Blog: William McKnight

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Was CRM really this bad?

In "Good-Bye Yellow Brick Road: CRM's Fairytale Start Fades Into a Pragmatic Finish", Dick Yee signs the epitaph of the CRM industry with a hard-hitting expose' of the euphoric rise and fall of the industry. I read this as I was contemplating the whole CRM thing and while Dick may take it further than I would, it's hard to argue the points he makes.

I contributed to the movement by naming my DM Review column "The CRM-Ready Data Warehouse", which I changed in Sept. 2003 to "Building Business Intelligence". However, I always kept it about the customer - not the software vendor. One can hardly argue the merits of the goal of CRM - essentially a deeper understanding of the customer - and I have no issue with helping clients achieve customer intimacy, or, at Dick puts it, going deeper into their customer's pockets - for a value exchange.

But, to some of Dick's points, the large, successful CRM engagements I was involved in hardly had to do with the technology. And the teams didn't consist of armies from multi-national, global consultancies either. And, yes, it was hard work.

But the software was difficult with all the bells and whistles. And the payoffs were hardly specifically understood, let alone monitored and realized.

I say these things as if CRM is dead. It isn't dead. True CRM, a focus on the 3 big payoffs, is not dead:

1. Targeted Marketing
2. Marketing Expense Reduction
3. Churn Prevention

The tools and the conferences may have been finally sniffed out, but maybe we should call the more sensible CRM we see today CRM' or CRM Version 2 to differentiate from the mess Dick talks about.

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