CRM, if it’s working right, is a tool for destroying the 80-20 business equation.

The best examples of CRM wrecking 80-20 rule are experienced when methodology is formalized, integrated into business processes and encoded within software. Few examples to illustrate the point are dramatic improvements in

• margin via elimination of excessive discounting caused by inadequate forecasting methods and practices;
• new sales hires retention and rump up enabled by clearly stated process guidance, terminology, and definitions; 
• lead conversion ratio since streamlining of pipeline management eliminates “stale” leads;
• customer satisfaction, i.e. retention enabled by flowing customer (contact/person) information across departments/sales teams/customer support/marketing, etc. within a proper context.

That makes CRM initiatives such a high risk/but much higher return proposition - if done right the ROI is much higher and faster than most of other options.

Let’s face it - primary responsibility of IT today is a risk management, not investment into loosely defined concepts like Enterprise 2.0. Read the rest of this entry »

I wonder why there is such a persistent stream of rumors about sale of Salesforce? Today Silicon Valley Watcher blog posts yet another installment on this subject. It seem strange to speculate that there is any reason for a corporate marriage for such a successful company in a growing market segment, but perhaps the reports of scalability issues and doubts in Salesforce ability to resolve these issues in a timely manner are a root of these rumors.

This is a continuation of the post published on March 7, 2008.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882)

5. Build “Eco-system” for Adoption Management. Most CRM initiatives are launched to change way of doing business in organization - if they don’t, the economics of such an initiative should be questioned. However concerns about adoption challenges often shift the focus to functions and features from processes and economics.

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I would have named this post “5 ways to waste IT project investment”.

To be successful, users must understand the project’s goals, status, and impact on their jobs. Many projects pay too little attention to training and documentation, especially when the project starts to run over-budget. This oversight makes reduces productivity and can negatively impact the project ROI. In extreme cases, users simply don’t use the new software, bringing the effective ROI to zero.

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