July 31, 2000

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Act Globally, Serve Locally

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However, there's some backlash to large-scale, centralized implementations that can take years to implement and offer no guarantee of success. Gerhard Waterkamp, an executive consultant at IBM's Siebel practice, gives two reasons CRM projects fail: first, the misconception that technology alone solves all of a business' service-related problems; second, because the company fails to understand that CRM is a process, not just an application. He suggests that before a CRM project begins, management should assess its customers and learn how they like to do business, what types of information they require, and where the company falls short.

Taking this more deliberate, customer-centric approach, some businesses are marrying centralized CRM and E-business suites with offerings from niche vendors. GE Capital Fleet Services, for example, is using MicroStrategy Inc.'s Intelligent E-Business Platform to supplement its Siebel ERP-CRM suite. As the world's largest vehicle fleet-management company, GE Capital Fleet Services has assets of more than $9 billion, a fleet of more than 1 million cars and trucks, and service management worldwide, including the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Europe, Japan, and Australia.

"The Siebel side helps us become better at selling and delivering goods and services in volume," says Ken Schneider, GE Capital Fleet Services' E-commerce project manager. "MicroStrategy, on the other hand, helps us help our customers run their own businesses more efficiently."

Unlike most CRM applications, which provide detailed information about customers to management, sales, and marketing, MicroStrategy's application takes the mountain of data and makes it digestible by customers via a secure Web site, then distributes summarized data via E-mail.

Previously, this information was available only on huge paper printouts that GE Capital Fleet Services mailed to its clients at vast expense. "An average customer runs a fleet of around 500 vehicles," Schneider says. "Their bills don't come in envelopes, they come in boxes." These reports include details about every vehicle, including mileage, maintenance and accident information, fuel usage, and licensing and titling issues. If a car is due for service, an E-mail message rather than a postcard is sent automatically, reminding the driver.

With such a massive international operation, "you have to balance the benefits of tying everything together vs. cost and time," Schneider says. For example, the company can give detailed, summarized reports from multiple sites within the United States or Europe, but the data can't be combined easily because of multiple currencies. To change this would mean knowing an exact exchange rate for every transaction and having a currency-conversion table in every record. GE concluded that adding this extra piece of record consolidation isn't worth the time and expense.

GE Capital Fleet Services decided to adopt one basic international structure that consists of Siebel ERP-CRM and MicroStrategy's Intelligent E-Business Platform. Within that, however, different regions have their own databases, are allowed some autonomy, and solicit local input.

Despite the abundance of localization tools, many are slow to grasp the importance of customer-friendly content and support that spans a variety of languages, cultures, currencies, and business practices. According to Jupiter Communications, 63% of leading U.S. dot-coms have no Web-site localization to attract overseas customers. Of the remaining 37%, few address the issue comprehensively.

"American companies tend to lack awareness of the urgent need for localization," says Don DePalma, VP of corporate strategy at Idiom Inc., a Cambridge, Mass., company that specializes in E-business localization. "If they look at the numbers today, they may see only 10% of the Web-site hits coming from outside the United States, but that gives a distorted and shortsighted view that's about to change markedly."

Language is central to any localization strategy, but translation isn't a one-time issue. Most sites are continually evolving, requiring a steady stream of revisions and additions. Each change to the English version must be tracked and duplicated or localized in all the languages the company offers online. Xilinx Inc.--a manufacturer of programmable logic semiconductors whose customers include Cisco Systems, Ericsson, and Lucent--has a customer base and plants and offices throughout Europe and Asia. The San Jose, Calif., company wrestles daily with the efficiencies of centralization vs. the need for localization.

Until recently, Xilinx's Web sites were largely static, with everything designed and produced in North America for the rest of the world. "That only prolonged the process of content publishing and made us far more centralized than we had to be," says Dave Stieg, Xilinx's director of corporate communications, who is responsible for overseeing the company's Web site.

The company adopted BroadVision Inc.'s Web-publishing system to provide an overall feel and image, while catering to different languages, cultures, and needs. Using this technology, site design is handled centrally. BroadVision templates let Xilinx achieve a common look that advances the goal of global branding while allowing for localization. "We keep in tight communication with regional PR and marketing groups and allow them the latitude to tailor the site to their own specifications," Stieg says.

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Illustration by Aaron Thomas Roth
Photo of Schneider by Steve Woit

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