Have you ever heard that CRM implementations tend to have a high failure rate? Being in this industry, this is a phrase we hear every now and then, but it is not a phrase we pay much attention to anymore as this has become less of a concern as more and more CRM deployments have occurred over the years and best practices have been put in place that help facilitate successful deployments. Recently, I read a blog on ZDNet that outlined some of the less obvious reasons why CRM implementations fail, and I wanted to dive-deeper into a few of them.
The first one that caught my eye was user’s inability to accept change, and not trying something because it either didn’t work the first time or because the user(s) simply do not want to change. This is a valid point and one that a company implementing CRM cannot always foresee being an issue. However, if organizations take the time to ensure proper training is provided to users, not only initially, but again after the users have had a chance to use the system for awhile this will become less of a barrier to ensuring the CRM implementation is successful.
The second one that caught my attention relates to the first sentence of this blog, and how the phrase “CRM implementations have a high failure rate” has caused unnecessary fear in those who went through a first generation CRM deployment. This has caused many to avoid trying it again or trying it at all for fear of bad deployment results. However, as mentioned earlier, failed deployments are no longer the norm as long as you are working with a partner, such as and has learned from past industry mistakes. Equally as important is ensuring your partner takes the time to truly understand your business objectives for deploying CRM. InterDyn – Remington Consulting does this by engaging every client in our , where we help clients uncover business process improvements, and then we adapt the business system (in this case CRM) to the business process. This guarantees that what the client is envisioning is actually deployed.
The final comment that I wanted to expand on regarding the not-so-obvious reasons CRM implementations fail has to do with internal executive sponsorship and internal politics. I will not spend time digging into executive sponsorship as this is a given, but instead will expand on how even with an internal executive sponsor, sometimes internal politics can halt decisions that need to be made to ensure a successful implementation. Thus, having a that is a trusted-advisor for the project can help the executive sponsors ensure that end users are engaged upfront in the analysis to increase adoption and ownership of the project. InterDyn – Remington Consulting has helped numerous organizations travel past internal politics that can halt deployments by offering our best practices and unbiased opinions.
Failed CRM implementations are becoming a thing of the past. If you want to !
By InterDyn – Remington Consulting,
