Often a CRM initiative is started by IT from a technology innovation perspective or lately by the urge to “get into the cloud”.
Sometimes these are good contributors to the success of a CRM initiative but are generally not the main reasons why you make an investment in a CRM initiative. I specifically use the word initiative as you will sell yourself short if you are merely implementing a CRM solution.

Do you know what you want to achieve?

If there is no valid business reason to start a CRM project your money might be spent better elsewhere in your business. Many CRM initiatives fail as there no clear and measurable objective. It is as taking off to the airport to go on a holiday without knowing where you want to go. It might be adventurous but it is probably not a great way to run a business.

One of the most important parts of a CRM initiative is having a (Customer) Relationship Management strategy in place. You will be surprised how many businesses don’t have a proper strategy. If you want increase revenue or profit you need to be to articulate how you are going to approach this. When you know this it will be a lot easier to improve or create processes to support this strategy. For example improving visibility of profitable and unprofitable customers through reporting and analytics can be a great way to determine where to focus your efforts.

Clear measurable objectives

Recently I worked with a customer who had very clear objectives. After doing some ad hoc number crunching in Excel they realised that over the year they had done business with less than 20% of their allocated accounts. Their goal was to improve this number to 50%.
To improve this they needed to increase customer engagement. However they didn’t have a proper system to manage their accounts and their sales executives were dealing with the same customers or at most only bring in new business from incoming enquiries. One of the reason for this was that they didn’t have the tools to target group of customers and set up campaigns to attract new customers.

Before implementing a CRM solution all the knowledge of their customers and prospects including the allocated accounts was either held by the individual sales executives or by the licensor they work with.
Now they are well on their way to get control of their allocated accounts which is really the low hanging fruit for them. The next step for them is to target the rest of the prospects in their area which is fivefold the number of the allocated accounts.
This business has a clear reason to implement a CRM initiative because there was a valid business reason everyone in the business understands that it is part of the process of making the business as successful as it can be.

If your biggest asset is your customers you better make sure you know who your customers are and why they are doing business with you!

So do you have a customer relationship management strategy?
And do you know what determines whether your CRM initiative is successful or not?

If you have a clear objective and are ready to formulate a CRM initiative or if you would like to discuss what to consider before starting a CRM initiative please contact us for an obligation-free discussion at + 61 3 9010 6101 or info@organonconsulting.com.au