In my last post I gave my thoughts on the most common problems associated with CRM feasibility and planning. This week I want to cover off my take on the main snafu’s in the CRM requirements gathering process: Lack of clear objectives – I covered this in the last post, Continue Reading

This is the first in a mini-series of posts aimed at picking out key problem points in the main stages of the implementation process. Today I’m going to focus on CRM feasibility and planning. So here’s my take on the six most common planning and feasibility snafu’s: Undue focus on Continue Reading

I was involved in a presentation last week to a group of CEO’s on the topic of CRM technology. The following summarises some of the points I wanted to get across: Most projects do not add great value – my best guess is that over 80% of CRM projects fail Continue Reading

The opening line of a recent article on mycustomer.com caught my attention: ‘You’ve got 19 CRM systems when you only need one – and you know it! Why won’t organisations rationalise their applications landscape?’ On the surface it seems a somewhat rhetorical question. Why would you want to live with Continue Reading

Once upon a time if you were a large enterprise you bought your CRM system from an enterprise vendor. And, while in the early days there were some high profile failures, enterprise vendors became pretty reasonable at implementing CRM systems. However the CRM market has changed. The CRM software that Continue Reading

As new generations of CRM system have become ever more flexible the potential to rapidly customise software to meet needs that may be far removed from the vanilla package has increased dramatically. This has created a dilemma for many potential purchasers of CRM as to whether it’s better to go Continue Reading

Once upon a time the pricing of support contracts for CRM software was pretty straightforward; normally a straight percentage of the cost of the software. In recent years things have become considerably less predictable with a raft of rather more exotic arrangements which seem to bear scant resemblance to traditional Continue Reading

Following on from my piece about the benefits of contact management, this post explains the benefits of using CRM technology for lead management. Lead management is an interesting area because, for reasons I will explain in more detail later, it can have a very significant bottom line benefit. However, for Continue Reading

One of the biggest mistakes I see organisations make when implementing CRM software is failing to set a realistic budget for the project. Not only is this a frequently fatal error, but as it occurs so early in the implementation process it’s a bit like false-starting a marathon and getting Continue Reading

In my previous post I reviewed Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. Perhaps the biggest change has been that Microsoft CRM has finally entered the cloud. 2011 can be purchased either as a traditional on-premise application or as a software as a service (SAAS) offering. While this has been available in the Continue Reading