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CRM – "One Size" Fits No One

Kevin Buckley | Articles > From the section: CRM

October, 2014 |

Developing a closer relationship with customers and prospects by using CRM software has always been attractive value proposition. The challenge of a CRM implementation has always been cost to implement, time to benefit and user adoption.

History

Years ago CRM software was hot – the Holy Grail that was going to deliver a 360-degree customer view. Great vision, why wouldn't you want it? So why were there so many failures? Because it was too big, too hairy, and just too hard. When we finally saw through the emperor's new clothes it boiled down to these simple facts: no company can afford to lay out millions of dollars and 18 months to implement software before seeing any return.

In 2000 a few small companies that had a breakthrough revelation – deliver CRM through the Internet. They devised a system that ran on their own servers and could be purchased like a service. You could simply turn it on when you needed it. Long implementation cycles and huge upfront costs became a thing of the past, and customers experienced a phenomenally quick return on investment. SaaS CRM (On Demand, Cloud, etc) is the hot thing.

Current Situation

Now that the SaaS CRM vendors have significantly reduced the cost and time to implement a CRM solution, the user adoption issue needs to be fixed.

In order to drive user adoption, companies need a CRM that supports their unique business model. Within companies, customer service, sales and marketing all have different requirements. Companies operate in different markets (B-to-B, B-to-C, B-to-B-to-C, Citizens Services), use sales processes optimized for their markets (inside sales, field sales, agents) and numerous distribution models (direct, indirect and distributors).

The challenge SaaS CRM vendors are now facing is how to address the dynamic nature of sales, service and marketing. Some SaaS companies build a generic or"one size fit all" CRM with a goal to provide a 360 degree view of the customer while other specialize on a functional area like sales or on a defined industry such as retail. Often companies that build out a generic CRM look to partners to provide industry specific functionality or add missing functionality like social CRM.

The trade off in using a generic CRM with extensive customizations is increased time and money. This is why many of the earlier implementations failed. A specialized CRM vendor already has many of the business requirements included in the product which reduces the cost and time to implement. In either case companies will need to integrate with other systems as the CRM grows within the enterprise.

CRM Recommendation

We started this discussion by observing that the majority of CRM failures are due to the cost to implement, time to benefit and user adoption. The best way to achieve success is to focus on solving a business need, quickly implement a solution and generate a ROI. A specialized CRM can help you achieve your goals quickly and avoid the problems associated with past CRM failures.

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