Successful customer integration doesn't come in a CRM software box. It requires innovation and agility across your organization
When it comes to creating competitive advantage through CRM, many organizations find that the market-leading products do not perform well. The inflexibility of packaged solutions, together with long and complex customization and integration projects, means they are unlikely to succeed in the increasingly dynamic world of customer-facing systems.
Time is the enemy of CRM implementations, with requirements often changing every few months.
Gaining competitive advantage from a CRM initiative requires an agile technical solution that is flexible enough to support innovative business processes and continuous improvement. One way in which this can be achieved is through 'framework' technology solutions comprising IT integration components with best-of-breed applications for highly specialized needs such as data analytics.
PA Consulting Group is independent of the major CRM software vendors. Our client experience and research indicates that a process-led approach to capturing customer value, independent of software solutions and with uncompromising attention to delivering rapid results, provides the greatest benefit to companies and their customers.
PA's successful alternative to complex CRM packages
Gartner predicts that, by 2004, 75% of CRM projects will fail to deliver a measurable return on investment.
Most enterprises see CRM as a technology solution. But a successful CRM program requires a business case, a customer strategy, innovation, and agility - supported by appropriate, agile technology. It must be a rolling program of improvement, with the customer as the focus and rapid results a necessity.
Technology infrastructure must model and support this approach rather than obstruct it with inflexible systems and long delivery times. The requirements of CRM implementations change on average every three months. Creating competitive advantage from technology requires a focus on solutions that will enable the capture of customer value for the organization and deliver value to customers.
Some of the market-leading CRM systems can be characterized by:
- Lengthy implementation timescales (12-24 months)
- Complex configuration, giving at best a 60-70% fit to business processes
- Poor ROI due to costly implementation
- Lack of competitive differentiation in CRM, leading to mediocre solutions that lack innovation
- Complex integration with stand-alone operational systems that is difficult to achieve and maintain.
The key to success is to break CRM projects into flexible, manageable chunks and develop a process-led approach. Use of flexible solutions, such as framework technologies (middleware integration products with tools to develop workflows and screens from business processes), is an emerging and highly successful alternative to complex packages.
Using framework technologies has many benefits over the 'traditional' enterprise CRM systems solutions:
- Data does not need to be replicated and stored in a front office database; it is accessed by the tool from wherever it is stored in the back office.
- The organization can focus on developing optimum customer processes and then design screens and workflows to support these. A ‘process-led’ rather than ‘application-led’ approach
- The approach supports a perfect 'fit' between system requirements and your company's customer processes and the principle of continuous process improvement
- The solution can be adopted in stages, delivering 'quick wins' in a rapid systems development environment
- Some packaged enterprise CRM solutions can cost up to five times more to implement and maintain than a framework technology solution
- Complete integration is guaranteed, and best-of-breed tools can be added to provide deep functionality in specialist areas
- Multiple channels are supported, with consistent customer processes behind throughout.
