Richard Peynot
Companies that plan to deploy a customer relationship management (CRM)
strategy and implement a CRM suite, or plan to integrate existing CRM
subprojects into an enterprisewide CRM strategy, are looking for best practices
in this domain. We urge them to make a diagnostic of their situation and
capabilities and to clearly delimit their needs. If CRM software needs to be
customized for relatively simple use, training internal resources on the product
is a reasonable strategy. However, if the company plans an enterprisewide CRM
program including business process re-engineering and CRM application
integration, real experience is called for. Because this kind of experience
takes a long time to acquire, if it doesn’t exist inside the organization, it
should be obtained from systems integrators that can manage these best
practices.
New technologies and new concepts can produce various results for different
companies. CRM is one of these emerging issues that lack positive experience
feedback and best practices that are built on experience over time.
Unfortunately, end-user companies seldom take the time to write or formalize
good or bad experiences on large projects. However, systems integrators do
accumulate and evaluate experiences that allow them to provide best practices
and appropriate scenarios for their clients. Leading systems integrators create
and maintain their own dedicated methodology for CRM.
End-user companies should evaluate the difference between training and
experience in the internal environment. According to the size and complexity of
their projects, they decide between buying and building their CRM deployment.
For example, Giga recently met with a large international company that plans to
deploy the Siebel CRM suite across several countries in Europe and North
America. This company has limited IT resources, no experience or skill with
Siebel, and this is its first CRM project. It is deliberating whether to
implement the project itself, implement it with Siebel resources or to trust the
implementation to a systems integrator that is a partner of Siebel. In such a
situation, Giga believes the latter option is the wisest and the safest.
Recommendations
Companies that do not have trained resources or successful experience with
even a small CRM project have no time to build up this experience, therefore, we
recommend subcontracting the entire deployment. Companies with insufficient
internal experience should not start a large CRM program without requesting
support and help from a systems integrator. Nevertheless, they should check the
effectiveness of the systems integrator’s methodology – whether it is
dedicated to CRM, how many times the methodology has been applied and with what
kind of success it has been done. The methodology must include both
organizational and technological aspects. An effective partnership between the
systems integrator and the CRM suite vendor is also required.