5 Ways to Ensure CRM Success

Want to predict whether your CRM project will falter or thrive? Chances are the quality of your technology won't be the deciding factor--at least, not according to the results of a recent survey conducted by IBM Business Consulting Services (BCS). The survey claims that paying attention to the human factors surrounding any CRM effort is the best way to improve the outcome of the deployment. The IBM team isolated 16 steps that CRM users take during implementation, and determined the five most common differentiators between successful and failed deployments: developing a value proposition, managing the budget process, change management, governance, and process change--none of which is directly related to the technology itself. Simply focusing on those five factors can boost the success rate among CRM projects from 15 percent to 80 percent. As Adam Klaber, partner and global CRM leader of IBM BCS, notes, companies can eliminate the distance between success and failure without going broke. "Doing CRM right only costs you a little bit more than doing it wrong," he says, "and the benefits are tremendous." Steve LaValle, the CRM partner at IBM BCS who spearheaded the study, adds, "It may even cost you less, if you consider the rework of doing it right. The charts shown here, excerpted from the study, convey some of its compelling findings.