Getting a Grip on CRM

While the people issues in CRM implementation are critical, thetechnology issues are certainly not trivial. Innovaposts Kilburn saysthat the methodologies and standards implemented by Innovapost providean overall framework that reduces risk and ensures that thepeople/process side aligns with the technology solution.

I think its fair to say that it was difficult, says Pritchard ofCreoScitexs SAPSAP CRM implementation. We opted to implement 3.0, andwhen we started doing it, it was in the early release phase. I thinkwere one of the very few customers that have implemented it in a veryintegrated fashion. A lot of the problems were data problems that showup more in a highly integrated system like this. Alles zu SAP auf CIO.de

Erschen says one key to BMO Financials CRM success was replacing sevendifferent technology platforms used to deal with business and personalbanking customers with a single platform. Customers were being sold toand serviced differently depending on which branch they walked into ordepending on which channel they were being sold to andserviced through, he says. That made it very difficult to offer newservices consistently.

Describing the technology implementation as taxing, Erschen sayssuccess depends on taking a phased approach and picking the rightpartners including software vendors and consultants with depth ofexperience.

Customizing CRM software to meet the businesss needs and integratingit with legacy systems can present headaches. Baxter avoidedcustomizing code as much as possible. We did a lot of what I wouldcall configuration on the user-interface side, but very littlecode-level custom-ization, says Sommerville. Baxter also limited thenumber of links from its CRM software to legacy systems.