Not so long ago I wrote a post called ‘The coming Zombie CRM Apocalypse and what to do about it’. The gist of the post was that a lot of CRM systems, while technically functioning, don’t contribute much to the health of the organisations that run them. While I outlined Continue Reading

One of the big movements in recent years has been the rise of marketing automation technologies such as Marketo, Eloqua, and Pardot (to name but a few). These systems are designed to help marketers move prospects through the sales funnel from initial interest to leads that are sufficiently qualified to Continue Reading

We’ve worked on a few projects in recent months where there was a compelling need for the system to be implemented quickly. This isn’t as easy as it might first appear. There’s only so much that you can compress the major building blocks of a CRM implementation, such a requirements Continue Reading

One interesting area of CRM technology whose potential seems yet to be fully realised is the use of portals. A portal is a website that serves as a gateway to the CRM system, and allows third parties, such as customers or partners, the ability to create and update records within Continue Reading

I’ve written a lot over the years about the importance of requirements gathering when implementing CRM systems. For me, the CRM requirements specification is the foundation of a CRM project, and I don’t believe there’s any other element that has as much influence on ultimate success or failure. What’s surprising however Continue Reading

In October last year I passed the ten year milestone as an independent CRM consultant, and at some point in 2015, all being well, I’ll pass the twenty year mark of working in the CRM industry. I mention this because back in the early days tales of CRM project failures Continue Reading

It doesn’t matter how successful you may have been in selecting the right CRM technology for your organisation and customising it to fit your specific needs, if you can’t get people to use it in a consistent and structured way, then it’s not going to generate much value. Despite the Continue Reading

In the ‘how to document CRM requirements’ series (part one, if you missed it, can be found HERE, part two HERE, part three HERE, part four HERE, part five HERE, and part six HERE, or all of them in an ebook HERE) noted that there were a lot of areas that people Continue Reading

If you’re implementing a new CRM system and have been talking to potential vendors about how they would approach a project, I suspect the word ‘agile’ features strongly in their presentations. Go back a few short years though and you would have been hard-pressed to hear the word ‘agile’ being Continue Reading

In my recent series on requirements gathering, I noted the need to document the phasing of a CRM implementation. I’ve come to the conclusion over the years that phasing is one of the most critical aspects of implementing a CRM system successfully, and so figured this might merit some further Continue Reading