Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Projects are fundamentally different from other standard software deployments, from both call center and field use points of view. First, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software packages in accounting, controlling, supply chain management, or human resources are relatively stable compared to CRM systems. Second, the success of ERP projects does not depend on end user satisfaction to the same extent as the success of CRM projects does.

                                                          

Customer Relationship Management is different. Systems for sales, marketing, partner management, and customer service are often still understood as optional parts of a companies' IT landscape. Employees tend to look suspiciously at these types of systems since they fear that maintaining the data would require an unfair share of their personal time, or, even worse, they would unveil data about their personal performance.

Furthermore, CRM systems have to satisfy much higher requirements regarding agility and flexibility compared to other standard software packets. When an organisation e.g. decides to re-adjust its market positioning due to rapidly changing competitive behaviour it will most likely also re-arrange sales processes and/or sales territories. If the CRM system cannot adopt these changes in no time it renders itself useless for this aspect of deployment.

Besides IT driven issues end user satisfaction is key to the success of a CRM project. High end user acceptance typically means success and low end user acceptance means failure. Even though all business requirements have been carefully implemented, big CRM systems have failed in the past because the end useres rejected the system due to usability issues which has lead to time-consuming and costly re-implementations.

Successful CRM implementations present recurring patterns: for example tight cooperation with selected end users during the the whole project life cycle, i.e. beginning with the first design and prototyping phases through the final system rollout. Without end user feedback and institutionalized communications loops CRM endeavours have a fair chance to either fail or to go beyond the planned budget by factors.

CRM Projects need measurable goals. Notable CRM Projects have failed because critical success factors have not been defined. This may sound trivial in the first place but the lack of those factors has far-reaching consequences. A proven method for successful CRM projects is the early introduction of mutually agreed score cards or similar manegement tools for the critical business and technical aspects of the planned system.

Less is more. CRM system vendours tend to advertise their products with the high configurability of their software. Customers, who made massive and imprudent use of this feature finally experienced a system which not only went beyond the budget by factors but also produced huge operating and maintenance costs and which had such a limited upgradibility that a complete re-implementation often was the most cost-efficient option for a release change. Based on this experience the standard funtionality of a CRM system should only be changed if this is absolutely critical for reaching important business goals. This implies the need for priotitized and detailed planning as well as for controlled, interdisciplinary and cross-organizational communication processes.

Based on our many years of experiencewe offer you tailored consulting packages to make your CRM project successful.

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