Upgrading Bain’s commercial tech to a best-in-class CRM
Upgrading Bain’s commercial tech to a best-in-class CRM
Bain’s commercial team wanted to cultivate even deeper relationships with clients and realized their legacy technology was no longer adequate. Frontline employees would need a fully unified software stack including a best-in-class CRM. After a careful evaluation, they selected and integrated a system that can support that ambition.
These teams evaluated and launched the CRM platform
Forty Bainies were involved in drafting requirements, scoping the project, and selecting the CRM, among other tools. Another 25 were involved in key integrations and the launch.
These teams evaluated and launched the CRM platform
Forty Bainies were involved in drafting requirements, scoping the project, and selecting the CRM, among other tools. Another 25 were involved in key integrations and the launch.
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Bain Marketing
As both a CRM stakeholder and end user, the digital and event teams helped gather requirements, design the system, and test it. The Brand Management team provided options for naming the system and raised awareness internally.
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Finance
The finance team helped evaluate the new software and plan for the purchase. The procurement team led a complex, multi-stage negotiation where they settled on performance-based payments with the vendor.
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General Consulting
Over three years, five Bain case teams helped develop the requirements for and select the platform. They did much of the heavy lifting—gathering and defining requirements, understanding the impact it would have on the company’s processes, and communicating the implications and changes needed.
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Global & Local Operations
The Global Commercial Operations team sponsored and led this project. Its CRM product management, operations, and data teams played leading roles in designing the platform, migrating the data, engaging and onboarding users, and providing support. The client advocacy and pricing project management teams assisted with key integrations.
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Product, Practice, and Knowledge (PPK)
As an end user, PPK’s industry and capability teams shared their processes and reports and participated in user acceptance testing. They also advised on the launch and helped peers adopt it.
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Talent Acquisition
Recruiters helped the Global/Local Operations and TSG teams hire new Bainies to staff the program.
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Talent Management
Talent managers helped hire and onboard external contractors to support this program and helped the technology teams integrate the new CRM with their staffing tool. The global alumni team helped the CRM program team integrate the alumni system by gathering requirements, advising on the design, and conducting user acceptance testing.
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Technology Solutions Group (TSG)
TSG participated heavily. The core team included the product management, software application, and change enablement teams, but also involved individuals in data, finance systems, human capital systems, and private equity systems. The product management team managed the external contractors and continuously improved the system.
Background
If Bain partners are known for one thing, it’s forming enduring relationships with clients and client executives. Sometimes, software can help with that; other times, it can get in the way. When it became clear that the tools and legacy systems those partners were using were impeding their ability to efficiently plan, coordinate, and convert their commercial efforts, the commercial operations team (outside of Bain, called “sales operations”) dug in to figure out how to help. Frontline teams said they wanted easy-to-use tools with all the data they needed in one place, which could help them collaborate with other teams and cultivate stronger client relationships.
Part of the problem was the legacy CRM was only used for managing contacts. Client-facing teams had to use separate tools to manage their accounts, move opportunities through the pipeline, find experts, communicate with stakeholders, and collaborate as a team, and these tools were not integrated and lacked key functionalities.
The commercial operations and TSG teams partnered to evaluate a new CRM platform and commercial tech stack, with tools frontline teams would want to use and which could all integrate. That way, those systems would not only support, but improve, Bain’s go-to-market motion and commercial outcomes, both for clients and for Bain.
The plan
The commercial operations, consulting, general operations, and TSG teams defined their desired end state: They wanted to arrive at one tightly integrated cluster of sales and marketing systems that revolved around a core CRM. This setup would allow for smoother frontline collaboration, richer relationship management, and easier account management. It’d help each client-facing team bring all Bain’s capabilities and expertise to bear, allow many teams around the world to work together, and reduce the administrative burden—saving consultants from logging activities in multiple systems and leaders from guessing where they needed to be involved.
“A core part of our value proposition to the rest of Bain is creating one integrated ‘commercial loop,’” says Shannon Williamson, Head of Global Commercial Operations and the executive sponsor for the CRM project. “Uniting these systems and giving our frontline teams one screen within which to work and find everything was critical, as were the analytics that would result.”
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What were the key value drivers for pipeline management?
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What was the current sales motion and how could it be improved?
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What were the critical functionalities and which tool would best support them?
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Which teams would need to be involved?
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How were all related teams using the current tools, and what were their processes?
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What phases should the project follow?
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How would they drive adoption and advocacy of the new processes and tools?
The approach
The vendor selection process took one year. The operations and technology teams gathered extensive requirements from the many teams who’d use the CRM. They interviewed nearly 60 leaders, frontline partners, and stakeholders, and maintained their pace even when Covid-19 emerged and made meeting difficult. While there were many options and combinations, they decided on the perceived best-in-class CRM in the market. The team already knew the operational danger of relying upon several different tools, and wanted a system they could grow into.
Following the selection, the team spent two years rolling it out, through the full lifecycle of design, development, testing, and implementation. They phased the release of different feature groupings to deliver value early and also gather feedback. The first release included contacts, mailings, campaigns, and a few other modules, built to already exceed the functionality of the legacy systems. To launch this, they built a bidirectional sync to Microsoft Outlook, to the marketing platform, to the survey tool, and to the alumni platform. They then held webinars to begin the training.
Even with the inevitable development delays, the Bain team was able to release a second wave of functionality within six months. They added opportunities, accounts, and a white glove strategy for onboarding pilot groups. The purpose-assembled Agile team addressed bugs and continuously improved the system, then switched into adoption mode and helped frontline teams achieve the desired whole-client view.
Upon launch, the initial engagement was even greater than anticipated—nearly all partners interacted with the platform and, within a few months, 95%+ of users had logged in at least once. Now, over 90% of the firm’s priority client teams are actively managing their accounts and relationships on the platform.
The results
Bain’s frontline teams now have a single, data-rich CRM platform which is integrated with all their other commercial technologies. Users can see the full client picture across relationships, accounts, pipeline, and revenue. They continue to add data to enhance the platform and they are deploying analytics to identify and surface insights. In addition, enhanced reporting helps both the frontline teams and leadership understand the true state of the business. And of course, though the platform is launched, it’s never “done.” The commercial operations and technology teams have an 18-month roadmap of additional features planned to keep the platform evergreen.
of users have logged in
of the Bain’s priority client teams are actively using the platform
