Evaluating software, byzantine software like CRMCRM, is an informationtechnology phenomenon unrivaled in its intricacy by any other businesstask. It's an amalgam of science, art and politics - a Shakespeareandrama plunked down in the middle of your business. Alles zu CRM auf CIO.de

You know the plot. Committees form and set requirements. They createmetrics. The IT department works out ROIROI charts. VPs golf with vendorsand negotiate. There's haggling, scheming and major power plays, tosay nothing of the vendors' activities. Alles zu ROI auf CIO.de

Alas, alack! In the end, you're left with a list of reasonablyequivalent choices and a sense that all's well that ends well. Buthere's the rub: The choice you make will have little to do with thisevaluation process. A good number of customer relationship management(CRM) projects will fail right here, when the winning vendor isannounced, and then they'll move full force into the deployment phaseanyway.

This may sound like a farce, but the history of IT is rife withhigh-profile projects that devolved into colossal failures. First camethe migration from mainframes to client/server. Next, datawarehousing. Then, enterprise resource planning (ERPERP). In each case, amust-have IT investment turned out to be more complex thananticipated, led to user revolt and required massive infusions ofmoney to sustain. Alles zu ERP auf CIO.de

Often, the projects collapsed anyway.