CRM makes best-practice imperfect

Customer relationship management applications should be flexible enough to fit the changing needs of businesses, writes Nigel Huxtable.

Best-practice software, for most customer relationship management (CRM) implementations, has had its day. Imagine a world where everyone drives the same car.

Is this a world that stifles creativity puts into jeopardy the very reason why people like doing business with you?

This realisation for CRM implementations is good news for customers but bad news for vendors that are focused on box-shifting rather than tailored implementations.

Off-the-shelf software is wonderful if you are a customer with a single issue that requires a single fix. The difference with CRM - something that has been learnt as the market has developed - is that there are no single, isolated issues.

CRM is a cycle of continuous improvement. It starts with a vision and strategic CRM planning which, in turn, plugs into relationship design, leading to operational CRM and then to analytical CRM. This analysis feeds back into vision and strategy, and the cycle goes on.

Traditionally, 'best-practice' applications have seen vendors design software based on their own views of best practice for a particular market.

This can work for some spokes of the CRM cycle, but not many. Research backs this up, as the Hewson Group told the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants.

"You can't back strategies and best practice into software," said managing director Richard Hewson. "Buying CRM to do this is a mistake."

And according to Michael Thompson, of Butler Group, the CRM market has been "bedevilled by implementations that have consistently under-performed on promises made".

This is because many systems cannot provide an exact fit to a business's CRM cycle. They are also rarely flexible enough to adapt to changes within the business, its products and customer base.

A shift in reliance on best-practice software will change this. Gartner cites "a highly flexible solution" as vital, specifically in the pharmaceutical market where SMEs are set to invest heavily in CRM.

I think Hewson is right. Why should customers change business practices to fit the systems they buy? Shouldn't it be the other way round?

When choosing CRM software, the right choice is vital. If an application can keep up with business change, businesses will thrive.

Nigel Huxtable is managing director of StayinFront Europe.