Is CRM Dead?

In a recent AccountingWeb article on what to watch for in 2006, Consultant Editor David Carter suggested:

"The big development that I see coming is the integration of customer relationship management (CRM) into enterprise software. This is likely to be the next big step in the evolution of business software."

I agree with Dennis Howlett's comment on the article, and I just don't see CRM integrated to ERP as the next big thing for the SMB market.  The issue is much more complex than that.  There is an interesting analysis from Allan Bonde on CIO.com asking if CRM is Dead?  Good, controversial title (which I borrowed, thanks Allan), but he is really suggesting that CRM is changing to a version 2 that needs to move beyond call centre, help desk and sales force automation to incorporate new innovations.  Quite rightly he points out that:

"Despite its name, one can argue that the greatest shortcoming of CRM is that it never really was about directly helping customers. Solutions were sold to executives running call centres or sales organizations as a way to wring out inefficiency, force standardized processes and gain better insight into the state of the business."

Depressingly, he also mentions:

"several global organizations that have spent more than $100 million on CRM projects and are still uncertain what real value they have received!"

Sadly, we know of many smaller implementations with the same characteristic.  But his piece goes on to explain that V2 of CRM might incorporate knowledge management, self service, user forums and other collaboration techniques.  He also adds:

"And there is the argument being made by Greg Gianforte at RightNow that on-demand delivery coupled with open source infrastructure may be the most efficient way to bring these types of applications to market, a view that has a lot of merit."

Here is where I completely agree with him.  For the SMB market in particular, an open source model works well.  It removes one of the major issues in smaller implementations, where the licence or subscription costs are often an inhibitor to rolling the solution out to the whole organisation and partner community.  This is certainly an area we will be investigating for our customers in 2006.

Technorati Tags : CRM, ERP, open source, SaaS, Salesforce.com, RightNow, AccountinWeb

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