Why Reinvent the Wheel?
Never have so many things been in raging conflict—the marketing department wants, no deserves, a “single view” of the company’s customers and prospects, yet the systems do not exist to make this requirement a reality. The Sales department demands customer and prospect data from marketing, marketing requests decipherable data from IT, but IT is busy with operational systems challenges.
Everybody from the CEO on down wants this seemingly simple request granted. So why is it so difficult to accomplish? Most CRM vendors prefer it that way for obvious reasons. Often IT will “help” marketing purchase a sophisticated analytical platform that is promoted as the answer to the problem, however more often than not marketing is left with a system even a seasoned IT pro would have difficulty getting useful information from. Now the real problems start…
The various stakeholders in a company bring in a “name” CRM vendor to finally get the company what it needs, namely the “360-degree view” of their customers and prospects. Now it is time to reinvent the wheel. In a boardroom of the company the vendor experts are assembled and the company is informed that they will implement a CRM system that will be rich in consumer data and one that will deliver incredible ROI’s. So, they proceed to gather requirements from the company and a proposal is submitted. For only a few million dollars invested (not counting ongoing internal support) and only a year or two (hopefully) the solution will be busily producing incredible sales results for the company. What is interesting is the fact that the data necessary for B2C and B2B marketing is very well defined, so why don’t we see more “packaged” marketing automation solutions? Well that of course would reduce the services component of the CRM proposal and no vendor wants to lessen the value of their deal, right?
We hope you will follow along on a series of blog posts that will explore the dilemma of custom CRM implementation versus a more packaged approach. Or to put it another way, are there CRM vendors out there willing to forego a long drawn out CRM deployment knowing that they will get less services revenue? We know that the customer will certainly appreciate a less risky approach…but is this how CRM is being sold? Stay tuned!
About the Author
Mike Schmitt
Mike Schmitt is the CEO and founder of Clairvoyix, LLC, a Las Vegas based marketing automation company focused on the travel and leisure market. With over 25 years of software industry experience, including eighteen years in management positions, Mike has worked in nearly all functional areas of the software industry. Mike holds a Bachelor of Science, Computer Science degree from California State University, Long Beach and a Masters of Business Administration from Nova Southeastern University.