A featured contribution from Leadership Perspectives: a curated forum reserved for leaders nominated by our subscribers and vetted by the Construction Tech Review Advisory Board.
Mall of America
Why Is CRM Important for Any Business?
As Vice President of Information Technology for Mall of America and American Dream – two world-class retail properties owned and operated by Triple Five – Aaron Nielsen remains laser focused on next generation innovation, surpassing guest expectations, leadership by example, and fostering team member growth. Encouraging new ideas, celebrating wins, and learning from setbacks is key to Aaron’s leadership style. He demonstrates daily that every leader needs a strong, motivated, balanced team to attain success for the company or project.
What are some of the major challenges and trends that has been impacting CRM lately?
Quality initial data remains a challenge for CRM. From the earliest days of computing there was a saying, ‘garbage in, garbage out.’ It may sound outdated, but in truth it is just as accurate today. The quality of data gathered has a direct impact on the value to the company – and to the consumer. Many companies continue to struggle with the quality of data that comes into their CRM. It is critical to understand if your processes are gathering truly valuable data interactions that your customer are having in your space or with your product. And without that valuable data, it is difficult to build a customer profile that creates both explicit and inferred segments for your customers.
An opportunity – verses a challenge – for many companies or brands is to develop a process of deeper education for the executive team. Executives often have a superficial understanding of CRM and its importance to the company. But it is important that the people making strategic decisions at the highest levels understand how the CRM data and tracking help to create a consumer profile that allows you to communicate with that guest when, how and where they prefer. The key is that smart companies cater to the guest communication expectations – that is how we build true brand loyalty.
What keeps you up at night when it comes to some of the major predicaments in the CRM space?
For me, one issue that keeps me up at night is the customer experience. I obsess about how our customers CRM journey and experiences are. Our entire team wants to make sure that the user experience is seamless, simple and frustration free. Some CRM systems are click- heavy and just do not have the right workflow automations in place. They may provide good data and customer insights – but they are not user-friendly or intuitive.
My team also spends a significant amount of time thinking about the mobile application for the CRM. Does it work on the go? With remote and hybrid work policies now firmly established in many organizations, employers need to be thinking about how they make their team members productive in office and from home.
However, data security is always at the top of my mind. We are constantly making sure that as an organization we continually protect the most sensitive data from the wrong people. The obvious example are those outside of the organization trying to gain access to valuable data and information, but people within the organization can pose significant challenges as well. It is critical to enable security policies that allow access to certain data points only based on company role and need.
Can you tell us about the latest project that you have been working on and what are some of the technological and process elements that you leveraged to make the project successful?
We migrated off our legacy HRIS system to a new system that offered more flexibility in the mobile space. It provided a more efficient way to manage human resource functions such as payroll and benefits. One of the key drivers of this project was making sure the solution was scalable with the ability to evolve with technology trends in the future. The reality is, technology from just a few years ago is likely out-of-date given the realities of our post-pandemic world. Most companies were in-person, office-style settings only three years ago. Post COVID, the business world has begun to embrace a new, more hybrid approach. We needed to make sure that this new HRIS system could evolve with us.
In this process, we performed a feature check on our existing tool and established what problems we were trying to solve. We then explored other vendors and asked them to prove out specific use-cases in a series of meetings.
After we had established which new system we would transition to, we pulled in our key power-users of the existing HRIS system for feedback and implementation input. It was important to identify what our users want out of this new tool and how could it make their lives easier.
An opportunity— versus a challenge— for many companies or brands is to develop a process of deeper education for the executive team. The key is that smart companies cater to the guest communication expectations, which is how true brand value is built
The key to a successful implementation is a well-planned and implemented training and communications strategy. Training and communication are critical during the project execution and well after the go-live phase. End users need to understand that a system/tool change is coming. When the new system is identified, it is important to share with the end users what the timing, implementation, and exciting new features the tool will offer. We offer both in-person and virtual training to help users understand how to use and navigate the new tool. Both our IT and HR teams were hands-on in this process so we could triage potential problems, add any bugs to our fix list, and communication status of bug remedies to all end users. In other words, we helped make their lives simpler through this process.
What are some of the technological trends which excite you for the future of CRM space?
I am excited to see how A/I can further enhance how companies understand and interact with their customers. Until around 2000, companies really did not have the website, email, and SMS data to help establish what they think their customers want. Now, we have tools that allow us to understand customer behaviour on our digital properties, take that information into a customer profile that is specific to that individual, and start to paint a picture of who that person is. Are they married, do they have kids, what are their interests, what pages do they visit most often on our website? All these interactions help paint a picture of how we can customize our future communications to this person.
Would you like to give a piece of advice for the community as to how should they approach this industry?
It is simple, really. Know what you know. Know what you don’t know. Strive to close that information gap.
Nobody is an expert in everything, so acknowledging where your proficiencies are, and more importantly, where they are not, will allow you to be transparent with your team on what you need from them, and what they can get from you.
Most importantly, never stop learning. What you think is true one day could have changed in the next. Technology is always evolving, always improving. Dedicate time in your day to read your favourite tech blog. I am always interested to read about a technological capability that may be years away that is the topic of conversation right now.
