News & Views

August 24, 2009 from InformationExec – “With a failure rate that hovers at about 50 per cent according to one research organization, customer relationship management (CRM) projects have plenty of room for improvement, and most of it has to do with its users…

Michael Burns – a consultant with Toronto-headquartered One Hundred & Eighty Degree Systems Ltd., an independent business, project management and IT consultancy – attributed the perceived failings of CRM by organizations to two things: people and system integration.

It’s a people issue for the way that some may not want to use the CRM system, because CRM implies that information about customers will be shared when sales people may prefer not to share certain information. As for the integration issue, Burns said that often, CRM systems are not integrated with an organization’s accounting or ERP systems.

But at the end of the day, CRM is worth the headaches it appears to be giving the organizations that invest in its capabilities, Burns said. “You’d be crazy not (to have the system),” Burns opined. “At its most fundamental, it’s a place where you can keep information about customers…”

180 View – As the author consulted us for our views and included them in the article, we have nothing else to add other than the writer, Maria Cootauco, is an excellent writer. She conducted the interviews quickly and efficiently, and presto the article was published in a couple of days.