One of my favorite quotes is “Happiness is expectation management”, and nobody knows better how to mismanage expectations like software marketing and sales people. However it is important to remember that it takes two to tango, and CRM purchasing decisions are often influenced, if not made, by sales and marketing executives. Add to this group some IT executives, who are famous for buying “silver bullets” every now and again, and you get very potent team of Kool-aid creators and consumers all in the same package.

It is interesting to hear the typical responses, when you ask a CRM executive sponsor about their expectations.

The top 3 answers usually are:

1. We need to improve our salespeople efficiency, so they have more time to make sales calls;

2. We need to get more leads to increase sales;

3. Our competitors “installed” CRM, so we cannot afford not to.

The only common theme in these three responses is that they predict a very high probability of failure.

Chris Bucholtz in his Inside CRM blog wrote recently:

I wonder at times whether CRM vendors have created their own fantasy lands, where customers’ CRM systems spit out leads and marketing people sit around pushing one big button that does everything for them. When you set expectations like that, there’s no way vendors can deliver.

I would like to site another quote. This one is from JP Rangaswami, the italics are mine:

Project failure and success seem to depend on saying, “Are you able to accurately articulate and honestly 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.

[F]ailure is usually a characteristic of unwillingness to recognize change and to cover up….It’s like a salesman putting forth a forecast to management…without ever talking to the customer. Management [is] blissfully unaware of the fact that the information is false.

Ben Worthen of WSJ Business Technology Blog reported about adoption problem experienced by SureScripts.

Doctors are reluctant to change the way they’ve always done things, Rick Ratliff, SureScripts CEO, tells the Business Technology Blog. That’s why more than 26,000 pharmacies across the country — including major chains like CVS, Walgreens and Wal-Mart – are now marketing the e-prescription program directly to consumers. The hope is that enough patients will ask their doctors about the programs that doctors will be forced to use them.

This story illustrates a cost of ignoring cardinal law of holistic application design - WIITFM (What Is It For Me). Considering that the appeal of SureScripts for the pharmacies is no-brainer (shifting a burden of data entry to doctors), what would motivate the doctors to change the way they do things?

Many business applications project investments were written off because of this failure. CRM initiatives are probably the hardest hit segment. However the attempts to correct this by bullying people into adoption, as Mr. Ratcliff is quoted to suggest, will likely produce even more waste and anguish. Perhaps honest and creative review of the system would produce an improvement, which would motivate doctors to use the e-prescriptions because it save time for them - like allowing them to dictate a prescription.

“Win-Win” is a popular phrase for Sales motivational trainers, but it is probably even more important concept in “Design for Adoption”  business.

Michael Krigsman, who’s blog I subscribe to, posted an interview with the SAP CTO, Vishal Sikka who is quoted:

Lines of business know the what and IT knows the how.

Mr. Sikka does not stop there and proceeds to talk about how this relationship should be managed. However this thought is very commonly used as a dogma which I would like to challenge.

If this is true, how can we explain all the projects delivered out of time and budget constrains, all the unsatisfied business communities, and low rates of adoption we read about in Michael’s blog? Perhaps these lines of business do not tell what they need? Or perhaps IT doesn’t have the know-how to install enterprise software or to maintain infrastructure?Â

I would like to propose that the above mentioned wisdom falls into a category of truthiness and the lines of business do not know exactly what their requirements are, as well as IT often does not have the know-how and political clout to provide thought leadership required to articulate and negotiate these requirements. The what is often in a realm of notions and wishes, which are impossible to act upon. The requirements are expressed in a form of functions and features which have very remote connections to the economic reasoning for the project. The lack of this knowledge is greatly discounted and misunderstood. The "what" needs to be figured out, challenged and probed until a set of specific business requirements is distilled which communicates why it is economically necessary to invest and how the change adoption will be managed. Perhaps lines of business have to accept ownership, responsibility and leadership for success or failure of the organizational transformation initiatives rather than "outsourcing" this responsibility to IT.