Judging by Gartner CRM inquiries, interest in our fall CRM Summit and readership of this blog, CRM is definitely back on many firms’ agendas. However, there is a difference in the focus of CRM today. Not only are more firms recognizing that CRM is a business strategy rather than just another IT project, but many are realizing that there is also a “C” in CRM, or “customer” in customer relationship management. That’s why we’ve chosen the theme of “CRM 2.0: The Next Generation of CRM” for our September CRM Summit in Chicago. It emphasizes the ability of companies to look from the outside in (that is, from the customer’s perspective), rather than looking from the inside out (that is, the company’s perspective). Balancing both perspectives is critical in this next generation of CRM. The upcoming Summit will look at customer experience management, innovation, customer loyalty, reengineering customer processes and customer analytics as major themes.
We have lots of great content, with keynotes from Fred Reichheld on driving growth through customer loyalty, Don Peppers on customer-driven innovation and Paul Greenberg on business models for the era of the social customer. Jeff Schumacher and Marc Singer from McKinsey have a session on change management and collaboration; Peppers and Rogers will moderate a session on customer loyalty; and Bob Thompson of CRMGuru.com will facilitate a panel on contact center metrics. More than 20 Gartner analysts will have more than 40 sessions across five major tracks: CRM strategy and implementation, sales and marketing, customer service and support, CRM analytics, and CRM technology and architecture.
This year’s CRM Summit is the one CRM event you don’t want to miss. It has answers to all your questions about the next generation of CRM, whether you are a business or IT leader or CRM project manager. As conference chair for this year’s CRM event, I look forward to seeing all of you there.
[Keywords: CRM ]
July 5th, 2007
When it comes to business automation, most organizations are constantly looking for the competitive edge. Today, acronyms like customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) have been so misused that end users can find it hard to make sense of it all. Add the marketing message from vendors claiming their wares are designed for businesses of all types and sizes, and you’ve got a recipe for utter confusion.
So how does a typical business cut through the noise and confusion, and obtain a tight concise list of solutions to review that provide the automation needs they actually need? The first thing to remember is that no one solution by itself can do it all. Despite what the vendor claims, solutions are always designed with an ideal target customer in mind, and it’s up to you to figure out if you’re that target customer.
What Everyone Does That You Shouldn’t
It’s no secret that business application roll-outs meet with more failure then success, as many case studies can attest to. A small business customer relationship management and e-business suite solution provider, I’m constantly hearing potential customers talk about past mistakes, so in this regard I’ve become somewhat of an expert. “I’m calling you guys because we got into this mess and now we need to fix it” is a common cry for help. But after hundreds of these conversations, you start to see common patterns emerge. I should first state that almost all of these data points come from small businesses of perhaps 10-200employees that got in over their heads. So what’s the common pattern you ask? Well, inputting together a requirements list almost everyone puts all the emphasis on license or rental price, features, and brand recognition. What else is there you might be asking? What no body seems to understand until its too late, is that while it was arguably relevant to Casanova, in the realm of business automation, size really does matter - business size that is. It’s because too many business failed to understand how the solution they chose failed to impact them in this one regard, that I get so many cries for help
[Keywords: CRM, Business Management Software ]
June 16th, 2007