Advertisment

CRM: To insource or outsource?

author-image
CIOL Bureau
Updated On
New Update

Richard Peynot

Advertisment

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.

tech-news