CRM finally seems to have come of age
There is no doubt that, after being hailed as the ultimate in 21st century business tools, with a rapid return on investment, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) failed to live up to its promises, and sales of the technology lost pace. Now this formerly much-hyped technology is finally coming of age.
CRM software is simplifying many business processes and becoming more user-friendly. The result being CRM is actually starting to live up to its early promise.
Derrick Cameron of IT firm Eximium comments, “In its early days, the first and second generation CRM technology was supposed to propel businesses into a new customer centered mindset. In truth, the technology wasn’t where it should have been. It was too complex and difficult to use effectively. Instead of making the lives of sales people and customer service personnel easier and their jobs more efficient, it tended to make processes and tasks harder and less efficient.
“The result was that early adopters found few real benefits. In effect, CRM became regarded as good in theory with few practical business applications. The expense, effort and time required in implementing a CRM solution and to train people, rarely worked out for anyone,” adds Derrick.
But the signs are that 2008 will be a different story. “Interest in CRM is picking up again because users are coming to realise that what they had in place was over-complicated. There is no need to have-it-all and do-it-all to benefit from CRM,” Derrick adds.
Derrick’s main three ‘must have’ points to remember about CRM are:
1. Incident Management - know when and what complaints customers have logged with your company.
2. Sales Management - know what a customer has bought, enquired about and their credit record.
3. Market Segmentation - know what location and sector the customer operates in and the types of products other people in that sector have previously bought.
CRM products have matured to the point where users can quickly and easily make use of the functionality of the CRM application that best suits their needs. “Get these 3 processes right and the CRM package is likely to quickly pay for itself,” adds Derrick.
This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 1:17 pm and is filed under Business Advice, Business Solutions, IT Advice, News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
