IT directors should justify customer relationship
management roll-outs on the basis of long-term business growth
rather than short-term cost savings, analyst group Gartner said
last week.
Gartner's analysts also told delegates at the firm's annual
CRM conference that there was likely to be a new
wave of build-your-own CRM projects undertaken this year, because
less than 60% of current packaged applications met the specific
requirements of companies.
"Once an enterprise implements packaged applications, it often
finds that the processes it has modelled have become rigid and
inflexible," said John Radcliffe, research vice-president at
Gartner.
"Improving business processes can be made difficult once an
off-the-shelf application is installed."
But Gartner's headline warning was that funding for CRM
initiatives is regularly only approved for projects with payback
periods of less than 12 months, with the emphasis on cutting
operational costs rather than on improving customer loyalty to
boost long-term prospects.
It said that CRM implementations were often treated as pure
software roll-outs, without sufficient attention paid to making
business processes more customer-centred.
"Most firms say 'we've done CRM,' but it is not just installing
a box," said Scott Nelson, managing vice-president at Gartner.
"Organisations need to do more than claim that they are
customer-centric to achieve this aim."
Nelson added that consumer power would need to be leveraged into
CRM systems, and the inclusion of social networks and communities
into CRM plans would soon climb the agenda.
Related article:
CRM helps EIC increase contract wins
Comment on this article:
computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk