There is a thought provoking post published on Search CRM blog. It is named CRM in the contact center sees little progress and focusing on results of the benchmarks analysis conducted by Dimension Data PLC.

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Painful memories of this issue were awaken again by Chris Bucholtz in his blog and I put some of this content as a comment to the post.

The Enterprise software adoption management of salespeople is probably the most difficult challenge for corporate management:

1. they have no inherent respect for a process, because to be successful they learned to go around processes and focus on a goal and a goals of CRM implementations are not often communicated in specific terms which relate to their goals;

2. they are often recruited as “entrepreneurs” and treated as “self-employed”, but then told to use a system which is designed to be a management tool to “control” them.

3. they are told that the system is to “help” them to be more efficient, but expect them to spend hours doing data entry.

There are many variations of these valid reasons, but the most critical one is - they can get away with ignoring the CRM system like no other business community. There is a limited upside for using it, the most active users who don’t make their numbers are still fired, and no downside, the best sales performers who ignore management orders to use CRM, are still the stars. 

That is the challenge that made me come up with an idea of holistic design methodology, in other words - the system needs to be initially architect with adoption management in mind. IMO the only way to achieve return on CRM investment is to design and implement it in a such a way that all CRM communities WANT to use it and I would double bold it for sales community. I wrote about the strategic options to address this issue in this blog before, so now I will try address some tactical ones:

I had very good adoption experience when it was possible to add (mash) external information about Customers and Contacts automatically fed from on-line subscription services. That could be huge value added for salespeople, who otherwise would need to spend hours researching or fly blind without CRM system.

One of the largest adoption challenges is around data entry requirements, so finding the ways to lighten the load by automation and other technology tools is very important. But that is it’s own subject for discussion and

I wrote about this before.

In the large organizations, cross departmental visibility made available to salespeople, allows them to adjust their pipeline activities to reflect for changes in a Customer credit standing or outstanding support issues. Sales teams need to be exposed to these opportunities to manage their time more effectively, but once they are - adoption improves dramatically. 

There are too many more tactical solutions to describe here, but the important thought is to think about them before design and implementation started.

The introduction of “cloud” computing seem to be forcing mass modernization of IT infrastructure. The scale of required demand for computing power surely requires fundamental re-evaluation of assets, methods, and practices which have been developed and deployed during last two decades. “Down on the server farm”, the article published by The Economist, explores economical, political, and security factors involved in planning process.

As servers become more numerous, powerful and densely packed, more energy is needed to keep the data centres at room temperature. Often just as much power is needed for cooling as for computing. The largest data centres now rival aluminium smelters in the energy they consume. Microsoft’s $500m new facility near Chicago, for instance, will need three electrical substations with a total capacity of 198 megawatts.

And we thought the herds of cows generating methane should be blamed for global warming! I wonder if anybody studied a positive impact of IT on re-forestation? With Internet news and advertising replacing newsprint consumption, on-line shopping reduces driving, etc there should be enough evidence to start balancing an impact of progress and present rational analysis of what is going on.

It is interesting to see how the industry based on “disruptive innovation” seem to embrace the challenge because it realizes profit opportunities associated with it. This quote is from “Buy our stuff, save the planet” article published in the same issue of the Economist.

It is easy to be cynical about all this. However energy-efficient computers become, the bigger task will be to generate electricity using technologies that do not emit carbon dioxide. Yet this is one case when market forces and environmentalism align. A cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax, of course, would make such alignments more commonplace. But even without putting a price on carbon, there are already plenty of examples, as in computing, where adopting more efficient technology would both save money and help the environment.

Greenery does not have to be motivated by altruism; and it is far more likely to be effective when it is not. If it helps to reduce carbon-emissions, self-serving greenery is as good as any other kind. The planet cannot tell the difference.

It is a refreshing change in attitude compared to one displayed by traditional industries and governments - “deny until you blue in the face and it will go away”. Perhaps they can benefit from more competition and less regulation, because we badly need some disruption for much more decaying infrastructure outside of IT.