In the long run...

As has been well documented here and elsewhere, the path to a successful CRM project is strewn with traps and pitfalls for the inexperienced and unwary. However for the minority that navigate these successfully there’s one final ‘gotcha’ that seems to trip up more than its fair share of would be successful implementers, and that’s a failure to treat CRM as an ongoing programme, rather than a one off project. What we need to be mindful of, is that the value from the investment in CRM occurs over time, rather than at the point the system goes live. It’s the point from live onwards where the money gets made. Or should be, in reality this is often the point that systems begin a rapid journey towards premature obsolescence.

One of the biggest reasons for this is a failure to accurately budget for the life of the system rather than for the short term cost of the project. They buy the car, but they haven’t the resources to put petrol in it or maintain it. For CRM systems to flourish there are a number of resource hungry things that need to be happening – the system needs to be carefully and diligently administered, new staff need training, existing staff need hand-holding, user adoption needs to be relentlessly monitored, processes will need to change and evolve as the business itself changes and evolves, new features and capabilities will be required, upgrades will need to happen, the system needs to be supported, etc., etc.

These etc., etc’s don’t come cheap. They take time and money, but they are what makes the value flow. Here in the UK there was an ad campaign with the strap line something along the lines of ‘a pet is not just for Christmas’ highlighting the plight of many household pets whose owners had not thought through the time and cost of keeping and feeding them. I doubt it’s going to be a new government campaign, but a lot of organisation could save themselves a lot of trouble if they were mindful that a CRM system isn’t just for Christmas either.