Back in October I made a very downbeat assessment of the state of the economy and its impact on the CRM industry. While I winced hugely when Joel Spolsky announced the end of the tech recession back in February, a straw poll of vendors suggests that while the last quarter Continue Reading

A lot of companies underestimate how much value they have in their customer base, and this may never be more important than in the current climate. As independent CRM consultants we’re currently doing a lot of work to help clients unlock that potential. A recent article of ours in CustomerThink Continue Reading

The final major flaw with the functionality led approach to CRM requirements gathering is the Rumsfeldian notion of the unknown unknowns. Users, who invariably haven’t used CRM technology before, are expected to articulate a complete vision of what they want from a system, and invariably are only able to produce Continue Reading

Had I been a venture capitalist a few years back, and, had I entertained a pitch from the folks looking to develop Twitter, then here’s what I would have said (choking back tears of laughter): ‘OK, so let me get this straight, you want to develop this site right, and Continue Reading

Having spent the past six weeks in CRM design hell, I thought I’d share some tips on surviving the process while it was freshly seared on my memory. Trust me, CRM design work, rather like a prolonged course of dental treatment, isn’t the most fun way to spend your time. Continue Reading

Once upon a time in my career any sentence containing the word ‘business process’ would reduce me to a near catatonic state. I assume many others feel the same way, because the concept of business processes virtually never features in the many CRM business requirements documents I get to read. Continue Reading

Curiously, I had three companies contact me this week about CRM software they were launching. One part of me wants to applaud anyone who has the gumption to invest their time and money in developing software, the other, my independent CRM consultant side, is about as receptive as the lady Continue Reading

‘So how would you rate the service you received on a scale of one to five, five being highly satisfied and one being highly dissatisfied’ said the lady conducting a satisfaction survey on behalf of the company who’d recently replaced my windscreen. ‘Well that depends, the call centre were great Continue Reading

Heavily mired in CRM system design work over the last few weeks I initially missed the post from InsideCRM regarding Salesforce.com losing three executives, which in turn draws on a post from DestinationCRM. I mention this not because it might be early evidence my suggestion that the CRM market may Continue Reading

Okay, so last week Bob got fired. The conventional wisdom on how to gather CRM requirements resulted in a substantial project overrun, a system that added no value, a board squeamish about further investment in IT, and Bob becoming a convenient scapegoat. But why doesn’t the conventional functionality led approach Continue Reading