Super CRM: a case study

[00:00:00] But it was the team members that the customer brought to the project that I think made our project such a joy to work on and such a smooth transition for their users. 

[00:00:09] Welcome to Amazing Apps. I'm your host, Neil Benson. Our goal is to help Microsoft customers and partners build amazing, agile Dynamics 365 and Power Platform apps. And one of the ways I love to do that is sharing stories about projects that have built successful apps using the Scrum framework. And in this episode, that story is about one of my own customers.

[00:00:35] I've got two businesses, Customery. This is my training and coaching business that creates content like this. Superware is an independent software vendor and systems integrator, creating apps for organizations with complex stakeholder relationships. 

[00:00:50] This is episode 151. If you're listening to the audio podcast, you'll find a transcription with links and resources at https://amazingapps.show/151. And if you're watching the video on YouTube, you'll find links and resources down below. 

[00:01:06] Let's set the scene with some background about the customer and their industry, because if you're outside Australia, you might never have heard of superannuation, and if you're watching on a YouTube channel, I hope you get the t-shirt reference.

[00:01:18] Our customer, let's call them Member Super, is a financial services organization with a couple of hundred employees. In Australia, employers must add 11 percent of your salary to a retirement savings account managed by a fund manager. Fund members choose various investment options and can make personal contributions along the way.

[00:01:38] Your contributions are taxed at 15 percent on the way in, and all the proceeds are tax free when you retire. I've lived in the UK and in the US, and their retirement systems are slightly different. 

[00:01:50] In Australia, it's called superannuation, and there are 2. 2 trillion US dollars saved in the Australian superannuation system at the moment. Which is about one third more than the total size of the Australian stock market. Or, put it another way, it's about U$100,000 per Australian adult. 

[00:02:11] Australia's got about 150 regulated superannuation funds today, and our customer is one of those. In fact, they're a top 10 fund with about a million members. Twenty years ago, there were over 1,000 funds to choose from. Economies of scale, and some pressure from the regulator, has created a reduction in that number to about 150. And who knows, in 20 years from now, Australia might have four big super funds, just like we have four big banks in this country.

[00:02:40] Member Super had an existing CRM application. It was provided to them by the same technology company that provides their registry. In superannuation, the registry is the ledger of all the transactions into and out of the fund. It includes contributions from myself and my employer, taxes, insurance premiums and withdrawals.

[00:03:01] The problem with their existing CRM application was that its data model matched the data model in the registry. For every member account in the registry, there was a contact record in the CRM application. 

[00:03:13] So, if a member left the fund and returned, they'd be given a new member account. They'd have two member accounts in the registry and two CRM contact records. If they had an accumulation account while they were working, and then a pension account when they retired, they'd have two CRM contact records. 

[00:03:29] Challenges with this data model made it almost impossible to achieve the Holy Grail, you know, it's what everybody's after, a single view of their customer, whether it was a member or an employer.

[00:03:40] In Member Services, users have to look up lots of records and perform some mental arithmetic, for example, to calculate a member's total balance across various accounts. The old CRM app was provided by a superannuation technology provider, not a business applications specialist, so its CRM features were limited and fixed.

[00:04:01] Our customer had no ability to make any changes to the app that was provided to them. I think the registry provider got a Microsoft partner to build it for them several years ago, but they'd stopped making any enhancements. The app was provided on a kind of a take it or leave it basis, and eventually our customer said it was time to leave it.

[00:04:20] They wanted to have control over their own CRM application so they could provide the level of service expected by their members, employers, and the fund's other stakeholders like financial advisors and industry associations.

[00:04:34] Superware already has a CRM application specifically for superannuation funds, but Member Fund wanted to engage us to build an app specifically for them rather than license our purpose-built industry app. I guess they had been burned once before by a CRM app that they didn't own, or didn't control, and didn't want to go down that path again, even if it meant a larger investment in application development.

[00:04:59] Member Super engaged a global consultancy to create new customer journey maps to help them understand how members interact with superannuation over their lifetime, and the key moments of truth that Member Super could lean into to delight their customers and create a positive impact on their retirement outcomes.

[00:05:16] This helped inform a product backlog of their requirements the new CRM application would need to be able to deliver. My team at Superware visualized that product backlog in a two dimensional user story map, with epic and feature level user stories arranged horizontally along the customer journey and stacked vertically based on their value.

[00:05:36] We estimated the relative size of the epics and features and the velocity of our proposed team to build those features. The user story map helped Member Super understand how long it would take and how much it would cost to build their new CRM application. 

[00:05:51] Looking at the original proposal, it said that we could start on the 31st of August and finish after 15 two-week sprints on the 28th of March with a cross functional team of six developers.

[00:06:03] And we provided the average cost per sprint, based on our developers' rates, to give Member Super an estimated total cost for the project. 

[00:06:13] On the Superware side, I played the role of the delivery lead and was involved significantly in the first few sprints and then on a part time basis afterwards. My responsibilities ranged from architecture and design advice, mentoring the team, participating in most of the scrum team's events like sprint planning, sprint reviews, and retrospectives.

[00:06:32] We had a business analyst responsible for refining the product backlog in collaboration with the product owner and his stakeholders. He ensured that our developers understood and could estimate backlog items and create product increments from them. He ran refinement sessions a couple of times each sprint and facilitated estimation using planning poker.

[00:06:53] We had a senior developer responsible for most of the integrations, and he also acted as our DevOps engineer, ensuring our build and release processes continually improved. We used the customer's Azure DevOps instance to manage the backlog and our builds, releases, and tests.

[00:07:09] We had another senior developer responsible for a lot of the customizations, and who later took on most of the data migration work using Azure Data Factory and the KingswaySoft Integration Toolkit. 

[00:07:19] We had a senior functional consultant who created most of the application. He looked after the data model and all the forms and views and, custom components.

[00:07:27] And we had a senior QA analyst who created and executed all of our system tests and integration test cases. And later, built a full suite of automated tests that got executed every time there was a new build.

[00:07:40] But it was the team members that the customer brought to the project that I think made our project such a joy to work on and such a smooth transition for their users. 

[00:07:50] First of all, we had their product owner, who was the CRM manager for the existing CRM application. I have to admit, I was a little skeptical at first of having such a technical product owner. He'd worked with Dynamics 365 and Dataverse before. But we eventually struck a balance between him expressing the true business needs and his helpful design ideas in his requirements. 

[00:08:12] He was supported by a CRM system administrator from his team, and she assisted with testing, data migration, and getting our app ready for production deployment.

[00:08:22] The scrum master was from an agile consultancy. Many years ago, back on my YouTube channel, I recorded a video about working with a customer's scrum master instead of our own. As a Microsoft partner, it's unusual for the scrum master not to work for us. This was my first experience working with a consulting scrum master employed by an agile consultancy. And it worked out way better than we could have imagined. I don't want to name names to respect confidentiality, but I hope she's listening and enjoying the kudos. 

[00:08:54] The scrum master worked closely with the Member Super's change partner and together they executed a flawless change management plan. They made sure everyone at all levels within Member Super knew about the CRM app, its timeline, what it was going to do for them and how it would benefit them.

[00:09:12] Later, they organized the development of the training collateral and the training sessions and executed all of that perfectly as well. 

[00:09:20] I had a conversation with Andrew Bibby recently about the increasing importance of change management and the positive impact it's having on our project's success rates. In Member Super's project, this was the first time we had actually invited a change manager into the scrum team as a developer. He worked on turning backlog items into increments, just like all the other developers.

[00:09:41] His items just happened to be things like communications collateral, showcase sessions, and training videos. It was a really successful experiment and one that I definitely intend to repeat in future enterprise projects. I recommend you try it out. 

[00:09:57] The core project team was supported by dozens of other people. The GM of Technology and her team of integration developers, data and analytics specialists, IT security, and other technical teams. 

[00:10:08] It included the executive team from Member Super, including the CIO, the COO, the Chief Growth Officer, and the Chief Member Engagement Officer, who appreciated our transparent project updates, presented in Miro every month.

[00:10:22] And all the super users and change champions who provided requirements, give us their feedback, and supported their teams through the training and early adoption. 

[00:10:31] Honestly, I can say this project went even smoother than most. The scrum team did a great job, every sprint creating increments, and Member Super's team did an amazing job too, bringing us their most valuable requirements to work on.

[00:10:44] In terms of challenges, well, there were a couple of data model challenges that business apps teams often face when handling complex relationships between people and organizations. 

[00:10:55] For example, let's say you have a member who has two part time jobs with two different employers. How do you model that in Dataverse? Or a CFO who has an employer contact and who's also a member, how do you handle that? 

[00:11:08] To differentiate between superannuation accounts, which are like bank accounts with lots of transactions in them, we renamed the Accounts system table to Organizations. You create an organization record for every employer, even if they only have one or two employees that are members of the fund, that will never be managed the same way as a larger employer with hundreds or thousands of member employees?

[00:11:31] We also had to solve the challenge of employers with lots of locations. Do you use a custom table for storing locations, or do you use parent child organizations instead? 

[00:11:42] Some late breaking requirements forced us to tweak the core data model deep into the project. The data model changes made for a better user experience and a closer fit with their requirements. But it required changes to our integration and data migration patterns, which, in hindsight, probably added an extra sprint or so onto our timeline. 

[00:12:02] Hofstadter's Law says that everything takes longer than expected, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. And while Hofstadter didn't bite us too badly most of the time, he did his best to throw a few spanners into our data migration efforts.

[00:12:18] Migrating a lot of data from an existing CRM, even when the data quality is good, can be a challenge when you've made enhancements to the fundamental data model. We got there in the end, but there were a lot of late nights, particularly from the developer who picked up most of the data migration work. 

[00:12:34] So how did things turn out in the end?

[00:12:37] Delivering on time and within budget is important. They're not real business outcomes though, but it's great to say that we did deliver on time and within budget. We started a few weeks later than expected, not in August, I think it was mid October, and we finished 17 sprints later, not 15, mostly because some stakeholders got excited and found some additional funding for a couple of additional features they wanted.

[00:12:59] The real outcomes were experienced by Member Super's Growth and Member Engagement teams. The Growth team looks after larger employers that have lots of members working for them. Now they can arrange education events at different locations, review contribution trends, engage their stakeholders and broaden their relationships, and ensure their employers are satisfied with the service being received by their employees.

[00:13:22] The Member Engagement team handles complex member inquiries and, where appropriate, passes referrals across to Member Super's licensed financial advisors so that members can receive personal financial advice. Where general advice is sufficient, team members have a much clearer understanding of members, because they can see a consolidated picture of all their accounts, all the previous inquiries, and all recent member communications. The Holy Grail, single view of the customer, The new CRM application is enabling Member Super to continue providing amazing service and impactful retirement outcomes for all of their one million members, even as the fund continues to grow organically and it combines with other funds in the market.

[00:14:05] If I was to offer any advice based on Member Super's CRM project, it's this. I'd like to think that our agile approach was perfect for an organization like Member Super. This played a massive part in the success of the project and meant it was such a smooth experience for everyone. Member Super didn't have a lot of experience with agile approaches, or with Scrum in particular, but it was a journey they were embarking on, and I hope our project serves as a useful proof point for their continued agile journey.

[00:14:34] There are still some Scrum skeptics out there in the Dynamics 365 and Power Platform community, and I'll continue to amplify stories like this one until everyone has successfully adopted Scrum for building complex business applications.

[00:14:50] What would I do differently next time? Well, this project was another example of a big bang release. On Friday, users were using the old application, they went home, and by Monday morning, they had a new CRM application. It's another example of a single cutover deployment. 

[00:15:08] In many ways, it makes a lot of sense.

[00:15:10] You can't give users a new app with just a couple of features and expect them to be able to still serve their customers. Or can you? 

[00:15:19] I think I need to do more to explore novel ways of releasing a smaller version 1 into production and getting real feedback and telemetry as we iterate on it and expand on it.

[00:15:29] Feedback from users in sprint reviews and showcase events is great, but it's just initial impressions from users who haven't really been given an opportunity to use the new CRM application in their day to day work yet. 

[00:15:42] In Amazing Apps episode 146, Martin Hinshelwood challenged us to find ways of splitting enterprise apps up into smaller apps and getting them into production quicker. I'm still noodling on it, Martin. 

[00:15:56] The initial project to deploy a modern CRM app has been successful. What's next for Member Super's member and employer engagement strategies?

[00:16:06] Well, I can't share any trade secrets about what they're actually planning to do, but let me share with you what I hope they're planning to do. I think there are two valuable opportunities for Member Super to consider from here.

[00:16:19] The first is to expand their adoption of Dynamics 365. Most of their users are using a custom Power Apps app running on Dataverse, and a few are using Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise. I think they could build even deeper and broader engagement, and improve productivity, with Customer Service Workspace, integrated with voice, chat, SMS, and email.

[00:16:44] In years gone past, superannuation members were used to occasionally calling their superfund, maybe filling in some forms at the end of the tax year, and getting a statement in the post. Today's digital native members are expecting a mobile app with real time, in app messaging, and other similar multi channel experiences that the best superannuation funds will be able to deliver on.

[00:17:09] The laggards will see shrinking member bases until they eventually get absorbed into one of those leading funds. 

[00:17:17] The other even greater opportunity is to invest in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and combine member data from Dataverse, the registry, the portal, and mobile app telemetry, and the marketing application.

[00:17:30] Use all of this combined data set to create predictions that can be surfaced back into the CRM for member services team members. What is the member's predicted balance at retirement? Or income at age 70? What are the chances of this member rolling out of Member Super and taking their balance to another super fund?

[00:17:51] And what actions can we take that have the highest predicted probability of retaining the member through their transition to retirement? Those are the kind of questions that Customer Insights' machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms can help us ask and answer. I think the answers can be used to drive better actions that have more meaningful, positive impacts on the secure retirement for millions of Australians.

[00:18:16] Look, I'm unlikely to retire this year, maybe even next year myself, but it's definitely something I enjoy thinking about. If you've enjoyed this episode of Amazing Apps and you're watching on YouTube, give it a thumbs up. If you're listening to the podcast, please follow or subscribe to the feed so you don't miss future episodes.

[00:18:33] Most of all, please share this story with others in your team. I'd really, really appreciate it. And I really appreciate you for joining me. 

[00:18:40] There's a library of case studies like this one in my Scrum for Microsoft Business Apps training course, which you'll find at https://customery.com/scrum. Registering for my courses is a great way to support the show and ensure I can keep creating content like this.

[00:18:55] Until next time, keep experimenting.