Why CRM fails so often--and what companies can do about it

Customer relationship management sounds great in theory, but 47% of companies that have started down the CRM path find significant obstacles implementing CRM, says AMR Research Inc.’s new “CRM: Inflicting Pain or Profit?” report. That’s true even at companies that vendors tout as successful showcases for CRM, AMR says.

The biggest problem, according to AMR, is the failure to take into account resistance or inertia by end users, including staffers within the company who must implement the CRM program and the customers themselves. The AMR Research study reports that in order to make CRM really work, a balance between corporate and end-user goals must exist. “Our analysis concludes that corporations can only achieve benefits from CRM software if end-users see an application as a blessing rather than a curse,” said Joanie Rufo, research director, customer management strategies, AMR Research.

AMR says its study results show that when companies surmount or avoid end-user adoption problems, they can be very successful with their deployments. To increase the odds for success, buyers should plan implementations from the individual end-user up and sellers should take more responsibility for CRM’s biggest challenges, AMR says.

The study is based on 80 interviews with the top 12 CRM vendors’ premiere reference accounts. AMR says its analysis shows that CRM implementations that do not make daily tasks more productive for individuals will not see corporate benefits. AMR’s four most common causes of end-user adoption problems are:
--Allowing end-users to continue to perform their job and still meet goals and objectives without ever touching a CRM system;
--Providing knowledge into a system makes end users less valuable to the company and augments their fears of being replaced;
--Failing to achieve user buy-in before pushing business process changes with the software; and
--Lack of executive-level commitment throughout the software’s life with the company.

“Companies that do not implement CRM strategies by making day-to-day tasks more productive for each individual user are constructing an expensive house of cards that will likely topple,” AMR concludes.