden from view. If the data is secure a message is displayed so that other users know it is a high value customer and if they wish to contact the person they need to obtain the details from the relevant relationship manager. Again this security has been set up using VPD.

From a technical perspective setting up security to the level required was worrying because we did not want to ‘upset’ other members of staff such as the SSC, however if they do stick to their policy and only set up ‘high value customers’ this should not happen as students, alumni, staff and organisation information should still be readily available.
I would advise anyone setting up a new system to ensure they plan security at the start of the project and put a policy in place outlining what information can be ‘hidden’, or whether it should be ‘read only’ but still available. I would advise that minimum personal data can be seen to ensure you are looking at the correct contacts along with any relationships they have. This will avoid duplicate entries which could in turn lead to the customer being contacted by numerous parties having an adverse effect on the customer satisfaction. If users do request information to be hidden, make sure they are aware of the large impact this would have, as a lot of time they don’t look at the bigger picture, but do appreciate it once it has been explained.

HEI moving from tactical to strategic

Strategy, leadership, culture and change

The following diagram (adapted from the Manager’s Toolbox, 2008) illustrates quite clearly the relationship between strategy and leadership, culture and change.

While it is unlikely that the culture can be changed in the short term, being aware of the barriers can be a useful tool when trying to drive forward any new technology or system.

Ensuring that senior management is aware of the link between their own strategic goals and the changes you want to implement will help gain their full commitment and support of the project. When that commitment is translated into a clear signal across the institution that the change is going to occur then it is much more likely to happen.

Working with the people of the organization

Aside from the culture, you also need to consider the effect of individual people when assessing the institution’s readiness for change and its acceptance of the CRM implementation. Not all staff will greet the proposal for change with enthusiasm. In general, younger staff are likely to feel more positive about the change as they will have invested less time and energy in the old systems.

The JISC infoKit on Change Management comes up with the following list of factors that affect our willingness/reluctance to accept change. Knowing these can help you plan the implementation.

Potential users of the CRM have been behind the project from the start, although as with any new system there have been some concerns about how roles might change / adapt, will there be an increased workload, will it produce the reports / information that is currently produced etc. This has been overcome by showing staff during consultancy sessions parts of the CRM that they would be using day-to-day and getting their input.
Senior management has also recognised that the college, except in more customer facing departments, has poor mechanisms for winning and keeping customers and that if more commercial income is to be generated we need to work smarter not harder. CRM has been sold as being part of the solution.

FEC with strategic approach

Assessing readiness for change

Implementing a CRM system in your institution will probably involve introducing several changes to current working practices.

One way of assessing an organization/institution’s readiness for change is by examining the three factors – culture, people and processes

This can be done by running focus groups with different categories of staff – eg management, administrators, academics, researchers, technical staff - or through surveys or workshops. The method you choose will depend upon the time and resources available. But the aim is always the same – to obtain as honest assessment as possible of things within the organization/institution.

It may be useful to remember this key point made in the HEFCE Report Effecting Change in Higher Education (2004)

Academics are challenging individuals - it is the nature of academia to debate, discuss and criticise. Engaging in debate is essential if there is to be buy-in from the academic community and criticism should not necessarily be seen as a lack of support.

Assessing culture, people and process

To assess the culture for change we might look at both the leadership and structure of the institution. We might ask questions that allow us to provide an overall rating of the following:

Based on the ratings of answers to the questions above it is possible to identify where barriers and risks may exist and impact negatively on the change. Taking steps to address any negative issues before the implementation is likely to impact favourably on the change.

“Before you go out to the masses you have to have people lined up to manage it. Just like leadership development you have to start at the top. Once you’ve started the grass roots stuff you must make sure you have the architecture in place to continue with it – otherwise it just fizzles out. Nicely designed training events will never change a culture. The message has to be embedded in the way you work. There has to be a reward and recognition programme – performance Management Programme and appraisal systems, supervisory management areas - you need to think where are they driving this forward' (The College Way Project)

Download a very useful change management toolkit for service managers provided by Northumberland County Council.

Alternatively you can access the document directly by going to the ProductShare website

6. Are you ready for change?