A Human View On CRM Adoption
Wayne Human, head of Product Strategy and Innovation in the Software Engineering business unit at The IQ Business Group, feels that CRM has generally failed to live up to its expectations. It is only now that the application technology is beginning to deliver desired results.
Early on, the problem with the first- and second-generation CRM systems was that they were too complicated for employee use and were consequently unable to deliver on the promise of customer-centric service. Incomplete deployments and poor user adoption did not help in generating ROI and CRM was in danger of being relegated to a great idea not worthy of the time and effort necessary for a practical application.
Human states that users are now realizing that they do not really need what he calls “have-it-all and do-it-all to benefit from CRM”. Incident management, sales management, and market segmentation are the three main aspects that a CRM should have, feels Human.
The new CRM applications are mature versions of the earlier ones and they no longer pretend to be a cure-all for all your business woes. Their ease-of-use and practicality are turning them into ubiquitous desktop applications and this, in the final analysis, is going to be the major driving factor behind the spread of CRM technology.
There is a large issue regarding CRM failures that has not been addressed before to my knowledge. After moving from sales to leading a large CRM implementation, I realized that sales reps were not being truthful about their intention to use CRM. I then conducted an extensive research project on this phenomenon and have discovered “The CRM Dilemma.” I have outlined my research on “The CRM Dilemma” on my blog of the same name. My research has revealed a far greater threat to CRM that stems from the fear that sales reps have towards activity controls through recording their activities in CRM. They will in fact work together to defeat CRM. I invite you to have a look at my research which has now been noted on several internal Microsoft blogs. I welcome any feedback you have on my research.
There is a definite shift from technology (first-) towards users (second-generation CRMs). Now business users, not IT personnel, are in charge of buying decisions, and CRM vendors should address their expectations – ease of use and a few mentioned above aspects – to be successful. Our sales force must-have requirement was tight integration with Outlook, so after evaluating a few solutions we ended up with Salesforce + InvisibleCRM (www.invisiblecrm.com). Everyone is happy.
In my opinion, I believe CRM is a challenge to successfully implement in ANY progressive sales organization for one very simple reason:
It is impossible to force a successful, relationship driven salesperson to record his or her activities in a transaction-focused manner. It just doesn’t match. Ask an accountant or a finance major however, to use CRM and likely, it won’t be a challenge for that company.
CRM success and effective salespeople? We’re talking square pegs and round holes here.
Hi, I noticed this interesting discussion and thought I’d share my thoughts as well.
I totally agree that it’s a challenge to drive a salesperson to record his or her activities into CRM. However there are ways in which we can overcome this upto 80%. The reason I am so confident about this is because I’ve driven our CRM initiative internally and I am responsible to ensure that all sales people keep their CRM data up to date. Here are a few tips:
1. Training and workshops are very important and must be done well.
2. Pick 1 or 2 change agents from the sales org and get them to support you in the CRM drive.
3. Re-iterate the advantages of using a CRM (from a sales perspective) time and again.
4. Get commitments from the head of sales and other key stake holders to make sure all reviews happen using the reports / data in CRM system. Some reports will be inaccurate initially but it’s worth taking this risk.
5. Reward selected sales people who use the system in the best way. Rewards need not be monetary or significant but make sure he / she gets recognized for their usage.
6. Finally, if you are also recording bookings / deals in CRM then make sure the revenue recognition / finance team begins using this data to recognize revenues. Sales incentives are obviously based on revenues and when it comes to bonuses / incentives sales guys will do anything to make sure they get their money.
Does this sound impossible – it did to me as well. But today we are in a much better situation when it comes to accuracy of data in our CRM system.
All the best!