Know-How Exchange : Strategy

husinw,

I would suggest you start with www.dbmarketing.com.It will give you the start-up insight into the issue.



Adam

Have you checked out www.crmguru.com yet?

Check out these links:

A Great Source for CRM Solutions:
https://www.crmsolutionsource.com/

This company is great, you can also download their CRM Fact Sheet:
https://www.icfconsulting.com/Services/Management_Consulting/mc_crm.asp

Good Luck

Sorry to rain on the parade... but I'm afraid I'd like to offer a different perspective.

I started selling CRM solutions about 20 years ago, and have been involved a bit with them over my entire career. I know several folk who have spent their career studying the issue you wish to understand by visiting a few web sites.

Possibly you believe that you can become an overnight expert in this complex area. Who knows, you may also believe that you can become a surgeon by visiting a few web sites and posting on a few bulliten boards.

I, for one, would put 0% credibility in your perspectives on this matter, despite your scanning of web sites and reading of back issues of a few weblogs.

If I had been tasked with this project, I would begin with the assumption that I had NO CREDIBILITY WHATSOEVER with the managers I was presenting to. Having started thus, how would I prepare my presentation? Rather than presenting MY ideas, which would be scoffed at by the managers - I would first research to determine who the key thought leaders were in the CRM field. I would then present the credentials of these experts and a SUMMARY of their views to management.

If I could offer one very brief perspective on CRM, I would say that the technical aspects of implementing a system are much easier than the cultural change required.

Good luck with your presentation - if you would like me to review and comment on the presentation, contact me offline (click my name to the right).

Hi

Telemoxie got to the most important point in the above suggestions. I too have been “Doing” CRM for more years than it’s been called CRM, both as a manager utilising it as part of our sales and marketing toolset and for the last 8 years as a CRM consultant covering the technical, management and consultative aspects of CRM.

It is not a software package, though we sell CRM software. It is not database management, though we advise clients on how to get the best out of their CRM databases. And it is not a subject which you can approach and understand, especially in the context of your company by scanning a few websites.

It is a philosophy or set of business practices which aim to put the customer at the centre of your sales and marketing efforts. As such, it spawns a whole pile of technologies, methodologies, analytical practices and more pure bull than most marketing related subjects.

Early entrants into “Big CRM” such as banks, insurance companies and telecom companies spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the technology for no measurable return. They blundered blindly into a new area of business practice where the blind were leading the blind and the one eyed man truly was king. Companies even tried to let their software drive and control everything from the centre, like a command economy. Pity they didn’t learn from the lesson of the collapse of the Soviet Union – it doesn’t work.

As a consequence, CRM at all levels got a bad name and we’ve been working hard to overcome the errors of overselling and blind faith in the unworkable since about 2000. So whilst I suggest that you look at the sites our colleagues have referred you to and read them with interest, don’t expect to be able to become even vaguely conversant with CRM practice, let alone be able to brief your colleagues.

For example, a number of the sites referred to are single platform sales sites. You will, if you hunt around find diametrically opposing points of view and a number of ideas which are plain cobblers. CRMguru is an excellent site for the CRM industry as a whole and I’ve been a member since Bob Thompson founded it. It will take you about a month to read what’s on that website, never mind get round to understand it in any real context.

The Siebel site is an example of good practice for a vendor, but let’s put this in context. Siebel is one of around nine, high end CRM software solutions providers all with a different take of their software and CRM. To implement an average high end system will take around $1M and as much as $30M and take anything from 3 months to a 18 months.

Much of that time is spent by very experienced consultants delving into what a company actually does and what it wants to do, what it achieves and what it wants to achieve. These days, they even try to tell the client when they will get their money back! For you to expect to accomplish even a fraction of this, from scratch is unlikely. What is likely is that either you will make a fool out of yourself or you will fool your management and I’m sure that you will agree that neither is desirable.

If you want to implement CRM in a hurry (After all, the query was urgent) and you don’t want to waste a lot of money and time, talk to some CRM consultants. Initial consultations will be free as part of their effort to acquire new customers. If you’ve already got a CRM system and you don’t know how to explain it to someone, then God help you.

I know that this is not what you were hoping to hear, but I also hope that it helps to put the purpose of your question into a more balanced context.

Steve Alker
Unimax Solutions