Email Interview with Jesus Hoyos
Name: Jesus Hoyos
Company/Title: Managing Partner, Solvis Consulting, LLC
Company: www.solvisconsulting.com
Blog about CRM in Latin America (Spanish): www.jesushoyos.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/jesus_hoyos
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesushoyos
How did you get involved with CRM?
I started working in the CRM industry in 1990 – right after college. I started as a developer for a CRM software vendor called Data Code, now Sema Tree. At Data Code, I had the opportunity to wear many hats – developer, consultant, trainer, and translator, and was involved in marketing and sales. Data Code gave me the opportunity to learn about CRM when it was not called CRM, back then – we used to call it TeleSales or Telemarketing. One of my complex and challenging projects was the implementation of a CRM system for DHL Latin America – 12 countries, Informix 4GL and integration to a billing system. After Data Code, I joined Cambridge Technology Partners as the CRM Domain Partner for Latin America where I had the opportunity to implement many Siebel, Clarify, Genesys, Edify and Vantive packages. After 4 years at Cambridge and decided to start my own company, Solvis Consulting, with 2 other business partners.
What’s the most powerful tactic or strategy for which CRM can be used?
The most powerful tactic would be the implementation of a marketing database or customer data mart. Many companies implement CRM without a complete knowledge about the customer. You need to understand who your best customers are, and your Top customers, frequents and spenders. Use a marketing database or customer data mart to collect and analyze this customer knowledge. This customer knowledge will help you figure out how to maintain and maximize the customer relationship with marketing campaigns, sales promotions and /or customer service programs. You need to get to know your customer data, turn that data into information, and turn the information into actions to improve the relationship with the customer.
What’s the most common CRM mistake?
The most common mistake is when you let politics take control over the project or strategy, especially when you do not have any CRM leadership from the CEO. If your company has internal political issues your company is not ready for CRM. Your company is ready for a change management strategy. Once you clear up the political issues, then your company is ready for CRM. And, when I say CRM, I mean processes, culture, metrics, people and technology.
What’s the biggest CRM trend on the horizon?
Social CRM – a worldwide trend. Social CRM, also known as CRM 2.0 or Social Media, is a trend that it is still evolving and where the consumer is in control. My take on this is that Social Media has different mediums to engage the customer. A medium will be Facebook or Twitter, and within each medium you have different channels. For example, in Twitter, you could have an account for customer service and another one for sales promotions – here you have two channels. Another example is Facebook, you have applications, groups and pages – they all are channels.
This requires a different thinking in terms of culture, processes and technology in your company. But the bottom line is that you will need to have a team or structure dedicated to manage these social media channels. Think of a call center, you have a director and supervisors and agents. You will need some sort of structure for social media channels.
How is CRM different in Latin America as compared to the US (as far as attitude toward it, implementation, etc.)?
There are many differences. I will focus in two of them. The first one is that when you sell and close a deal in Latin America (B2B or B2C), your collection process starts. You need to truly understand the payment process of a company, guidelines, laws, and paperwork. From the consumer side you also need to start proactively work on collection process to lower the risks of bad debts or late payments. Most of the traditional CRM packages do not have the functionality to manage collection processes which in Latin America is a front office process. This why there are many local CRM packages in Mexico, Peru and Argentina providing collection functionality.
The second difference is that the best practices provided by a CRM package could not really represent a best practice in Latin America. For example, address formats in many CRM packages do not consider the different address formats in the region. Many CRM systems are design to only manage US and Canadian addresses. You need to consider the different address formats for each country. For this you will need to look for local address validation software or services in each country.
There are many other differences — from managing projects to pricing and from managing call centers to the Internet. There are many business and cultural differences in Latin America, making CRM different from the United States or Europe.
What job would you do if you weren’t a CRM expert?
Any job that would require being in the outdoors. I would be somewhere hiking and getting paid for it. Love the outdoors and national parks. I would probably be working for a travel or outdoor magazine writing about my travel experiences. Every year I go with the family to a different National Park and do 2 or 3 major hikes. I do have stories to tell!
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