There Is No Excuse Not To Be Deploying CRM

December 02nd, 2009, by Martin Schneider

I had an interesting IM conversation with Sugar associate Mitch Lieberman based on a blog post he wrote the other day. The post was around CRM complexity – but what sparked my imagination was a point in somewhat the opposing direction.

Yes, technology can be complex and at times frustrating. And in years past, technology was a limiting factor when it came to deploying systems like CRM. But today, a lot has changed. Now, I would argue that technology – while still complex at times – is not a barrier to CRM deployments but actually the chief enabler.

Think about it. Ten or 15 years ago you needed hardware and other infrastructure (as well as administration smarts) to get a full-fledged CRM system in place. (This is partly the reason why outdated products like Act! survived.) But now, all you need is a few laptops and an internet connection, and you’re ready to go with CRM. And not just traditional CRM – you can get into social CRM, sales 2.0, whatever you want to call it…

The costs involved are even far lower. There are open source solutions, small monthly fee SaaS and cloud options, and much of the social CRM tools like LinkedIn and Twitter are free for the most part.

So, if cost and technology are not an issue anymore – and you are not deploying a full service CRM initiative, what’s your excuse?

Author profile: Martin Schneider

Martin Schneider is Director of Product Marketing at SugarCRM. In his role, Martin handles competitive intelligence, marketing positioning and analyst relations. Prior to joining SugarCRM, Martin held the position of senior analyst with technology industry research firm the 451 Group, headquartered in NYC. Martin covered the CRM landscape for the 451, analysing and consulting on such topics as Software-as-a-Service, business intelligence and open source applications. Martin also covered the CRM space as news editor with CRM Magazine in New York.

See all posts by Martin Schneider

One Response to “There Is No Excuse Not To Be Deploying CRM”

Normand Béïque says:

16/12/2009 at 21:53

Very good point Martin.

We are a management consultant firm using an exclusive business Intelligence and process reengineering approach, applied to Marketing and Sales. To stay neutral, we don’t sale any software, we work with our customer’s existing software and interface them to crate powerful dashboards in Excell through Crystall report. So as you can imagine we see all kinds of situation and CRM.

What strikes me the most is I still keep meeting sales force with manual activity reports filed by hand and sent by fax, in 2009?!?!? At the same time I meet enterprises with the latest upscale CRM, but they barely use 10% of their CRM’s potential. A lot of the “less than 1 year installations” are really not a success, because of poor training, a total lack of objectives and expectation, or no planning at all. It leaves the business totally breathless financially and unable or uninterested in reopening the working processes.

I agree, there are no excuses not to have a CRM today, but software alone is not a magic wand, it is only a tool, but a hell of a good one. The true return is the simplicity and efficiency of the reports they produces. Since I’m rarely impressed, we have to build our own.
A good report should present only the key indicators and business drivers in a 1 page format. A drill down function is essential and please no gages, clocks and lights.
Norman

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