Gartner Highlights the Past, Present and Future of CRM

Mark J

Updated · Jun 30, 2010

Gartner analyst, Ed Thompson, recently laid out an expansive view of CRM’s past, present and future with a clear message: Change is happening fast. This Search CRM article takes a look at Thompson’s one-hour keynote address that spanned the nearly 30-year history of CRM.


“Corporate metrics such as earnings and revenue, and operational metrics such as how many calls a contact center takes per hour or how many visitors hit a website are easy to track by comparison. ‘The problem is process,’ Thompson said. ‘Companies that excel at CRM excel at process metrics.’

“Thompson also tried to deflect criticism that Gartner was responsible for labeling CRM a failure. ‘In 2001, the reputation was that CRM projects fail,’ he noted. ‘No, what we said was some particular projects fail. What failed was sales force automation.’

“Those projects failed, he added, because of errors such as enabling too many functions, using dirty data and a lack of executive buy-in.”

Read the Full “Gartner Outlines CRM’s Past, Present and Future” Story at Search CRM

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