 | Define your end goal very clearly. Understand whether it’s focused
on technology, process or people (customers/staff/stakeholders). |
| Define the impacts you’d need to deliver that end goal. What would
success look like? What would failure look like? |
| Define the experience you want your customers to have before you
start talking about the technology IF customer experience is to be
enhanced. |
| Brand, target customers, staff, acquisition, campaigns, marketing,
retention, profitability, lifetime value, proposition and channel ALL
need to be understood. What’s the model that brings them together? Get
the consultants to explain them to a junior member of the team - do
they understand them? |
| Consultants will work hard on selling you on a package. Get them
to show you the customer lifecycle process and where the package fits
at what stage. |
| Get a second or third opinion. One size definitely does not fit
all. |
| Figure out who does what. CRM should not be the province of either
the marketing team or the IT team. Structure for multi-disciplinary
success. |
| UK marketing/CRM professionals highlighted that organizational
‘structure’ as the biggest challenge facing successful CRM followed by
‘single view’. |
| Ask relentlessly: do we really need to do that now? Show me how it
fits and how it will work today, not tomorrow! |
| CRM can provide the “spinal column” or “business nervous system”
that could drive your business. Give it the senior management focus
such a critical venture requires. |
