Comments on: Define Your Needs Before Buying CRM

By: BMW Sydney

BMW Sydney — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:00:41 +0000

It makes sense with any substantial investment (not just financial investments) to clearly identify your needs beforehand.

Some of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen in business usually start with the decision maker failing to identify his/her needs to start with. The elation of a ‘great’ purchase on transient criteria is short lived when the product doesn’t fulfill it’s essential tasks.

With something as crucial to so many businesses as CRM, this initial process of needs identification is all the more important.

By: Nic

Nic — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 01:43:28 +0000

I agree, this is a great point!
When buying any software first know what you want before you even start to look at software solutions that try to change what you want to what they have… not that great!

By: Neil Vineberg

Neil Vineberg — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 15:24:18 +0000

There’s a new widget – a One-Click Phone-Calling Button for Web Pages, Blogs and Email – called Click-and-Connect by Jaduka.

SmallBizTechnology just blogged about it: http://www.smallbiztechnology.com/index.shtml.

Get dialed via a button in your email. For marketers and sales teams, etc., it stimulates action at the point of impulse. Takes seconds to set up. And you get 60 minutes of calling free on setup.

A complete CRM solution? Nope. If you cannot afford one (as a small business), this is a low cost tool with potentially tons of value.

The URL where you can get it is:
http://shop.jaduka.com.

By: David Elkington

David Elkington — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 21:21:31 +0000

This is a great point. I wish more companies understood this. I am a partner in a company that provides a Hosted CRM application that focuses on the inside sales space (InsideSales.com). Companies/CEOs will often look for CRM solutions only because they understand and believe that it will help their business. The problem is that they don’t understand their own buisness.

You made a comment – “analyzing your current processes and methods, flagging the procedures you want to enhance or areas you want to improve in efficiency”.

We often have companies subscribe to our CRM application without knowing these things. As a result, implementations are slow (and often never completed), and we usually see these companies drop our product. Though we encourage and to some degree require these basic questions be answered before we begin an implementation, companies not knowing their own needs is the reason we see the greatest number failed CRM implementations.