The remarks, from Gartner analyst Scott Nelson, reiterates a theme pushed by the analyst community over the past few years and indicates the corporate community consistently and continually fails to grasp the opportunities presented by the technology and its associated processes.
Nelson, who defined a failed CRM implementation as one which fails to meet the firm's initial expections or which has not met the needs of the enterprise's most important constituents - the consumer - said sales automation implementation failures sat at around 75-80 per cent.
In order to fix a failed CRM implementation Nelson has some simple advice. "Figure out what went wrong the first time, and build on that." The number one reason an implementation will fail, according to Gartner, is that the underlying processes were not addressed. In this case, the system automates a process that does not fulfil customer needs.
"The number one reason sales automation tends to fail is that sales people see no benefit to it, and don't use it," said Nelson, as an example. "It's usually a people and process problem rather than a technical problem."
Enterprises should also reset expectations when trying to fix a failed CRM implementation. "Most firms don't even know what they want from a CRM when they set it up," said Nelson. "Don't just sort of drift toward being customer-centric, have a plan of how you will get there."
"Start with the customer and work your way back into the organisation," said Nelson. "Rebuild things from the customers point of view." Companies who are planning a CRM implementation, or are currently in the middle of one, need to ensure their planning includes eight vital steps, according to Nelson. They are:
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-CRM Vision: The company needs to know what benefits the CRM will bring, in a specific sense.
-CRM Strategies: How resources will be used to implement the CRM and achieve goals.
-Valued Customer Experience: Ensuring that the propositions give value to customers.
-Organisational Collaboration: The changing of culture, structures and behaviours to ensure staff, partners and suppliers work together to deliver what is promised.
-Processes: Managing customer life cycle processes in a way that builds customer knowledge.
-Information: Ensuring the right data is collected, and the right information goes to the right place.
-Technology: The data and information management, customer-facing applications and supporting IT infrastructure need to be sound.
-Metrics: There needs to be internal and external measures of CRM success and failure.
"Every failed implementation is missing at least one of these things," he stressed.
