PublicationsDate: 13 Sep 2001 Subject: Gartner glum on CRM success rates and costs While many industry research firms have been strong boosters of CRM and have pointed to the area as one with great potential for future growth, Gartner stands out by being a piquant naysayer. It has just announced the results of some of its research into real-world CRM implementations, and these they paint a grim picture for corporations hoping to use CRM to improve performance. Through 2006, Gartner said, more than half of all companies implementing CRM systems will view those implementations as failures. Although this sense of failure will be drawn from many customer-specific problems, Gartner said it feels that the software's inability to link various channels, the lack of true process redesign and the failure to provide any real customer benefits will often be the main culprits. In addition, Gartner claimed that while many businesses are implementing CRM strategies, most of them will severely underestimate the costs of such projects. The researcher claims these underestimates will be as high 40-75%. Gartner analysts said there are three key areas that enterprises must implement to effectively use a CRM business strategy. To emerge as a market leader, a company needs to excel in at least one of these areas, and it needs to be as good as the competition in each of the others: To help thwart the heavy cost overruns, companies will need to adopt specialized project management tools and metrics to track, analyze and influence the CRM implementation. Gartner estimated that a large enterprise can blow through between $30 million to $90 million over a three-year period on technology, labor, consulting services and training related to their CRM projects. Companies can trim those costs by using tools such as a TCO (total cost of ownership) tracker, which offers a view of true IT costs over time, including all three major areas of any company: people, technology and processes. See http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/newsItem/0,289139,sid11_gci769545,00.html |
Copyright © 2001 KDnuggets. Subscribe to KDnuggets News!