Year: 2008

I get the impression that most CRM vendors are at best deeply suspicious of CRM consultants. Not surprisingly, as a CRM consultant myself, I’d argue the negative impression is undeserved, and that we provide considerably more benefit to vendors than they realize. The common complaints are that access to the Continue Reading

I was quoted in Computing the other week making somewhat unsupportive remarks about the CRM vendor’s attempts to harness social networking. In essence my feelings are that companies need to understand the impact of social networking rather than concern themselves about taming it. If we go on a brief historical Continue Reading

The following is a copy of an article I wrote for Winning Edge Magazine published by the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management (ISMM) under the title ‘Can we fix it, yes we can’ where I attempted in 700 words to explain how to revive a failing CRM system: Can Continue Reading

As I’ve touched on in previous posts, the art of getting value out of CRM is to embed key business processes within the technology. While a lot of attention gets paid to sales and marketing processes, ‘downstream’ areas, such as order fulfilment, are often overlooked but often offer rich potential Continue Reading

One of the points I made in a recent post on CRM requirements specification, was the part that education plays in CRM requirements gathering. In brief, the more people understand about the use of CRM technology, the better their contribution to the requirements gathering process. Expanding on that a little; Continue Reading

I was talking to a salesman the other day about a sale he’s working on. We discussed his potential client’s requirements, and I asked him what pricing he was putting forward. The figure he came up with was considerably less than I would have expected, and considerably less than I Continue Reading

I was asked this week what the pit-falls were of implementing CRM technology. This is the sort of question that can tempt you into gushing out a long list of potential hazards, but, when you come to think about it, for many, maybe most people there are very few pit-falls Continue Reading

Well another week brings more economic bad news. Recession seems inevitable, so I figure it might be a good time to try and work out what it means for the CRM industry. Anyway these are my thoughts: Firstly, you’d figure that people are going to spend a lot less on Continue Reading

In retrospect, suggesting that the Titanic was unsinkable, was hardly the most accurate of representations. The origins are interesting though. ‘The Shipbuilder’ magazine published an article in 1911 where the term ‘practically unsinkable’ was used. The article in turn seems to have borrowed extensively from a White Star Line publicity Continue Reading

As promised, shameless plug number two. Last week I mentioned CRM VM, but the other new service we’ve launched is CRM SOS (second opinion service). As the name suggests we’re giving people the opportunity to get an independent second opinion if something a vendor tells them doesn’t feel quite right. Continue Reading