By providing a comprehensive view of a client's lifetime involvement with your company, customer relationship management software is supposed to be one of the wonders of the electronic age for business. Theoretically, a complete purchase and service request history can streamline the sales process, and a careful profile of known preferences and dislikes can enhance marketing and even product design efforts. However, success is proving to be elusive for many people who have invested heavily in the software. A recent Gartner Group research note projects that 55 percent of all CRM software projects through 2005 will come up empty. The reason, says Sheryl Kingstone, program manager with Boston-based Yankee Group, is that a lot of people both inside and outside the company have to be able to access parts of the same information, and the environment is not the same from month to month.
Business processes can still change in midscope through acquisitions or management changes.
You can be doing everything right, but business changes so quickly. Adam Klaber, managing partner for the CRM practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers, is not so pessimistic. But I do see companies and executives whose expectations have not been met. Yet the chatter in the industry still suggests that the road is littered with CRM projects that have not lived up to expectations. Industry experts suggest that failures are due to an unwillingness to embrace the business processes that are part and parcel of a successful CRM system.