It’s interesting how business is segregated into distinct categories and the analysts go to work spelling out what is proper in each category. In CRM, there always seems to be a different reflection on what is going on in the SME (small to mid-sized enterprise) versus the Fortune companies – if that is what they are still called. The last time I looked SME covers a vast range in size and scope; 15 to 1000 employees and revenues of $5M to $1B.

This leads me to my point, which is easiest to phrase in the form of a question. Are the CRM or SFA requirements for multi billion-dollar companies any different from the smaller enterprises out there that make up the bulk of the economic drive and job creation throughout the world?

The answer is a bold, unanimous no. There is absolutely no difference between the CRM and SFA requirements of a global enterprise as a 12-man operation doing $2M in business a year. The core issues of CRM and SFA are the same across all markets.

Companies of all shapes, sizes and markets need a complete, accurate and clean store of critical customer information. To stay competitive, they require a seamless and smooth method of gathering information at every level of the organization. All of this has to be laid out on a collaborative network structure that allows crucial information to be accessed by any member of the team. Armed with this information, companies can best address the needs of their customers.

If you are among the majority of small-to-mid market enterprises out there, don’t assume that only multi-billion-dollar companies can take advantage of the potential of sound CRM and SFA solutions. The reality is, the sooner SME companies recognize how CRM and SFA fit into their own “grand scheme of things,” the quicker they get to realize their own potential.

Why do I ask that question? Well, SalesWays is about sales and technology. In my book Sales Automation Done Right I am downright discriminatory against paper. There are many instances where I infer that a paper-based office will ensure the demise of the business. I’m not backing away from that, because I’m referring to paper-based processes.

Paper is not conducive to dynamic workflow within the company; it can’t move itself so it needs people to pick it up and move it from one desk to another. It accumulates in heaps, and people, inevitably intimidated, procrastinate when they have to stare down a leaning tower of paper. It is much better to make the process electronic and move it using electrons down a wire or through the air. With paper-based information, you have to store it in big metal boxes, and then spend a lifetime trying to make some practical use of it. It’s a much better idea to store it on a 200GB hard drive and take advantage of some friendly software to extract the stuff you need.

But here’s the paradox; paper is great when it comes to capturing information when you are sitting in front of the customer. You can usually write as fast as you think, but you certainly couldn’t touch type into your notebook computer at 40 wpm in front of the customer (if you can, you should be commended; you have a marvelous ability to multitask). Somehow, customers seem to appreciate you carefully writing notes about your conversation, whereas they may have a problem with you when you’re dealing with the odd Windows quirk at the same time as they are telling you about their budget, product needs, or difficulties dealing with their purchasing department.

Paper is great for capturing information quickly. Paper works with the human mind in splendid unison. If you don’t like what you just jotted down, you can scratch it out. If you love what you wrote, highlight it with a star. If there is no room left to write, put it in the margin or curve it around the perimeter—paper will let you do anything. And I don’t care how much of a computer junky they are, the typical salesperson will have their favorite notebook with no LCD or keyboard—just paper.

I was looking at a recent article by Denis Pombriant. I’ve known Denis as a perceptive analyst for a number of years, and fortunately he and I have mostly seen eye to eye about CRM fundamentals (although not always). Denis has the ability to look at all the stuff about the CRM space and to locate something lurking in there that most other people have missed.

The latest example of this that struck me was his observation regarding the spreadsheet. Denis wrote:

“I have always believed that, to figure out what new applications would be appearing in the near future, all you have to do is understand what people are tracking on spreadsheets.”

I see this observation come to life in my other world, as the head of a company specializing in delivering CRM solutions If I had to pick just one technology that was supporting the endeavors of most companies implementing their CRM, it would be Microsoft Excel. This is because the spreadsheet is the best list making tool in the world.

Recently (2002) I was an interim CEO for the Canadian division of a global bioscience company where their future sales projections depended on the spreadsheet. The giant spreadsheet would arrive from head office, and you typed into the part you for which you were responsible. You e-mailed it back, and it got rolled up with scores of other region’s results. Then you got it back again to see how you were performing. At that time there was no company-wide CRM tool—each region did its own thing. But head office wanted to know what was going on, so they used Excel to figure it out. A dozen business analysts were needed at head office just to keep the spreadsheet routine working.

Don’t get me wrong, of course, spreadsheets are powerful analytical and reporting tools, but, to use spreadsheets throughout an organization without any kind of connecting glue underpinning it is a recipe for waste of effort and inefficiencies. They don’t link very well, they don’t share common data very well—they are cumbersome and need lots of tender loving care to make them work. You manually dig the information out from somewhere else and type it into the spreadsheet.

The CRM system has to be the central repository that contains all the information (accurate and up to date) ready for the spreadsheet to use. Press a button and the CRM information automatically flows into the spreadsheet, which then automatically digests the data and spits it out into predefined formats. No one types data into the spreadsheet.

It is the reliance on the spreadsheet that slows a company down in evolving to a proper CRM solution. The attitude is, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, and the pressure of continuing business prevents people from sitting back, taking a breath, and recognizing just how wasteful and time consuming the spreadsheet process really is. From my experience the best thing to do is to implement a solid CRM product in parallel, and to slowly wean the business off the spreadsheet, and relegate it to a pure reporting and analysis tool.

Sales Force Automation, or sales automation, was “in” in 1993, and everyone talked about it. It made sense because most people were automating their sales teams, but they were going about it the wrong way, by bringing together their processes into inadequate Contact Management software. They thought it would fix all of their problems, but the sales opportunities were still getting neglected, along with the strategies, skills and techniques that occurred in the sales cycle.

Just as software developers were coming to grips with these problems, up springs this concept of Customer Relationship Management.

Almost overnight, SFA and CRM got hastily paired together in the growing e-business lexicon, and they came out synonymous. The industry, the experts, even the customers, used them interchangeably, believing them to be one and the same. But they’re wrong.

SFA and CRM are related, dependent and intertwined, but they are not the same thing, and it’s a disservice to the market to suggest they are. It’s time to clear the air.

CRM focuses on building and maintaining good customer relations. On the other hand, SFA centers on providing salespeople with the proper tools to win the all-important sales opportunity. The former takes on a relationship focus, while the latter promotes opportunity focus. While these ideas aren’t mutually exclusive, they simply should not be lumped together.

The industry is simply out of touch with this concept. Let’s put the spotlight back on SFA, and concentrate on making it work first. Along the way, we can figure out how it meshes with CRM. And then, we’ll be ready to move on to e-business.

This agreement gets full marks from me, and is a step forward in providing an optimized mobile platform for salespeople to conduct business. RIM gave us universal, easy access to information in the form of e-mail. Palm gave us the ability to run complex business applications from a very small footprint. The ideas in sales automation done right have already been running on the Palm platform for three years, and they work well. When they run on the Treo with RIM software, they show the promise of working even better.

Palm is also bringing out a Treo that will run on the Microsoft operating system. If you were to ask Steve Jobs today if his highly protective stance on licensing out the Apple operating system decades ago was the best thing to do – he would say NO.

Palm has got it right.