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What is Customer Relationship Management? | ||
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Everybody who profits from CRM has their own
definition of what it is, but theyíre agreed as to what it is not: CRM
isnít about technology any more than hospitality is about throwing a
welcome mat on your front porch.
Properly understood, CRM is ìa philosophy that puts the customer at the design point, itís getting intimate with the customer,î in Shahnamís words. Mike Littell, president of the CRM Division of EDS puts it this way: ìWe view CRM more as a strategy than a process. Itís designed to understand and anticipate the needs of the current and potential customer base a company has.î Once you nail that, Littell says, thereís ìa plethora of technology out there that helps capture customer data and external sources, and consolidate it in a central warehouse to add intelligence to the overall CRM strategy.î Jim Dickie, managing partner of Boulder-based Insight Technology Group says that while the basic idea behind CRM is simple, implementations are often bollixed because ìCEOs are suffering from techno lust, in love with shortcuts, and are operating with a sense of urgency. As soon as anyone in any industry does this right, everyone else wants to jump on the bandwagon and have an instant solution. When a CEO sees the technology her competitorís using to bash her brains out, she simply orders the same stuff for her company. Thereís so much pressure on CEOs to do it now that they usually manage to avoid doing it right,î Dickie says. CRM and marketing expert Dick Lee, principal of Minneapolis-based Hi-Yield Marketing agrees that CRM is ìa customer-centric business strategy that triggers changes in functional roles in the company that require new engineering processes, which requires a solid tech base to support it.î Translation: First you change your business approach, then you re-engineer the roles in your company to support that new approach, then ó and only then ó do you start talking to CRM technology vendors. While Lee agrees that the most prevalent misconception among CEOs is that CRM is about the software, ìyou can show the CEO heís wrong about this because beneath the idea that CRM is software is the idea that your company can become more customer-friendly without any change in the organization.î Lee cited the recent Wall Street Journal article on the General Motors audit on what the company would have to change to be able to make cars to order. The answer? ìWeíll have to change everything.î Simply put, successful CRM is a fundamental, often painful change in how a company is organized -- the sort of changes that need the CEOís backing. Bill Brendler, president of Houston-based Brendler & Associates says bluntly ìsuccessful CRM always starts with top management. If they donít lead the charge, it wonít happen.î Change in an organization thatís established is difficult. Thatís where the real heavy work comes in. ìPeople want to slam-dunk the technology, but we try to tell them itís not about technoloty, itís about a new way of doing things, a new way of doing business,î Brendler says. ìThe vision thingî is indispensable, Brendler says -- along with a healthy dose of commitment and guts to lead the charge. As a wise man once said, where thereís no vision the people perish. The New Business Strategy
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Liz Shahnam, CRM
analyst with META Group, says CRM is ìa buzzword thatís really not
so new. Whatís new is the technology is allowing us to do what we
could do at the turn of the century with the neighborhood grocer. He had
few enough customers and enough brainpower to keep track of everyoneís
preferences. Technology has allowed us to go back to the future to this
model.î