What Santa's CRM System Must Look Like

Ability to personalize -from wish list items to physical locations.

Imagine your global business needed a very personalized database to track all the aspects that go into deciding if a person was being naughty or nice.  And next year do this assessment all over again.  Knowing the characteristics of who is a good prospect or a good client for a business is core in serving ideal clients.  But for Santa he would need to track some additional pieces of information - number of times a person was helpful to another or was a pain in the neck to those around themselves.  Santa and his helpers also have to track what is on the "wish lists" of those he'll be creating gifts for- making sure not to duplicate a gift from a prior year. Similar to your own business there are psychographic characteristics that are helpful to your business and having them easily accessible in your CRM database is a must have.

Ability to segment sleigh loads of names and characteristics

Santa's CRM system must have dozens of groups of segmented lists: Boys age 9 -11 in SW Michigan; Girls age 7-9 in South Bend, IN who want the latest doll; teens in Elkhart looking to get a new Kindle Fire, etc. Of course the creation of these group lists has to be easy for each of the elf's back at the North Pole.  Next add to the database the ability to segment based on geographical location. Now when you are trying to schedule that many of deliveries you need to know time zones, specific addresses for those roof top landings and best routes.  When the dark of night hits it's best to be able to pop up that bright iPhone and display the driving directions map.

Staying connected 24 x 7.....

Santa would have to synchronize information from many of his remote offices - we seem to see these pop up especially in shopping malls this time of year.  Santa helpers are quickly making notes of the nice boys and girls on handy mobile devices that are immediately updating the main office in the North Pole.  Can you see those elves with their smaller hands easily typing out 'wish list' notes?

Of course this is a shared, multi-user CRM system- just too many people with contact information for one white haired 60+ guy to keep up with.  I bet it also has a Microsoft SQL server database backend for the needed capacity, accessibility and ability to be modified easily for what Santa needs to track year after year.

Everyone shares information

Since everyone in Santa's organization shares the information freely there is no need to use the built in security:(view/edit/add) based on members of a sales or support team.  While your business may have regional sales teams with various geographical areas- Santa doesn't need this capability.

I bet he has a list of related strategic business partners identified in his CRM System.  Its nice to have these alliances and go to partners to help Santa get things done. Using your CRM system for this additional purpose is a great way to "get more bang for the buck" as my dad would say. (Dad really liked the 10 point kind of 'buck'....)

Easily accessible information for Quality decisions

Can you imagine Santa's production team tracking all of the lists of gifts to create, pack and prepare for distribution?  This is similar to your business tracking sales opportunities and quotes and once the sales occurs, having the CRM system integrate with production sales orders in accounting. 

Sales managers can make smart decisions based on the opportunity pipeline and how the sales professional can be coached.  The business owner or management team can make financial decisions on forecasted revenue.   Maybe the purchasing agent elf can get a better buy on raw materials for those lego blocks, hot wheels and doll cloths knowing what has to be produced.

Business Solution with these capabilities

So as I began to consider all the needed capabilities of what Santa's CRM system must handle, I bet it might be Sage SalesLogix.  It is always surprising the diversity of each business we come across or who finds our web site through a Google search.  Each is looking for some or all of the these capabilities and the desire for the resulting benefits.

If your business needs a CRM business development system and you are interested in knowing how to get started- give me a call:  269-445-3001.

P.S. Now I wonder if Santa has moved his Information Technology operations from on-premise to the "cloud"?

Since Amazon seems to have about anything a person could want to buy, I bet Santa may have also moved his CRM database to the managed SalesLogix Cloud.... and found related Santa helpers to keep up on who's naughty and nice.

P.S. 2 - Wonder what other sugar fairy and plumbs are coming to dance in my head?

What do you think is in Santa's CRM system?