Invitation for a CRM Review

Since you are here and reading this, you’re interested in the value of a CRM review — so let’s discuss why we offer it.

Over the last 26 years we’ve focused on understanding the value a CRM delivers to organisations. Here are our observations of common obstacles to CRM uptake based on our engagement with organisations in different stages of the journey.

  • CRM often becomes a filing system.
  • CRM is treated as a database.
  • CRM is installed by IT or as a technical application rather than a solution to support a business plan or processes.
  • CRM deployments never get off the ground because of user push-back.
  • CRM deployments become complicated and never get used.
  • CRM is deemed too hard and takes too much time, so use stops.
  • The CRM never becomes the single point of truth, so people stop using it
  • The deployment by the partner or yourself focused on technical functions and features that never translated to value.
  • CRM just is too expensive.

That’s the short list. These obstacles and issues are well documented on the internet and it’s a problem because frankly, this doesn’t need to happen.

So the aim of the review firstly is to listen to you and understand your journey so far; understand what you need and how to best describe a working, supporting system for your organisation.

How do we do that? We have developed a review process, refined over 26 years to capture your current state systematically. This allows you and our team to understand what you desire and what you have achieved, and see the gaps.

We look for commercial and productivity aspirations as well as user level experience.

Through the review and interview process, we capture this into a report that can then apply to an execution plan to get you back on track.

It’s not for us to decide if that means a restart or reboot and start afresh. That will be for you and your team to consider the best way forward, given the report in front of you.

Our goal is to add value with our experience to show you what can and should be achieved, and be a resource to get you back on the path.

The result of the consultation is a document and a plan that clarifies your position, removes the passion and frustration and allows everyone to review the current state or position and decide on what the next steps need to be.

We don’t have any skin in the past, so we can simply document the facts and support the decision making for the future.

Should you wish to engage us further, we would utilise this report with the intention to restart or reboot and start anew to get you to your destination. Using this single resource we communicate the corporate agenda, everyone’s role in it, how it applies to them and the reasons for change and the implications of doing nothing.

The result? You are now running an innovation activity to change the performance of the business, supported by technology. Not the other way around. This is a critical change in strategy. You need your technology partner to buy-in and understand your business plan, so they can ensure the technology where needed, enables the plan.

So let’s get started.

We’d be delighted to get involved and help you on your journey…

Brett Cruickshank
CEO CRM Strategy