Unlocking the Value of CRM Enterprise Software
CRM Enterprise software initiatives are rightly considered to be the most challenging Enterprise Software undertaking by many people in business, yet many companies dip their proverbial ‘toes” into this dangerous “water”. The attraction is, that when these initiatives do succeed, the return on investment is very fast and spectacular. It is interesting to understand what the critical reasons for such volatility are. I will explore them in this post, based on my own experience as well as what I have learned from various discussions with other practitioners.
1. Clear definition of objectives. The objectives are often articulated in terms which are not specific or measurable – “Improve Customer satisfaction”, “Obtain 360 degree Customer visibility”, “Increase time available for Sales calls”, “Improve Sales efficiency by 13%” – are quite common and absolutely useless if not harmful.
First and foremost, we have to manage better communication….Project failure and success seem to depend on saying, “Are you able to accurately articulate and collect what the requirements are?” and “Are you able to express the right estimates?”…. Too many times, the collection process is weak, because the customer is not easily able to articulate [his needs] in language the people [on the project] understand. [S]oftware estimation is not a trivial exercise; it is still an art rather than a science.
JP Rangaswami is the Managing Director of Service Design at BT Design
There is either no measurable target or agreement on base line and measuring methodology. The agreement is the crucial word in this sentence because we deal with an open economic system which can be influenced by multiple market factors outside of the sphere and control of this initiative. So it is difficult to come up with clear metrics which would allow for measurement, i.e. accountability, and people are not often motivated to do difficult things without effective leadership. The result is a list of features and functions which are collected without asking a fundamental question – How this feature, function or process would affect the GOAL?
2. Effective leadership. The leadership is very often outsourced or delegated to IT after initial, very loud announcements:
In American culture, we tend to equate leadership with yapping. There is no correlation. Lead Well and Prosper, by Nick McCormick.
I would like to thank Michael Krigsman for posting these and some other excellent references and analysis in his ZDNet blog.
That is why effective leadership is critical – Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
Peter Drucker
It is much easier to be a critic, so I will try to be constructive for a change, ranting can get very tiresome. From my Best Practices notebook I can suggest the following targets as examples:
“Reduce selling cycle by 5% first year, and 7.5% during subsequent 2 years without decrease of average deal size, normalized to our industry market condition”;
“decrease deal discount rates by 10% from the current (pre-initiative go live) levels, normalized to industry market condition”.
These do not reflect the whole CRM footprint, but I found the SFA part is more challenging, that is why I have included these examples, but I hope it is illustrative enough to extrapolate to Marketing, Support, etc.
Oh, I would love to use this new SFA system!
It is business leadership which needs to step up to the plate and articulate WHAT do they want to achieve, and WHY these are the most critical targets to aim for. It is also very important that achieving agreed targets does not become an IT challenge, but remains a business challenge thru training, adoption, and compliance management. The IT is an enabler, not a deliverer of economic results.
I will continue later with the rest of the W’s
I have six honest serving men,
They taught me all I know.
Their names are Who and What and When,
Why and Where and How.
- Rudyard Kipling
A blog about experiences, curiosity and the never-ending search for ways to do better things better
Making the IT function responsible for the results of a CRM project is like making your local lumberyard responsible for the timeliness and quality of the construction of your new house.
I think in reality the good results have happened when the implementing organization really wants to know what is going on. So success depends upon existing culture. If the culture is one of blame and social punishment, then there is no desire to actually know “the truth”. If the environment is the opposite— then knowledge is power.
John, thank you for your comment. I have seen the best results when the implementing organization completely assumed the functional project leadership, management and responsibility for adoption. IT, as a partner was only responsible for technical and infrastructural performance delivery quality and timeliness. The progress was monitored by CXO level where they could only swim or sink together.
Here is the challenge – most CRM implementations span multiple organizations and hence you often have to manage multiple tracks as multiple implementing organizations (Sales, Support, Marketing, etc) compete for resources and attention from IT.
[...] Posted on the October 22nd, 2009 under CRM, Change Management, Organizational Transformation by Gregory Yankelovich This is continuation of the previous post. [...]