http://forum.crmreports.com/ User-to-user CRM related forums en Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:23:11 +0000 http://forum.crmreports.com/topic/why-do-most-crm-projects-fail#post-2139 Wed, 26 Nov 2008 08:13:24 +0000 howaje 2139@http://forum.crmreports.com/ <p>24th November 2008 Is this headline is a mistake? Global <a href="http://www.salespush.com/">CRM</a> spend is estimated at US$ 14 billion annually (AMR Research). With such a huge amount of expenditure, can it really be possible that most CRM projects fail? In Barack Obama's words: "yes, it can".</p> <p>And the rate of failure is staggering. Gartner Group estimate that 65% of CRM projects fail. The Meta Group has suggested failure rates of between 55 and 70%.</p> <p>If we take Gartner's 65% failure rate and AMR Research's market size estimate this means that an amazing US$ 9.1 billion was completely wasted in corporate CRM spending in 2007 alone! If this continues, given AMR's projection of a US$ 22 billion global CRM market in 2012, this number will have risen to US$ 14.3 billion.</p> <p>In this research note we draw upon our own experiences of failed CRM projects to draw up a list of lessons learned from real world scenarios. We focus solely on the Sales sub-segment of the CRM market, which Gartmore has estimated as the biggest category - accounting for 40.5% of global CRM spending (or US$5.67 billion) in 2007.</p> <p>By far the most common CRM failure involves the wrong system being rolled out. Let's look at a couple of examples before we discuss what we learn from the mistakes management made:</p> <p>Buying an Inappropriate System is the Fastest Route to CRM Failure</p> <p>CRM Failures: Case Study 1: US Printing and Publishing Company</p> <p>A US-based printing a publishing firm failed to adopt Salesforce.com as it was too complex for their user base. As the organisation had a fairly high turn-over of staff, Salesforce was simply too complex and too expensive to adapt to the requirements of a rapidly changing sales call centre. As a result, the sales manager decided to move away from Salesforce, but struggled to find a solution on the market which could meet both requirements of functionality and simplicity.</p> <p>Lessons from Case Study 1:</p> <p>It sounds obvious, but so many companies still get it wrong. The system adopted must be flexible enough to 'breathe' with your organisation. If your company has a fast-pasted sales culture, with a high staff turnover rate, a complex 'enterprise' application (whether it is hosted locally or SaaS) is unlikely to be a good choice. By the time the sales staff have received sufficient training to be able to use it properly, they are likely to have moved on - wasting precious training budget and (even worse) meaning that the system is never properly implemented. If your average sales staff turnover is one year or less you must adopt a system which is simple and easy to adopt on day one. Most likely, this will be a Saas package delivered on-demand. Our advice would be to register online for a package which appears aimed at companies who need to get up and running quickly.</p> <p>CRM Failures: Case Study 2: UK Media Company</p> <p>We recently spoke to a media company in the UK. They had attempted two full Siebel implementations with little success. Each time, the company met with the sales force to determine the reasons behind their lack of CRM usage. Sales reps provided a list of reasons and requirements, and changes and modifications were made to accommodate the concerns expressed by the sales force. But even after investing further in development and training, the CRM usage by sales reps remained the same as before - zero.<br /> Lessons from Case Study 2:</p> <p>Our analysis of the problem revealed that there were two fundamental issues: 1) related to the complexity of the system itself, and to the time it took for the salespeople to move from one record to the next. Given the fast-paced nature of the salespeople's' work, the system was simply not able to keep up with their minute by minute requirements. This led to frustration and an inevitable decline in usage. 2) was more fundamental. On investigation we found that management had actually spent insufficient time and planning on really understanding what was needed from the system. This company actually needed to manage leads ('opportunities') and not 'clients'. The needed a sales process management system to track the progress of leads through a sales process, but instead had purchased a cumbersome contact management database. This had resulted in little but-in from the sales staff and even less value-added from management, because no meaningful analytics on the sales process were available.<br /> Conclusions</p> <p>Our investigations into CRM failures throw up a couple of crucial lessons. The first is that companies should not 'over buy' their CRM solution. Often times a less expensive and simpler SaaS solution will end up being more valuable if it is actually adopted and used by the people it is supposed to serve, i.e. the sales staff.</p> <p>The second vital lesson is that management has to understand clearly what kind of a sales CRM system they need. For many, relatively static, companies with a limited number of very deep and stable customer relationships, a contact management system with a sophisticated data structure may be the most appropriate. But for other companies who are essentially moving 'leads' rapidly through a sales process chain a very different system will be necessary, one that puts the sales 'opportunity' at the centre of the process.</p> <p>So in summary, management needs to be precise in its analysis of its own organisation, but also realistic and focused on what their sales staff will actually use and derive benefit from. </p> http://forum.crmreports.com/topic/reports-bcm#post-2142 Thu, 11 Dec 2008 11:45:57 +0000 cotillo 2142@http://forum.crmreports.com/ <p>Hello, my question is if somobody knows how is possible to create marketing campaigne reports where I can see the proffesional contact name and the count where he is added?</p> <p>Thanks </p> http://forum.crmreports.com/topic/how-to-create-an-wf-in-4-to-run-syncronic#post-2141 Sun, 07 Dec 2008 20:32:27 +0000 sls 2141@http://forum.crmreports.com/ <p>Is there a way ? </p> http://forum.crmreports.com/topic/customer-feedback-gets-visual-with-latest-release-of-responsetekcem#post-2140 Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:09:59 +0000 Claudiu 2140@http://forum.crmreports.com/ <p>Vancouver, BC, Canada – December 1, 2008 – ResponseTek, the leading provider of customer experience management (CEM) software, today unveiled a visualization tool that allows companies to manage and respond to customer experiences through keywords used in customer feedback.</p> <p>ResponseTek Comment Visualization weights keywords that appear in customer feedback, providing companies real-time insights into the quality and frequency of customer-generated comments and concerns.</p> <p>“We’ve always focused on making customer feedback actionable and auditable, especially qualitative, open-ended feedback,” said Syed Hasan, ResponseTek CEO. “With comment visualization, we’ve added an important piece of the puzzle – accessibility. Reporting on and understanding customer concerns and issues from unstructured feedback is very important in today’s economy. Rather than making promises around future product releases, we’re giving our clients these product innovations today, so they can understand and respond to the needs of their own customers more effectively than ever before.”</p> <p>“Unlike survey data, unstructured customer feedback can come with reporting challenges,” said Gord Elder, Product Group Director at ResponseTek. “Comment visualization is a very powerful way for large companies to see broad themes that are affecting the customer experience. Our clients can see issues cropping up across their client base in real-time, and immediately work on resolutions.”</p> <p>Comment Visualization was introduced as part of today’s ResponseTek:CEM Fall 08 software release, along with a series of other reporting and workflow management enhancements. Further innovations focusing on the management and analysis of unstructured data will follow in 2009.</p> <p>For more information on ResponseTek:CEM and its Fall ‘08 release, call 1-866-484-2900 (toll-free in North America), or +1 (604) 484-2900 (toll worldwide).</p> <p>About ResponseTek<br /> ResponseTek is the leader in on-demand Customer Experience Management (CEM) solutions, transforming the voice of the customer into actionable business intelligence. ResponseTek provides its groundbreaking CEM solutions to Global 1000 corporations, including AAA, Aon Corporation, HSBC, lastminute.com, and Sabre. ResponseTek is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, with offices in Toronto, Canada and London, UK.</p> <p>Media Contact:<br /> Colin Stein<br /> Director of Marketing<br /> +1 (604) 484-2900 x242<br /> <a href="mailto:colin.stein@responsetek.com">colin.stein@responsetek.com</a><br /> <a href="http://www.responsetek.com" rel="nofollow">www.responsetek.com</a> </p> http://forum.crmreports.com/topic/business-contact-manager-has-encountered-an-internal-error-in-excel#post-2106 Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:00:31 +0000 UG Bot 2106@http://forum.crmreports.com/ <p><em>Newsgroup subject: Export Report<br /> Archived from: microsoft.public.outlook.bcm<br /> Author: Anna</em></p> <p>I am using Office 2007 and I receive the following error when exporting a report from Business Contact Manager "Business Contact Manager has encountered an internal error in Excel. Please reinstall Excel and all of its components." I reinstalled Office and still receive the error message. </p> http://forum.crmreports.com/topic/attach-1-contact-to-different-accounts-that-you-create#post-2135 Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:57:11 +0000 UG Bot 2135@http://forum.crmreports.com/ <p><em>Newsgroup subject: BCM 2007<br /> Archived from: microsoft.public.outlook.bcm<br /> Author: ljr2u</em></p> <p>Question: Can you attach 1 contact to different accounts that you create. I use to use ACT and was able to tag contacts in multiple groups. Cannot seem to figure this one out. thanks, Larry </p> http://forum.crmreports.com/topic/microsoft-office-small-business-setup-wizard-has-encountered-a-problem#post-2134 Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:53:40 +0000 UG Bot 2134@http://forum.crmreports.com/ <p><em>Newsgroup subject: Installing Outllook 2007 BCM from CD 2 fails<br /> Archived from: microsoft.public.outlook.bcm<br /> Author: Fuse-ATV</em></p> <p>I've been trying to get BCM to install after successfully installing Office Pro 2007 from CD 1.<br /> When I insert the disk, it start to spin up, then the following error message appears on the screen.<br /> "Microsoft Office Small Business Setup Wizard has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience."<br /> I cannot get past this error. What should I do? </p> http://forum.crmreports.com/topic/example-of-creating-and-using-a-new-group#post-2126 Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:57:37 +0000 UG Bot 2126@http://forum.crmreports.com/ <p><em>Newsgroup subject: Groups<br /> Archived from: microsoft.public.outlook.bcm<br /> Author: Smike</em></p> <p>In the navigation pane is a command 'add new group' I have done so and named the group. For my purposes I would like to work with 'Suspect' 'Prospect' and Customer groups whilst using Categories to indicate market sectors. </p> <p>I cannot seem to do anything with the newly created group nor can I find readily accessible information in BCM help. </p> <p>Does anyone have an example of creating and using a new group? </p> http://forum.crmreports.com/topic/will-all-users-of-the-database-be-able-to-autolink#post-2128 Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:59:54 +0000 UG Bot 2128@http://forum.crmreports.com/ <p><em>Newsgroup subject: email autolinking<br /> Archived from: microsoft.public.outlook.bcm<br /> Author: Frustrated Pat</em></p> <p>With Outlook and BCM 2007 and a shared database in a Windows XP Pro Workgroup will all users of the database be able to autolink their email and files to Business accounts and users and will those emails and files be available for viewing to all users or only the database owner able to autolink and share emails and files. </p> <p>Pat </p> http://forum.crmreports.com/topic/deleting-the-wrong-bcm-item#post-2127 Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:58:46 +0000 UG Bot 2127@http://forum.crmreports.com/ <p><em>Newsgroup subject: Deletions<br /> Archived from: microsoft.public.outlook.bcm<br /> Author: Smike</em></p> <p>It seem dangerously easy to click on 'delete' or 'clear' and possibly click the wrong item with no means to recover it. </p> <p>Of course, a contact record will be moved to the deleted items section of Outlook - but what if you accidentally 'clear all categories' when in the 'account group'? There is no Edit&gt;redo' Are these recoverable, other than from a back up copy? </p> <p>For me this would means hundreds of companies no longer designated as IT or Telecoms or Civil engineering etc. </p> <p>Have I correctly identified this 'no way back' possibility? </p>