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Get the Most Out of Your CRM

In today’s connected world, continuous optimization of enterprise applications to realize your digital strategy is key.

  • Application optimization is essential to stay competitive and productive in today’s digital environment.
  • Enterprise applications often involve large capital outlay, unquantified benefits, and high risk of failure.
  • Customer relationship management (CRM) application portfolios are often messy with multiple integration points, distributed data, and limited ongoing end-user training.
  • User dissatisfaction is common.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

A properly optimized CRM ecosystem will reduce costs and increase productivity.

Impact and Result

  • Build an ongoing optimization team to conduct application improvements.
  • Assess your CRM application(s) and the environment in which they exist. Take a business-first strategy to prioritize optimization efforts.
  • Validate CRM capabilities, user satisfaction, issues around data, vendor management, and costs to build out an optimization strategy.
  • Pull this all together to develop a prioritized optimization roadmap.

Get the Most Out of Your CRM Research & Tools

Start here – read the Executive Brief

Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should optimize your CRM, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

1. Map current-state capabilities

Gather information around the application:

1. Identify CRM optimization team.
2. Inventory current system state.
3. Complete the CRM business model to create goals and organizational alignment.
4. Identify key CRM processes (optional).

2. Assess your current state

Assess CRM and related environment. Perform CRM process assessment. Assess user satisfaction across key processes, applications, and data. Understand vendor satisfaction

3. Build your optimization roadmap

Build your optimization roadmap: process improvements, software capability improvements, vendor relationships, and data improvement initiatives.


Member Testimonials

After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.

10.0/10


Overall Impact

$19,000


Average $ Saved

10


Average Days Saved

Client

Experience

Impact

$ Saved

Days Saved

Circular Materials

Workshop

10/10

$19,000

10

We really appreciated Tom flexibility in adapting the workshop content to our needs. He was quite accommodating during the planning phase and even... Read More


Get the Most Out of Your CRM

In today’s connected world, continuous optimization of enterprise applications to realize your digital strategy is key.

Get the Most Out of Your CRM

In today’s connected world, continuous optimization of enterprise applications to realize your digital strategy is key.

EXECUTIVE BRIEF

Analyst Perspective

Focus optimization on organizational value delivery.

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are at the core of a customer-centric strategy to drive business results. They are critical to supporting marketing, sales, and customer service efforts.

CRM systems are expensive, their benefits are difficult to quantify, and they often suffer from poor user satisfaction. Post implementation, technology evolves, organizational goals change, and the health of the system is not monitored. This is complicated in today’s digital landscape with multiple integration points, siloed data, and competing priorities.

Too often organizations jump into the selection of replacement systems without understanding the health of their current systems. IT leaders need to stop reacting and take a proactive approach to continually monitor and optimize their enterprise applications. Strategically realign business goals, identify business application capabilities, complete a process assessment, evaluate user adoption, and create an optimization roadmap that will drive a cohesive technology strategy that delivers results.

This is a picture of Lisa Highfield

Lisa Highfield
Research Director,
Enterprise Applications
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

In today’s connected world, continuous optimization of enterprise applications to realize your digital strategy is key.

Enterprise applications often involve large capital outlay and unquantified benefits.

CRM application portfolios are often messy. Add to that poor processes, distributed data, and lack of training – business results and user dissatisfaction is common.

Technology owners are often distributed across the business. Consolidation of optimization efforts is key.

Common Obstacles

Enterprise applications involve large numbers of processes and users. Without a clear focus on organizational needs, decisions about what and how to optimize can become complicated.

Competing and conflicting priorities may undermine optimization value by focusing on the approaches that would only benefit one line of business rather than the entire organization.

Teams do not have a framework to illustrate, communicate, and justify the optimization effort in the language your stakeholders understand.

Info-Tech’s Approach

Build an ongoing optimization team to conduct application improvements.

Assess your CRM application(s) and the environment in which they exist. Take a business-first strategy to prioritize optimization efforts.

Validate CRM capabilities, user satisfaction, issues around data, vendor management, and costs to build out an optimization strategy

Pull this all together to develop a prioritized optimization roadmap.

Info-Tech Insight

CRM implementation should not be a one-and-done exercise. A properly optimized CRM ecosystem will reduce costs and increase productivity.

This is an image of the thought model: Get the Most Out of Your CRM

Insight Summary

Continuous assessment and optimization of customer relationship management (CRM) systems is critical to their success.

  • Applications and the environments in which they live are constantly evolving.
  • Get the Most Out of Your CRM provides business and application managers a method to complete a health assessment on their CRM systems to identify areas for improvement and optimization.
  • Put optimization practices into effect by:
    • Aligning and prioritizing key business and technology drivers.
    • Identifying CRM process classification, and performing a gap analysis.
    • Measuring user satisfaction across key departments.
    • Evaluating vendor relations.
    • Understanding how data fits.
    • Pulling it all together into an optimization roadmap.

CRM platforms are the applications that provide functional capabilities and data management around the customer experience (CX).

Marketing, sales, and customer service are enabled through CRM technology.

CRM technologies facilitate an organization’s relationships with customers, service users, employees, and suppliers.

CRM technology is critical to managing the lifecycle of these relationships, from lead generation, to sales opportunities, to ongoing support and nurturing of these relationships.

Customer experience management (CXM)

CRM platforms sit at the core of a well-rounded customer experience management ecosystem.

Customer Relationship Management

  • Web Experience Management Platform
  • E-Commerce & Point-of-Sale Solutions
  • Social Media Management Platform
  • Customer Intelligence Platform
  • Customer Service Management Tools
  • Marketing Management Suite

Customer relationship management suites are one piece of the overall customer experience management ecosystem, alongside tools such as customer intelligence platforms and adjacent point solutions for sales, marketing, and customer service. Review Info-Tech’s CXM blueprint to build a complete, end-to-end customer interaction solution portfolio that encompasses CRM alongside other critical components. The CXM blueprint also allows you to develop strategic requirements for CRM based on customer personas and external market analysis.

CRM by the numbers

1/3

Statistical analysis of CRM projects indicate failures vary from 18% to 69%. Taking an average of those analyst reports, about one-third of CRM projects are considered a failure.
Source: CIO Magazine, 2017

85%

Companies that apply the principles of behavioral economics outperform their peers by 85% in sales growth and more than 25% in gross margin.
Source: Gallup, 2012

40%

In 2019, 40% of executives name customer experience the top priority for their digital transformation.
Source: CRM Magazine, 2019

CRM dissatisfaction

Drivers of Dissatisfaction

Business Data People and Teams Technology
  • Misaligned objectives
  • Product fit
  • Changing priorities
  • Lack of metrics
  • Access to data
  • Data hygiene
  • Data literacy
  • One view of the customer
  • User adoption
  • Lack of IT support
  • Training (use of data and system)
  • Vendor relations
  • Systems integration
  • Multichannel complexity
  • Capability shortfall
  • Lack of product support

Info-Tech Insight

While technology is the key enabler of building strong customer experiences, there are many other drivers of dissatisfaction. IT must stand shoulder to shoulder with the business to develop a technology framework for customer relationship management.

Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service, along with IT, can only optimize CRM with the full support of each other. The cooperation of the departments is crucial when trying to improve CRM technology capabilities and customer interaction.

Application optimization is risky without a plan

Avoid the common pitfalls.

  • Not considering application optimization as a business and IT partnership that requires continuous formal engagement of all participants.
  • Not having a good understanding of current state, including integration points and data.
  • Not adequately accommodating feedback and changes after digital applications are deployed and employed.
  • Not treating digital applications as a motivator for potential future IT optimization effort, and not incorporating digital assets in strategic business planning.
  • Not involving department leads, management, and other subject matter experts to facilitate the organizational change digital applications bring.

“A successful application optimization strategy starts with the business need in mind and not from a technological point of view. No matter from which angle you look at it, modernizing a legacy application is a considerable undertaking that can’t be taken lightly. Your best approach is to begin the journey with baby steps.”
– Ernese Norelus, Sreeni Pamidala, and Oliver Senti
Medium, 2020

In today’s connected world, continuous optimization of enterprise applications to realize your digital strategy is key.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

MEMBER RATING

10.0/10
Overall Impact

$19,000
Average $ Saved

10
Average Days Saved

After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve.

Read what our members are saying

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst

Get the help you need in this 3-phase advisory process. You'll receive 7 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.

Guided Implementation 1: Map current-state capabilities
  • Call 1: Scope requirements, objectives, and your specific challenges.

Guided Implementation 2: Assess your current state
  • Call 1: Build the CRM team. Align organizational goals.
  • Call 2: Map current state. Inventory CRM processes. Explore CRM-related costs.
  • Call 3: Conduct gap analysis for CRM processes. Prepare application portfolio assessment.

Guided Implementation 3: Build your optimization roadmap
  • Call 1: Understand product satisfaction and vendor management. Look for CRM cost optimization opportunities (optional).
  • Call 2: Review APA results.
  • Call 3: Identify key optimization areas. Build out optimization roadmap and next steps.

Author

Lisa Highfield

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