CRM Still in Formative Stages for Many Users

Despite all the buzz about CRM, no consensus reached on its purpose

May 28, 2001 (Computerworld)

Rancho Mirage, Calif.
It's software. It's a process. It's a bunch of Lotus Notes databases strung together.
For all of the noise being made these days about customer relationship management (CRM) technology, there appears to be little agreement on precisely what it is and what it can and can't do for companies. There's even debate over whether it's advisable to implement CRM applications immediately or put the whole exercise on hold until the software proves itself in a much broader way.
These were among the key points made during a CRM-related panel discussion at Computerworld's Premier 100 IT Leaders Conference here last week. An electronic poll of the approximately 300 IT managers and other attendees lent credence to comments by the panel members about the relative immaturity of CRM as a technology.
Culture vs. Technology
In the poll, only 29% of respondents said their companies have CRM systems up and running. Another 24% indicated that they have CRM projects under way, while 22% said such projects remain in the planning stages. Another 24% said their companies have no CRM plans on the table.
Panelist Evelyn Follit, CIO at RadioShack Corp. in Fort Worth, Texas, said the consumer electronics retailer is just now launching a CRM pilot project that's designed to integrate information about customers who shop both at the company's Web site and in its 7,000-plus stores. But there's already a demand from end users for the data that the new system is expected to yield, Follit said.
During the past 90 days, Follit and other RadioShack IT workers have hosted CRM awareness sessions for various business departments, including sales and marketing. "Now that we've created excitement about CRM, the ball has come back to us. I get notes from people in marketing and advertising where the subject line reads 'CRM envy,' " she joked.
But that's not a universal sentiment, according to panelist Joe Puglisi, CIO at Emcor Group Inc., a Norwalk, Conn.-based provider of mechanical and electrical construction services. Salespeople and other end users with knowledge about customers are frequently unwilling to share that information in a Notes database or other collaborative CRM systems, Puglisi said. His point was backed up by another audience poll in which 47% of respondents said the biggest problems that CRM systems face are cultural hurdles, not technical ones.
"The issue is not technology," Puglisi said. "The issue is what information about your customers . . . can you [actually] capture. It's too easy for sales and marketing to keep their own little black books, and, in the words of another speaker I recently heard, knowledge is only volunteered. It can't ever be coerced."
"CRM is not so much an application you try and implement, but an attitude in your company," said panelist Tom Thomas, president and CEO of software vendor Haht Commerce Inc. in Raleigh, N.C. The root of all CRM "is giving customers the information they want when they want it," he added. "It's the customer who's now in charge."
But not all customers are equal, which raises the issue of whether or not all should be treated equally under the CRM banner.
For example, Follit said, RadioShack plans to focus its CRM system on a relatively small percentage of its customer base. "Only about 20% of our customers give us 80% of our [revenue], so it wouldn't be effective for us to track every customer the same," she said.