Essay on "Software Development Plan for CRM System"

Essay 13 pages (5045 words) Sources: 25

[EXCERPT] . . . .

The CRM customer record portion of the application will be decomposed into interacting units or blocks of code, with the data flow design supporting changes in presorting and workflow analytics depending on what's needed for a specific strategy or program (Chang, Yen, Young, Cheng-Yuan, 2002). The functional workflow will also include a series of interactive data flow designs, delivered in Visio, which will give the client the flexibility in defining how each needs to change over time. Using this design approach of a data flow design, coupled with structural decomposition and detailed design descriptions in Visio, the client will be able to quickly define alternative workflows and communicate with the design team more effectively than if any other form of communication was used. The detailed design description will also be provided with an interactive design application running on top of Microsoft Visio so the client will be able to test constraints of the application design before coding is complete. In providing these tools, the goal of having a more collaborative workflow in place with the client will be achieved.

2.2 Architectural Design

The architectural design will be predicated on agreement of the client with the FRD and decision to select a cloud-based development platform for building their CRM system. The architectural design will concentrate on creating a series of Web Services running on the Salesforce1 architecture, capable of being used on every mobile device that a Salesforce1 client can access, which is all of them. Further elements of the architectural design include the use of Salesforce APIs that will enable customer records to be integrated directly into Salesforce's CRM application or stand alone on their own in a separate cloud-based applications (Moise, Surugiu, Stanciu, Soriga, 2012).

The client will be given the option of having the CRM application designed to be a native Salesforce application or standalone as a cloud-enabled application running on the Salesforce1 platform. It is recommended that the client choose to have a native Salesforce1 application created as support for Salesforce APIs in the initial release will ensure upward compatibility with future versions of the Salesforce1 platform. APIs are critical to the long-term scalability and security of the client's applications and the architectural design stability and long-term value of the CRM applications. Figure 2 illustrates the architectural design of the Salesforce1 platform, which will be used as the foundation of the client's CRM system. The Salesforce1 platform APIs will be used for constructing the architectural foundation of the client's CRM application, providing immediate access to the Force.com architecture that includes Web Services that include integration APIs to legacy and third-party applications.

Figure 2: The Salesforce1 Platform

The architectural design of the CRM application will use each of these components shown in the Salesforce1 platform to deliver an application that is modular enough to change over time with the client's needs. The agility of the architectural design will allow for the client to redefine the application's basic underlying structure based on shifts in their business model and reporting requirements. The client has databases that will be integrated at the Heroku1 level of the platform, using the Platform Services APIs to integrate these legacy systems of record the client is using today.

Using the Salesforce1 platform as the foundation of the CRM system provides the client with the flexibility of defining operational, analytical and strategic CRM into separate areas of the overall application architecture. Based on the stakeholder analysis, analytical CRM is the highest priority in terms of new application development. The lack of customer reporting and analysis is slowing down sales cycles today in the client, which makes analytical CRM and its supporting elements in operational CRM the highest priority project overall (Boyle, 2004).

Taking this approach to defining the client's CRM system also provides for greater agility in managing multichannel interactions of its sales teams at the strategic level. Stakeholders have mentioned that customer acquisition, retention, cross-selling and up-selling are critically important to gaining greater sales immediately and need to be supported in the CRM application being developed.

Figure 3: Schematic of a Strategic CRM System

Source: (Zumstein, Werro, Meier, 2007)

2.3 Components Design

Each application component will be based on the APIs, Mobile Services and Core Services available on the Salesforce1 platform. Specific application components defined in Figure 3: Schematic of a Strategic CRM System will be tailored to customer's unique requirements using the pre-existing APIs, Mobile Services and Core Services shown in Figure 4, Salesforce1 Development Components. The components most recently released on Salesforce1 are highlighted in the figure.

Figure 4: Salesforce1 Development Components

Component design needs to take into account the legacy real-time CRM applications in use today along with the ability to integrate at the software component level to legacy real-time applications. In addition, the component design needs to include a centralized coordination point or scheduler (often called a daemon process) to ensure rule execution, parameter estimation and the assignment of resources and guarantees to applications. All of these elements of the componentized design also need to work directly with the kernel areas of the Salesforce1 platform (or the operating system kernel if the customer opts for an on premise system). Each software component needs to also provide for user preference support and real-time integration for the CRM user interface (Kim, Mukhopadhyay, 2011). This area of the CRM component design needs to concentrate on providing agility and flexibility of defining user preferences and application, system and user mode status. Figure 5 provides an overview of the CRM Component Design, which is based on studies of CRM performance and heuristics decision making including fuzzy logic interpretations of complex customer selling strategies by Regehr and Lepreau (2001).

Figure 5: CRM Component Design

Source: (Regehr, Lepreau, 2001)

2.4 Data Design

The data design will be based on a customer-based schema taxonomy that will be iteratively defined with stakeholders. Using the existing databases in place along with a definition of the key attributes of new application functionality the client requests, the data design will be defined using a series of relational schemas that include customer, sales person, product, sales channel, pricing, customer history, marketing and pricing performance schemas as well.

2.5 Interfaces Design

One of the major benefits of working with a proven and widely adopted cloud platform development architecture is the benefit of capitalizing on the years of development already completed on interface design and application navigation. Using the standard application development APIs that Salesforce makes available on the Slaesforce1 platform, the immediate design goal is to create a dashboard showing analytics, Key performance Indicators (KPIs) and metrics of performance. Initial conversations with stakeholders have found that having a dashboard of existing KPIs and metrics is essential to support their business today (Moise, Surugiu, Stanciu, Soriga, 2012). Figure 6 shows an example of the type of dashboard that will be initially implemented and used to continually track overall performance of the development and design project.

Figure 6: Salesforce1 Dashboard

Source: Salesforce.com

The interface design also needs to include the ability to integrate data from diverse systems and through non-standard APIs. These diverse systems need to populate a display of all customer activity, prospective new accounts related to existing customers, and abbreviated views of analytics and KPIs. Figure 7, Consolidated CRM Interface View, provides an example of the design objective for this step in the overall development. This approach to a consolidated view of all customer activity on a single dashboard will be preferred by stakeholders as it consolidates several reports each has requested that overlap information needed.

The interface design must also support HTML5 and comparable technologies to deliver a consistent user experience regardless of the device being used. This will alleviate the dashboard shown in Figure 7 being clipped off or not even being viewable on a tablet or smartphone. Using HTML5 for interface design will alleviate many user adoption issues in the future right now by designing in device and platform adoptability.

Figure 7: Consolidated CRM Interface View

2.6 Quality Assurance

The quality assurance process for the proposed CRM application will follow the process shown in Figure 8, Quality Assurance Process for Proposed CRM Application. Each component will be tested inden0pdnetly first, followed by an integrated test of all components together. A functional test, performance will next be completed. Once this is complete, the client will be given the opportunity to test the application in multiple beta tests with its key stakeholders. Once these tests are complete the application will be released.

Figure 8: Quality Assurance Process for Proposed CRM Application

3. Programming Practice, Techniques and Environment

Selecting the right software development environment and supporting tools is reliant on a number of issues including portability, possible reuse, maintainability, compatibility with other systems, performance etc. Describe how particular approaches to software development impact on these issues, and therefore the process you would have to go through in making appropriate selections.

Across the spectrum of programming techniques and approaches, the most effective for cloud-based CRM development… READ MORE

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