| The importance of clarifying the meaning of CRM | | | | misunderstandings and confusion which often results in |
| before start | | | | lots of efforts with very limited impact on business |
| Recently I sat in a client meeting with top and selected | | | | results. This is getting very obvious in the CRM context |
| middle management discussing CRM implementation | | | | and may cost companies millions of Thai Baht. |
| approaches. During the course of the meeting, it | | | | Therefore, if you are considering a CRM idea in your |
| became very obvious that most meeting participants | | | | organization, spend sufficient time with your |
| have very different ideas about CRM. Some thought | | | | management team to clearly work out how the |
| it's just a customer system with a comprehensive | | | | company is going to utilize the concept. Ideally, this |
| customer database, others related it to better | | | | activity should lead into a well formulated and |
| customer segmentation, while again others believed | | | | communicated CRM strategy (sorry to introduce |
| implementing CRM would mean a complete shift of | | | | another buzz word) that is specific to your business. |
| the corporate culture to strengthen the brand with a | | | | What I mean with a CRM Strategy (and here the |
| strong customer service element across all touch | | | | specific part) is clarifying as tangible and measurable |
| points. | | | | as possible the overall goal and positioning of CRM in |
| My immediate thought: No wonder that (according to | | | | the company, evaluating which areas of your business |
| Metagroup) more than 50% of CRM projects fail fail | | | | should be impacted by the concept and how and what |
| since it's already so difficult to create a common | | | | you are going to include under the umbrella of a CRM |
| picture of what CRM stands for. Since clear, | | | | project and what you are going to exclude. |
| measurable objectives and well defined scope is one | | | | In some cases, we even recommend to drop the |
| of the most important success factors of any kind of | | | | word CRM completely from the agenda because it's |
| project, chances are already close to 100% that this | | | | so easy to misunderstand. Instead we suggest using |
| company won't go anywhere with their CRM initiative | | | | key ideas from the CRM concept as a guideline and |
| if they don't spend significant time within management | | | | name projects according to their specific business |
| to clarify what the company means by CRM and | | | | objective, e.g. "Call Center enhancement", "Service |
| what they want out of the system. | | | | Capability improvement", "Campaign Management |
| Indeed, I can name numerous companies in Thailand, | | | | Improvement". |
| that struggled with their CRM initiative because of | | | | The need to be specific in your wording even holds |
| unclear and inconsistent direction. One of them is now | | | | true if you are going to implement a CRM software |
| scrutinizing their past investment in a CRM system and | | | | system. The functionality of these systems usually |
| is considering starting over from scratch. Many of | | | | overlap (confusion again) with other software |
| CRM projects, that we have seen either struggled | | | | applications. For instance, for some companies a good |
| because of being defined too broadly as "save all | | | | Business Intelligence Solution may have more impact |
| problems of the world projects" and became | | | | on Customer Relationships than labeled so called CRM |
| unmanageable while others were kept too limited in a | | | | software. |
| silo manner which caused problems later when | | | | Clarifying the meaning of CRM and respective |
| integrating with other initiatives. | | | | objectives, scope and approach as clear as possible |
| In general, I am not a fan of using too many buzz | | | | to everybody in the organization before starting is a |
| words in business. Business is all about people, and | | | | simple task that should not take more than a couple of |
| people become busy and generally have problems | | | | weeks. However, the impact on project costs and |
| communicating effectively. The use of buzz words | | | | risks and realization of CRM related benefits will be |
| creates a big opportunity to oversimplify complex | | | | significant. Your bottom-line will be thankful. |
| topics and concepts and cause lots of | | | | |