Top 10 CRM Articles for 2006

SMBs Set to Spend US$2.4B on Hosted/SaaS CRM and ERP/SCM Services in 2007

There are many CRM software packages which offer all sorts of feature sets to their customers. I’d say all offer contact management, and many offer sales automation, technical support/service tracking and marketing functionality. Some go as far as providing event management and financial smarts. I’m interested in finding out, which features do most small businesses find essential to their CRM solution?

A fantastic article has been written on the Newsfactor Network that talks about improving a new staff member’s adoption of your CRM system when first joining your company.

A great quote:

“You see these very highly scripted scenarios, but what would help more is for a rep to see a day in the life of a customer,” he says. For instance, a rep could go through a session where the customer looks for information on the Web site, doesn’t find it, and then gets frustrated trying to navigate the automated voice response system.

“By the time they get to the rep, the customer is irritated, and now the rep knows why,”

Have a read of the full article here.

Over the past few months, my company has been involved in developing a new CRM system. We pretty much have our first version to a feature complete state. During this time, we’ve had one major customer who has been using it within their business. So, we’ve pretty much designed the system with as much communication and feedback from this customer as possible. That way we could aim to have something that is suitable for “real life” effectiveness in a real business environment.

What I’ve realised however, is that even with this level of feedback, the design is still lacking. When trying to use the CRM system within our own business, I find that there are important areas that just don’t work as well as they should.

What does this say to me? Well, I’m not really sure, but I think that those who design CRM systems should have this important feedback from their customers. Also, I think that they should have some skilled people who have knowledge about effective business systems and also program design. This would help the design to be as effective as possible.

By streamlining CRM software in this way, you get advantages like efficient business sysyems (for the businesses who use the CRM system), but also (from the developer’s point of view) well utilised software, and most importantly happier, more effective and growing business customers. Really a win-win for both sides.

I recently noticed that one of the top search results in Google for CRM is Wikipedia.

Disregarding the Wikipedia story for a moment, the first paragraph states:
However, CRM is not a technology itself, but rather a holistic approach to an organisation’s philosophy, placing the emphasis firmly on the customer.

The part that I’m noting in particular is “placing the emphasis firmly on the customer”. How many CRM solutions actually have their emphasis on the customer? I’ve seen many CRM systems, particularly the cheaper ones focus on sales and not the customer. They are not the same thing, and I would say that customers are more important. If you have no customers, then you have no sales. Simple.

I think it would be beneficial for CRM designers to note that they have a special opportunity to help businesses focus in the right area for improved health of their business. I believe CRM systems should teach and help businesses streamline processes and improve customer service and general relationships.

CRM is not a sales tool, it’s a system that helps your business focus on the customer, where it should be.