Loading ...A few months ago I sat in on a CRM system evaluation meeting for a manufacturing firm. The project lead was presenting and comparing the results of four different applications, and was highlighting the reasons the team was recommending one choice over the others.
After listening to the discussion of the technical merits of the various systems, the CEO asked, "I am sure your selection is the right technology choice, but tell me, is it the right business choice? What will we be doing better after we install this system that justifies the time and money investment required to take this project forward?"
Those are great questions, ones every project team should explore. To get some perspectives on these issues, let me share some of the data CSO Insights recently gathered as part of a recent survey of 457 firms that implemented a CRM system.
We asked participating sales executives to assess the impact that technology was having on their sales performance. A consolidated review of their responses found that 71.9 percent stated that CRM was improving their performance, 18.2 percent said it was having no effect, and 9.9 percent didn’t know.
Initially we see that for more than seven of 10 firms there is a plus side to their CRM initiative. But these figures prompt a follow-up question: What exactly is different as a result of using this technology? To get a more definitive answer we asked these execs to get specific about what "better" looked like now that the CRM applications were in the hands of their salespeople. The figure highlights their responses.
I have normally found it difficult to put a hard number value on improved communications; other items on this list are easier to translate into real dollars. For example:
These are just a few of hundreds of successes we have benchmarked over the past two years. This proves that CRM can represent real value. As these types of results are achieved by more firms, we think CEOs will finally see that the promises made in the 1990s regarding how technology will reinvent how we sell have become a reality.
Jim Dickie is a partner with CSO Insights, a research firm that specializes in benchmarking CRM and sales effectiveness initiatives. He can be reached at www.csoinsights.com
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Dave,
Great to get this kind of information. My question in response is what kind of CRM did they implement? Did it stand alone as it is out of the box, or was it customized and integrated to other back-end systems for these companies who had such nice success rates?
If customized and/or integrated, what changed or was improved from the stand alone version of the CRM system the companies are using?
Thanks,
Ardath