CRM today Part 2 of 3 The challenges of CRM Software

With the brief overview of CRM software provided in the prior blog post in mind, lets move on with the next series installment,  the challenges of CRM software.  With the broad scope of this article series, the challenges that with will view are equally as broad, but to the same extent common amongst all most all CRM software systems.  

Here are the challenges most common with CRM software, 

1) Cost / Benefit or Return On Investment on the CRM software.   With all software implementations there typically is a evaluation process to determine the Cost  / Benefit and ROI, usually able to utilize solid tangible figures.   With CRM software there is the challenge of quantifying the value of the intangible improvements in customer relationships, customer acquisition, and customer retention prior to the implementation of the software.  Surveying and other tools can be used post implementation to quantify these aspects, unfortunately it's too late to add this to the implementation evaluation. 

2) Current technology infrastructure.   While this is becoming less of an issue, there are still challenges with integrating CRM software into existing software and hardware infrastructure.  Some examples of this are legacy or proprietary systems, such as accounting or inventory management not having the appropriate interface to integrate into a CRM system.   This can result in reduction in the the effectiveness of the CRM software as there is a limited sharing of information between.  CRM Software thrives on having the ability to fulfill all of the customer needs, and access to all customer data is imperative to addressing this.

3) Stakeholder adoption.  This is by far the greatest challenge with CRM Software today.   With even the best planned, supported, and implemented CRM, stakeholder adoption can be a challenge.   Time and time again the best designed and implemented CRM system fails to live up to expectations due to a failure in the stakeholders adopting the habits, tools, and business processes that CRM systems require.  There are many ways to better engender stakeholder adoption, some examples are,

a) Change is hard, accept that it will take longer that you think to get the results that you hope for.  Plan for a supplementary adoption plan.

b) Provide appropriate incentives to aid in adoption.   Building incentives in to the adoption plan are great, but if you fail to forecast the outcomes, even the best planned incentive will result in failing to meeting adoption expectations.

c) You might want to adopt a phased implementation model that allows you to implement the most prepared stakeholders first.   With a successful first step implementation this allow you to leverage this success to other stakeholder groups. 

Do not let these challenges cloud your view of CRM software.  In the next installment of the blog series I will review some of the emerging advantages of CRM software. 

Comments

[managementcrm]

Very interesting to read this article...very nice.