CRM Building Project – Part 1: New Construction

So for some reason, one day about a year and a half ago I decided that it would be a good idea to build a house. Not sure exactly why I thought adding this to my never-ending list of existing projects would be a smart thing to do (OK, perhaps my friends weren’t entirely wrong when they suggested that I was a bit of a type-A) but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Imagine the idea of having your dream house – designed exactly to your specifications. I’d finally get to have all the things I wished my current house had: more space, a garage, a guest room for friends or colleagues to use when they came to town, a modern kitchen, a fireplace and a roof-top deck.

But, of course, I didn’t decide to just build a new house. No, I decided to tear down the existing house (yep, that’s it there in the picture) I have lived in for almost 15 years and build my new house on the existing lot. Again, not sure what I was thinking. I obviously didn’t contemplate the fact that this would mean moving twice, but that’s a story for another post. Anyway, the good news is that my house building project has inspired me to think about how building a house is a lot like building CRM…

Data Quality Do’s and Don’ts – Part 6: The CRM Wreck

Having worked with almost a hundred firms to help them achieve and enhance CRM success over the last 8 years, the biggest challenge we always seem to run into is CRM adoption. Firms consistently tell us that their CRM system is literally a ‘wreck’ due, in large part, to poor participation.

These firms frequently say that in the beginning of the CRM deployment, everything seemed to be running fine. They purchased the right system and implemented it without a hitch. The system was firing on all cylinders, but then at some point they seemed to hit a wall with adoption.

Down the road, this seems to become an issue for almost every firm. In fact, we ran into this exact scenario just last week. After investing thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of time into their CRM implementation, the firm just can't get the partners to take the wheel. 

While it can be tempting for some rubberneckers to simply do a drive-by and observe this type of CRM car-nage, we think it’s more helpful to put on the brakes and actually analyze a CRM crash to help a firm shift gears and accelerate change…