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When it comes to CRM software, one would think that nowadays this question can only be asked by someone as disturbed as Hamlet. Considering choices of products available for use on demand (SaaS) or for purchase to use in house, why would anybody even think about building something from scratch?
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...This is a fascinating read posted by:
Andrew McAfee
Associate Professor, Harvard Business School
The main thread of the post is around the role of IT in productivity growth and whether it has reached its limits. I would like to review and comment only on some of the excellent points I found in this post that resonate with my experience and understanding, and I encourage you to read the article yourself for a more complete understanding of this issue.
“… companies have been re-engineering their processes and value chains as long as there have been companies, and that there has been a rich mix of legitimate innovations, tools, and fads around process and performance improvement over the past hundred years. This mix has included total quality management, Six Sigma, re-engineering, just-in-time, quality circles, lean manufacturing, Taylorism, Sloanism, etc. etc. Is IT, () really such a great leap forward in companies’ abilities to better themselves that it’s more than another process improvement program? Does modern IT really deserve a place alongside electricity and the internal combustion engine? “
IMO the answer is a resounding “Yes” and the examples given are very compelling. Humanity moved cargo around long before combustion engines were invented, and used different forms of energy to produce before electricity was invented. All of these allowed us to do the same (more or less) things much faster and better. Quantitative analysis could be very interesting, but results would largely depend on initial assumptions rather then the fundamental premise. The most challenging part, IMO, is measuring the impact of IT on social change, democratization of knowledge (or at least of information), re-evaluation of institution’s role in our lives, etc.
“A process embedded in IT work the same in the 100th location as it does in the first, and will process all transactions the same way. Propagated with confidence that they’ll actually be executed as designed. In many circumstances, once a new process has been embedded in Enterprise IT it’s simply not possible to execute it the old way. These technologies act as a ratchet, making backsliding impossible. Re-engineering efforts that don’t involve IT often fail because people simply ignore the new methods and keep doing business the same old way. IT can be used to remove this option. Propagated with confidence that they’ll actually be executed as designed. In many circumstances, once a new process has been embedded in Enterprise IT it’s simply not possible to execute it the old way. These technologies act as a ratchet, making backsliding impossible. Re-engineering efforts that don’t involve IT often fail because people simply ignore the new methods and keep doing business the same old way. IT can be used to remove this option.”
This statement explains why so many Enterprise Software implementation initiatives fail so miserably. It completely ignores that knowledge workers have enough autonomy to ignore imposed business process. Billions of dollars invested into Sales Force Automation were written off because the most successful salespeople refused to conform to the processes embedded into these applications. I have personally witnessed Accounting Departments breaking business processes flowing info from one application (Project Accounting) into another (AR) to produce invoices in Excel. This risk needs to be understood and mitigated, because when ignored it leads to ROI disappointments, which leads to management skepticism of IT’s claim to importance, which leads to reduced investment in IT. Adoption and compliance management is a pivotal issue.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...This post title written by Larry Dignan does not sport a question mark, I think is begged for. I do not question superiority of on-demand (SaaS) model or quality of Salesforce.com service offering. What I really want to learn is HOW does this model work for their customers in terms of return on their investment? Did they realize improvements in their sales effectiveness, if that what they expected from this investment? In other words WHAT are the Salesforce.com (CRM) customers expectations and how do they measure their success or failure? I wait for a day when we stop evaluating tool vendors on the basis of their sales achievements and start to look at success ratio of their customers achieving expected returns on their investments. This is not a reflection on Salesforce.com specifically, but on IT industry value system in general.
Chef of the very respectable restaurant in South Hampton (Silvers), once reacted to McDonald’ board boasting “Served 5 million customers” with this interpretation - “Eat shit - a gazillion flies can’t be wrong”.
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