CRM being replaced by CRO?

Computerworld - NEW YORK—"CRM is history. Are you ready for CRO?" That session title at last week's National Retail Federation annual conference here drew chuckles and eye rolls from some attendees and analysts, who expressed skepticism about yet another IT buzzword.

CRO stands for customer relationship optimization, and it is the alleged potential new direction for customer relationship management (CRM). "It's no longer about managing your customers," the NRF session description stated. "It's about strategically investing in customer segments that will make the most money."

By either name—CRM or CRO—it was "all smoke" to Judy Straus, vice president of information systems at New York-based Brooks Brothers. "I don't see anything in it," she said.

Phillip Maxwell, CIO at Neiman Marcus Group in Dallas, speculated that because some failed projects had given CRM a bad name, a vendor may have changed the term in hope that customers might take their calls, if for no other reason than to find out, "What is that?"

Janet Suleski, an analyst at Boston-based AMR Research Inc. called the CRO moniker "incredibly lame."

"You can't optimize a relationship between a human being and an institution at any given point in time," Suleski said. "Optimization, to me, is more of a mathematical calculation. To say that you can reduce the relationship between an institution and a human being down to ones and zeroes is not giving very much credit to either."

Fellow AMR analyst Rod Johnson said he viewed the term CRO as partially "a vendor or consultant creation to try to find differentiation in an extraordinarily crowded market."

"But it's also partially valid," he added, "because analytics are becoming more and more the heart of a good CRM deployment. You're using business intelligence, data mining, advanced visualization tools to make better decisions about what you offer a particular client, how to target or segment new opportunities and understand what drives new profitability."

However, Johnson said he doesn't think the CRO acronym will stick. "The reality is a lot of users are just understanding what CRM means to their organizations, and there's plenty of room for the use of analytics within a CRM strategy," he said. "I think [the term CRO] is just confusing the issue."

"Let CRO go off with the crows," he said.

Retail CIOs Focus on High-Priority Projects, Cutting Costs Retail CEOs Hold the Line on Tech Spending CRM being replaced by CRO?

IT Spending A survey of 1,048 IT professionals by Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn., and Soundview Technology Group Inc. in Old Greenwich, Conn., revealed the following projected changes in IT spending in 18 sectors of the economy. Industry Change from 2001 to 2002 Petroleum, mining, energy 15.9% Agribusiness, fishing, forestry 10% Business services 7.8% Media and entertainment 7.6% Distribution or logistics services 7.1% Financial services 5% Retail trade 4.4% Health care 3.6% Education 3.4% Nonprofit 1.9% Research and development 1.7% Durable goods manufacturing -0.2% Wholesale -0.4% Transportation -1.6% Government -3.6% Utilities -3.7% All Manufacturing -6.2% Nondurable goods manufacturing -15.1% Source: IT Spending Confidence Survey, November 2001.

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