CRM Analytics: The Integration Challenge

Field Report: CRM Analytics

Having an integration road map is the best way to navigate through the deployment terrain of CRM analytics. With failure rates of almost 50% for implementations of CRM applications and CRM analytic projects, it seems likely that the integration map is the one that many companies leave behind.

Despite that difficulty, the payback of using CRM analytics to identify areas for revenue growth, cost-cutting, customer retention and other business needs will lure more companies to invest in CRM analytics. But the integration effort required to make this possible could cost 10 times the amount of annual sales of CRM analytic software, say some analysts.

CRM analytic software feeds on as much legacy data as it can access, which poses data migration and integrity problems. Data format and middleware standards are vital, as is a rigorous methodology for coding business logic into the software. Failure in any of these areas can doom a CRM deployment, practitioners say.

CRM Analytic Software Sales 2001 $700 million 2005 $6.2 billion Source: IDC, Framingham, Mass.

CRM Analytics: Sucess Begins With Girding for Complexity Analyze Your Staff Squeezing ROI from CRM Integrated Suites Vs. Best of Breed CRM Analytics Resource Guide Field Reports: CRM Analytics

Sober CRM

Stories in this report:

• Editor's Note: Sober CRM
  
• The Story So Far
  
• Try, Try Again
  
• Slow and Steady Can Win CRM Race
  
• Picking Winners & Losers
  
• Insights Turn Into Profits
  
• Schwab Sees CRM Payoff
  
• CRM Analytics: The Integration Challenge
  
• All-Star Players
  
• Profitable Privacy
  
• Lessons in CRM
  
• How to Choose CRM Software
  
• Data Quality: 'The Cornerstone of CRM'
  
• Mazda Wants 360-degree View of Customers
  
• How to Run a CRM Project During a Recession