Inspiration While Driving

For the past two years, I've been working with a credit union in St. Louis implement a new CRM system. The original goal was to make the CRM system be the new system of record. All information regarding their members was supposed to flow in and out of the CRM system. This would be accomplished by seamlessly integrating the credit union's systems (i.e. core, mortgage, investments, collections, etc).

We spent hours and hours in meetings drawing all this up on whiteboards. Then, we would put it to paper in the form of business and technical requirements. We also built process charts and workflow diagrams. These charts and flow diagrams were a work of art. I was even tempted to frame a couple of them and put them on my wall. Since we had all the proper flow charts, requirement documents, and workflow diagrams we started the march. The problem was that the march turned out to be a death march. When we attempted to integrate the systems, it was not seamless at all. The CRM system had limited integration capabilities. It turned out to be a series of exports and imports. The CRM had another challenge. It just couldn't understand how a member could have the same social security number on multiple main share accounts. The core processing system was account based and the CRM was person based. Oh boy! We were trying fit a square peg in a round hole.

As much as I wanted to run for hills and just convince this credit union that their CRM initiative was a dream, I couldn't do it. Why? Their vision was spot on. Their vision was the following:

• Increase utilization of services
• Lead & Opportunity Management
• Cross selling
• Campaign Management
• Improve communication
• Track member interactions
• Improve efficiency
• Improve content management
• Improve accountability
• Improve service levels between front and back office
• Improve ownership
• Improve responsiveness

The vision was good but the strategy was flawed. Literally, we went back to the drawing board. How could we get all the information into the CRM system without jumping through all the import and export hoops? To be honest, in all my years working with technology, I was drawing blanks. I didn't have the answer. Then, one morning I was driving to work when inspiration came knocking. I live in Carmel, Indiana. A few years back, the mayor of Carmel was in France and noticed that France had very few traffic lights (according to the mayor). They use Roundabouts to control the flow of traffic across different intersections. Apparently, Roundabouts are very efficient and a lot cheaper to maintain than the traditional traffic light system. Our mayor was inspired and convinced the city council to build Roundabouts. Today, you can't drive anywhere in Carmel, Indiana without running into a Roundabout.

When you look at the flow of a Roundabout, you'll see traffic coming from four different directions which intersect at the Roundabout. The roundabout itself is basically a round piece of dirt. Yet, all this traffic moves around this dirt efficiently. In high traffic situations, there is always a constant flow of traffic moving throughout the Roundabout in all four directions. It's actually pretty cool to watch. I know...I need my head examined.

Sometimes the best innovation comes from inspiration. It can come from places you never thought off. The challenge is to keep your eyes open and your mind free.

Cam

PS: You're probably asking yourself, what does a Roundabout have to do with the CRM project? Stay tuned for future posts. If you would like to see for yourself I will be glad to show you.