4% of CRM Projects Are Very Successful

According to a July 2007 research report issued by PMP Research, 42% of entities polled indicated their CRM systems had achieved only partial success and limited business benefits. Somewhat ironically, PMP Research Manager, Cliff Mills, suggests that an even greater number of organizations recognize that CRM strategy is more essential now that it was three years ago. It is viewed as "much more important" by 44% of the organizations surveyed and "slightly more important" by another 39% of respondents. "No one sees it as less important" according to Mills.

However, recognizing customer relationship management strategy importance and achieving planned results are oftentimes mutually exclusive. 37% of organizations report achieving some clear benefits from their CRM software systems while a scarce 4% of participants indicated their CRM software systems were successful and delivering all of the intended benefits.

While CRM implementation failures suffer from a host of factors most of which are well publicized, CRM post-implementation utilization often suffers from a failure to periodically measure results. 30% of the companies surveyed regularly measure their CRM software systems against operational metrics and planned benefits. Approximately another third of participants indicate they are planning to measure progress, 11% have measured only one time since the software implementation and 13% have never measured their CRM software effectiveness. In the report, Mills comments "This suggests that judgment as to the degree of success of a CRM application is often made on subjective basis rather than quantitative information because organizations do not know how to successfully, or how frequently, measure their CRM software."

For companies that do establish clear CRM software goals, the top cited benefits include the following:

• Deliver better strategic information to functional areas of the business, such as sales and marketing;
• Improve customer satisfaction levels;
• Improve customer lifetime value; and
• Retain existing customer longer.

The research results also indicate that a lack of success is not reducing interest in being successful. 78% of organizations indicate that they are currently implementing changes and additions to their CRM software implementations in order to ultimately realize the initial objectives. Only 11% have completely abandoned further improvements.

Tags: CRM software, customer relationship management systems