By my reckoning, we’re now in the third stage of the customer relationship management (CRM) evolutionary cycle: the agonizingly painful rebuilding phase following the second stage (the horrible crash). The second stage, in turn, was preceded by the first stage:…
This represents the third and final part of a three-part open letter to corporate executives who are struggling with the issue of making CRM successful in their organizations. In the previous Parts I and II of this column, I outlined…
This is the second of a three-part open letter to corporate executives who are struggling with making CRM successful in their organizations. In Part I of this installment, I outlined the qualifications of the three-point pledge and described in detail…
This is an open letter to all you corporate executives out there who are grappling with the hoary task of designing and implementing CRM in your organization. Despite all of what you’ve heard and read about in surveys, research reports,…
While nearly every business would claim that the information it gathers about its customers is a mission-critical, strategic asset, many don’t treat this “asset” accordingly. Most customer data is left lying around in different systems, and in various stages of…
In my last column, I described some “requirements” that many project management experts describe as essential to success in implementing CRM, but, in my opinion and based on my own experience, are really more “nice to haves.” I make this…
Having recently attended a CRM project management conference, I was struck by the convergence of recommended methodologies and practices that project management specialists propound for CRM implementations. While I was encouraged by the fact that some many people in the…
While many pundits predicted earlier this year that CRM — due to its strategic importance — would be immune from corporate budget cutbacks in 2001, this is clearly not turning out to be the case. CRM has been affected by…
Businesses have long realized that not all customers are created equal. But, thanks to digital processes technology, they are just beginning to measure in real dollar terms, just how unequal they really are. Let’s consider just three broad segments of…
I always laugh when some so-called "CRM Guru" denounces hidebound, greedy, stupid corporate executives who refuse to re-align their organization’s management reporting structures and business operations around customers. These CRM "experts" often criticize corporate types for seeing CRM exclusively as…