There is absolutely no doubt that a CRM system is essential to businesses of all sizes; however, Gene Marks’ recent article in Forbes Magazine raised some interesting points. He began his argument by stating that anywhere between 30 and 70 per cent of customer relationship management systems don’t achieve their objectives and believed that this was, in part, due to companies not putting the same emphasis on their CRM systems as they might with their accounting systems (all businesses need to keep track of the vanity and sanity of their turnover and profits, right? Although adding and subtracting numbers can sometimes be less daunting than finding out if several thousand Joe and Josephine Blogs have had a change of status recently!).
But he went on to further stress that even with companies who know the strength of a good CRM system and prioritise it, these systems can also falter and not reach their potential. He laid the blame with one person; the administrator or rather the lack of a dedicated administrator. Without someone who is also given the relative training to administer and be in charge of your CRM and be given the leeway to fix and implement the system, then the platform will never reach its full potential. He also highlighted that this incurs a cost and by training and honing an administrator the company also has to plan for them to leave, as they will do at some point in their career. The company just has to make sure they’re not left holding the CRM baby while they invest in and train another administrator.
All good points. However, we did take issue with one element of his argument. In emphasising the role of the administrator, he argued that if you buy a race horse you would also invest in a jockey. Likewise, if you own a car, you would take it to a mechanic. This is true but we would argue that the first step in looking after your administrator is to furnish them with all the right tools, they need to ensure that their CRM is as effective as it can be. And that’s exactly why we’ve launched Clean Contacts and the Free Data Health Check for Microsoft Dynamics 365, which enables administrators to ensure that the customer data held within Dynamics 365 is as clean and up to date as possible. After all, clean data is the lifeblood of CRM!
So, if you are an administrator and would like some information on how Clean Contacts can revolutionise how you manage your data, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Or, if you would like to help your CRM administrator, please point them in our direction!
