CRM: The Essential Guide

Overview

This guide provides insight to help you take a more customer-centric view of your business. It walks you through how to weigh and consider your CRM options, asking questions such as:

- How can CRM address customer-facing processes unique to your industry?
- How can CRM work with your company's specific business processes?
- What CRM capabilities are available that will help you keep pace with rapid changes in your business and market?
- How can CRM deliver quantifiable business results?
- Are there implementation approaches that mitigate the expense and risk for your business?

Companies need to take a strategic and informed approach to their customer relationships and CRM selection. Over the years, some companies have spent large sums on CRM only to have it fail to deliver the results they had hoped for. When CRM deployments do not meet expectations, it is often due to a lack of clear business strategy or executive sponsorship, poor technology fit, inadequate planning, or a combination of these factors. As explained in this paper, CRM is first and foremost a strategy, and CRM technology enables and supports this unique business strategy—not the other way around. To avoid common pitfalls, it’s important to be aware of this and other core CRM success principles discussed in this guide.