User Dissatisfaction with Customer Relationship Management
The customer relationship management (CRM) industry is approaching a ten year anniversary. Despite its longevity, there continues to be a pervasive sense of dissatisfaction within the end user community relative to CRM's perceived delivered value. There are three fundamental factors contributing to this:
1. The industry fails to articulate a clear picture of the value it provides outside of the feature/function attributes of the technology.
2. Senior management (user organizations) view CRM in terms of infrastructure deployment instead of in operational and strategic terms.
3. Because the user community fails to approach CRM as an operational strategy, its perceived value is limited to technology efficiency. User organizations must move beyond technology and process productivity to properly assess the system's potential. Only then, can the vendor and user communities establish meaningful discussion about value.
The industry does itself a gross disfavor by using tired and essentially empty terms when discussing the application of CRM. The rate of technology development has largely outpaced the development of management techniques to effectively use the technology. Vendors base their pricing on the level of sophistication their product has, but end users balk because they are unable to leverage a solution's capabilities. As a result, users do not assess the added value highly.
It is time for the CRM industry to more accurately articulate the implied value proposition of their solutions and for senior management to take a leadership position and articulate a true CRM operational strategy. Without these two forces coming together, CRM will be forever relegated to a position of infrastructure and will become one more footnote in the history of failed management concepts.
The Issue
The motivation to write this article was spawned by two recent articles. The first article was based on a survey of CRM experts who explained why they believe CRM initiatives fail. Although some of their comments were refreshingly accurate, there were a number of references to tired old phrases that do little to improve understanding of the real issues and opportunities associated with CRM. The second article was based on a survey of chief executive officers (CIO) about their satisfaction with CRM applications. The survey reported a rather low level of approval and cited various technology and productivity deficiencies. These two articles are representative of the disconnect between galloping technology and the inertia of many organizations to change their operating paradigm. The continued use of empty phrases and the emphasis on implementation as opposed to strategy is not going to help narrow this gap.
The customer relationship management (CRM) industry is approaching a ten year anniversary. Despite its longevity, there continues to be a pervasive sense of dissatisfaction within the end user community relative to CRM's perceived delivered value. There are three fundamental factors contributing to this:
1. The industry fails to articulate a clear picture of the value it provides outside of the feature/function attributes of the technology.
2. Senior management (user organizations) view CRM in terms of infrastructure deployment instead of in operational and strategic terms.
3. Because the user community fails to approach CRM as an operational strategy, its perceived value is limited to technology efficiency. User organizations must move beyond technology and process productivity to properly assess the system's potential. Only then, can the vendor and user communities establish meaningful discussion about value.
The industry does itself a gross disfavor by using tired and essentially empty terms when discussing the application of CRM. The rate of technology development has largely outpaced the development of management techniques to effectively use the technology. Vendors base their pricing on the level of sophistication their product has, but end users balk because they are unable to leverage a solution's capabilities. As a result, users do not assess the added value highly.
It is time for the CRM industry to more accurately articulate the implied value proposition of their solutions and for senior management to take a leadership position and articulate a true CRM operational strategy. Without these two forces coming together, CRM will be forever relegated to a position of infrastructure and will become one more footnote in the history of failed management concepts.
The Issue
The motivation to write this article was spawned by two recent articles. The first article was based on a survey of CRM experts who explained why they believe CRM initiatives fail. Although some of their comments were refreshingly accurate, there were a number of references to tired old phrases that do little to improve understanding of the real issues and opportunities associated with CRM. The second article was based on a survey of chief executive officers (CIO) about their satisfaction with CRM applications. The survey reported a rather low level of approval and cited various technology and productivity deficiencies. These two articles are representative of the disconnect between galloping technology and the inertia of many organizations to change their operating paradigm. The continued use of empty phrases and the emphasis on implementation as opposed to strategy is not going to help narrow this gap.
No comments:
Post a Comment