Could you be your CRM's worst enemy?

Is your personal management philosophy helping or hindering your organisation’s CRM initiatives? The latest research indicates it’s more likely to be slowing progress. Here’s how to find out...

 

Do you think your marketing department should own your CRM initiative? Do you think customers are the key stakeholders? Do you think CRM is ‘useful’? It’s very probable you answered yes to all of these, but the reality is you’re probably contributing to CRM failure rates. That’s according to the latest research* by IBM Business Consulting Services, which surveyed 372 global organisa- tions this year to gain some insights into what makes CRM projects successful. (The full white paper can be downloaded here).

According to IBM, three of the most important rules of thumb from the research are:

1.

Within a company, Corporate - not Marketing or Sales - should own CRM. When Corporate owns CRM, there is a 25 to 60 percent greater chance of success than with other ownership models (see Figure 1A and 1B). Today, only 26 percent of global respondents have Corporate-owned CRM.

December 2004

Figure 1A. Actual impact of CRM ownership on success.

Figure 1B. Where companies are today: Ownership of CRM within companies.

2.

Rally senior management to actively and strongly support CRM as strategic and critical. Otherwise, there will be trouble ahead. When senior management supports CRM as critical or strategic, it is a major contributor to overall CRM success. It turns out, senior management viewing CRM as "useful, not critical" actually detracts from success (see Figure 2A and 2B) likely because this mindset sends a message to employees that the CRM effort is not a company priority.

 

Figure 2A. Actual impact of senior management view on CRM success.

Figure 2B. Where companies are today: Senior management view of CRM.

3.

Pay attention to stakeholder alignment, especially by aligning with employees; they are as important as customers. Companies aligning CRM goals with the objectives of employees are realizing the most success with CRM; those aligning with customer objectives are a close second (see Figure 3).

 


Figure 3. Actual impact of stakeholder alignment with CRM success

For further information on CRM, visit the online Pavilion at www.istart.co.nz/crm.htm

For information on IBM visit their virtual exhibit in the System / App. Integration Pavilion

* IBM White paper: Doing CRM right: What it takes to be successful with CRM Asia Pacific view, CRM global study - 2004

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