Essential CRM v Nice to Have CRM
An interesting survey from Forrester Consultancy.
Summary? Purely my view -
CRM is a growing priority for businesses of all shapes and sizes.
A business can spend loadsa dosh on a CRM system - but what a waste if the CRM is not “right” for the business
CRM must fit with business needs - this survey prioritizes the needs of 260 companies as an example (no surprises for the Woo Team)
http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,44179,00.html
January 10, 2008
CRM Best Practices Adoption
by William Band
with Sharyn C. Leaver, Mary Ann Rogan
Organizations continue to spend heavily on customer relationship management (CRM) — $11 billion annually by 2010 — to grow the top line, improve the customer experience, and boost the productivity of customer-facing workers. To better understand how enterprises can get the most value from this investment, we surveyed 260 business and technology decision-makers and influencers to discover their strengths and weaknesses in adopting 11 sets of CRM capabilities consisting of 150 best practices. We found that adopting CRM best practices is a big challenge for many organizations. A significant percentage of the executives surveyed evaluate their capabilities to be poor/below average for all categories: 1) marketing — 37%; 2) customer analytics — 36%; 3) customer service — 35%; 4) indirect sales — 33%; 5) customer data management — 31%; 6) eCommerce — 30%; 7) customer strategy — 25%; 
technology infrastructure — 23%; 9) field service — 22%; 10) people management — 20%; and 11) direct sales — 17%. Disappointment with CRM is usually the result of poorly conceived strategies that lack a laser focus on improving a specific set of business capabilities to increase revenues or reduce costs.
Tags: Cost, CRM, Right tools for the Job
