The reputation of CRM implementations is a mixed one but we could say that about many IT endeavours. The good news though is that there seems to be a more balanced take now. Take a look at Lauren May's article, 'CRM is No Longer a Four Letter Word' as an example.
There are many reasons that it has a bad rep. Not least because many organisations focused on IT, systems and process but forgot that it was essentially about the err Customer. And the costs! In the high profile, now failed, EDS implementation for Sky, the original costs before (allegedly) spiralling out of control were estimated at over £40m.
In spite of the misses, CRM is still a purchasing priority for CIO's in 2010 according to Ed Thompson, Gartner Analyst who suggests "For most organizations, the single most logical way to differentiate the business is through great customer experiences, rather than having the lowest cost or most innovative products and services".
However, I can't help think that some of the reputation is based on the classic principle that it was oversold and under delivered. Analytics are a good example of this with many of the platforms promising innovative ways of analysing sales performance. They promise democracy through dashboards but it was never going to be that simple.
CRM implementations are allowing us to capture more about sales processes and activities than ever before. However, valuable and actionable insight will not simply fall out of the CRM implementation. The biggest challenge is that they all treat their own data like an island. Useful sales analytics can only typically come from bringing together information from Sales, Marketing and Finance systems.
Ask a sales rep for the revenue number and they will tell you what was booked on the order. But we all know that a lot can happen between an order and an invoice and the difference is a constant source of frustration to a management team trying to drive the business in the right direction using a gage with one set of numbers and three needles all at slightly different points. And, of course, the cost of a campaign or the profitability of customers is not information captured in a CRM platform but requires information from the CFO and the Marketing Director too. Reporting or dashboard tools in a CRM implementation are great at reporting operational CRM but they cannot bring information together from all those places that are needed in a meaningful way. At least, not yet.
I am not being critical of CRM systems. Their existence has opened up new opportunities for the analysis of sales performance for organisations and that's a very good thing. However, those that expect integrated analytics that provide useful insight into the plan variance, demonstrate which sales tactics are working or identify which products and customers are proving more profitable may not get it from their shiny new CRM dashboards. Meaningful and actionable insight can only come from combining CRM information with other organisational data into a coherent and common framework. It can, as I have seen it done in many instances, look like it is part of the CRM implementation but the real work is done behind the scenes by smart data warehousing and enterprise business intelligence tools.
Do you know where your sales organisation is heading? Sales Leaders take the IBM Sales Performance Management Assessment here;
