Year: 2008

As a long standing veteran of the CRM market, I can recall what happened in the last down-turn in the economy post 9/11. Up to that point CRM vendors seemed to be springing up all over the place, thereafter there was a rapid consolidation. In recent years we’ve seen a Continue Reading

One of the things that never ceases to depress me is the hundreds of millions spent on CRM software that while live is generating marginal value for the organisation using it. In my experience the vast majority of CRM systems under perform against their potential. There are a number of Continue Reading

Quite a nice video interview on the SearchCRM site with Gartner analyst Scott Nelson at the recent Gartner CRM Summit entitled ‘CRM’s Not Dead’. Interesting observation that he feels there’s an awakening in the market that while technology is important, so too is a vision about what you are trying Continue Reading

One of the questions thrown up in open forum at the Sugar CRM event last week asked for recommendations on the best approach to training users. Since this didn’t garner a particularly illuminating or comprehensive response I thought I would set out a few thoughts on what I see as Continue Reading

While on the subject of television adverts and the Sugar event, I’ve always had great respect for the way that Unilever has marketed Pot Noodle. Pot Noodle emerged in the late 70’s as a convenient instant snack. By rights the healthy eating revolution of the new millennium should perhaps have Continue Reading

One of my favourite TV adverts is for British Telecom (BT) and features Gordon Ramsay using a carving knife to gain access to the innards of a PC, while in the background his kitchen is rapidly descending into chaos. The voice over is something along the lines of ‘Do what Continue Reading

While I was away on holiday earlier in the summer I read Richard Moore’s book ‘Heroes, Villains, & Velodromes’ which tells the story of Chris Hoy who went on to win three gold medals in Beijing. While Chris’s achievements are not surprisingly the focus of the book, there’s some intriguing Continue Reading

The reporting aspects of CRM technology produce two of the great fibs of the CRM industry: Fib number one – ‘The CRM system comes with 200 standard reports which will meet most of your needs’ (cue the salesperson to point to a long and seemingly exhaustive list of reports on Continue Reading

Sitting in on a series of CRM short-list presentations this week, I became acutely aware of just how much we seem to rely on acronyms and jargon. I had to stop a couple of sessions because it was obvious that the audience wasn’t following what was being said. Even when Continue Reading

I’ve been reading CRM RFP responses for much of the week and I’ve seen a number of references to ‘fully managed systems’. This caught my attention at first because it seemed to support the suggestion in my last post that outsourced of administration of CRM systems may prove a new Continue Reading