What In The World Is Wrong With My CRM?

Wrong CRM- The road to digital transformation — a highway that nearly all companies are currently following — extracts a hefty toll. Corporate spending on it is set to exceed $650 billion by 2024. IDC estimates it will amount to a staggering $2.3 trillion as soon as 2023. Whatever the actual amount turns out to be, it is a huge number, and it is typically justified by expectations of significantly improved performance flowing from the technology.

But many companies report dissatisfaction with their digital investments, particularly those involving customer relationship management systems, or CRMs. There are a number of reasons for that disappointment, including unrealistic expectations, poor planning, inadequate support, excessive complexity and failure to see it from the customer’s or the user’s perspective. However, the greatest single source of disappointment comes from low rates of user adoption among the company’s own staff. In fact, nearly half of the people-related obstacles to a successful CRM implementation are due to poor user adoption.

For a CRM system to work effectively, all sorts of information have to be entered into it — contact lists, phone calls, emails, meeting details and more. It takes a lot of time — time most salespeople would much prefer spending with prospects. Most sales professionals don’t see their company’s CRM as being particularly effective support for their own work; instead, they see it as a data mill for higher-ups to create their management reports and forecasts.

One practical outcome of using the technology infrequently — and this applies to every type of technology — is that many people, often including sales personnel, never really learn to master the system. And that, in turn, compounds the problem of low adoption rates, leading to more excuses, all of which attempt to mask one simple truth: They don’t know how to use the CRM.

Read More Here

Article Credit: Forbes