Unlocking the potential of CRM technology…

I’m just finishing up on a revised white paper. The title will be something along the lines of ‘Unlocking the potential of CRM technology – and the role of the independent CRM consultant’. The traditional perception of the CRM consultant is that our focus is on vendor selection activities. In reality our engagements tend to be much broader, and vendor selection while a key component, is just one in a number of aspects designed to deliver a more fundamental goal of increasing the bottom line value of CRM technology. I’ve tried to keep the paper as brief as possible without it becoming just a long list of bullet points. I’ve included an excerpt from the introduction below, and I’ll publish the full paper later in the week, potentially with a punchier title – if I can think of one!

Introduction

If you’ve ever worked for a software company, or know someone who has, then you’ll be well aware how much pressure software vendors are under to hit their sales targets. As each financial quarter looms the stress of making the numbers increases. Those that succeed are well rewarded – companies through higher market valuations and profits, and individuals through commissions, bonuses and stock options. For those that fail, markets and employers are unforgiving.

Against this background, it’s perhaps no surprise that the software world is rife with hype, half-truths, and pushy salespeople desperate to close the deal. These commercial realities go part way to explain why many organizations have struggled to realize significant value from their investments in CRM technology. The Gartner Group famously noted that 65% of CRM implementations failed to meet expectations, and this gloomy assessment is supported by a raft of other analyst reports. However the good news is that we know from our own experience that those who get it right can use CRM technology to very significantly increase performance and profitability.

While CRM projects fail for a variety of reasons, the gap between the vendor’s goal of ‘selling’ software and the user’s objective of generating value from their technology investment can often be an unbridgeable chasm. The CRM consultant, perhaps more traditionally associated with software selection, is increasingly taking on a much broader role from project conception to delivery, to bridge the gap between raw CRM technology and profit creation for the client. This paper sets out how CRM consultants are helping organisations now deliver considerably more from their CRM systems.

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