"It will never work"

We’ve been working on a project recently that aims to change the culture of a complex medium-sized organisation and create a customer-centric culture.

I can already hear you crying “don’t bother”! But before you scroll down to the comments window to tell me it will never work, let me share with you some comments from one of the working groups about their interactions with colleagues when introducing business process redesign:

“when told what successful CRM systems can achieve, they are very positive about it, and give every indication of committing to the change”

“it is difficult for people to visualise something that is not yet in place and the benefits need to be neatly described to those who don’t know much about CRM”

“can we think of quick and dirty examples of how the CRM will change the face of [the organisation] if we were all to sign up to it 100%. This is what we could look like it 3 years time ... paint the picture and tell the story maybe?”

“I think some of them will come from organisations that have successfully implemented CRM systems and can evangelise about them”

When I hear comments like these it brings a real sense of satisfaction and achievement. At Purple Vision we spend a lot of our time evangelising the benefits of real CRM (ie not just the database) to clients and others who typically see it as a just a technology solution.

Real CRM is about building a shared attitude where an organisation collectively places its customer (aka stakeholder, client, supporter, donor) at the centre of it’s work. We reckon CRM should be about 25% TECHNOLOGY, with the rest of the effort going in to PROCESS and PEOPLE.

The members of this project team are experiencing this for themselves – and reflecting it in their enthusiasm to spread the word! This is really encouraging for the chances of success for this organisation's ambitious plans.

OK, now you can be cynical (sorry, realistic) …

Comments

[Ben Morris]

Heartening stuff. Many technology implementations tend to become obsessed with "the system" rather than the people and business processes that it's there to support and enhance. It's a pretty common syndrome that's not just confined to CRM. Your 25\75 split is *very* important - it's so very easy to get bogged down so that technology starts to drive the vision rather than enable it.

[Sally Moger]

For us as a small national specialist charity, my first reaction is that for CRM to really be effective for us we need to sell it to the frontline staff (in our case, teachers working with deaf children and their families) - they believe that they always put our beneficiaries first, and up to a point they do. They just do not always do it in the most effective way by escalating ideas and issues into the rest of the organisation to REALLY inform planning and fundraising. They can be quite protective about "their families" and have difficulty convincing themselves that by communicating better with their backroom guys ("the office staff"), those families would actually get even better service and the charity might stand a better chance out there in the funding jungle. And of course all us want the benefits of good CRM without actually having to put in more effort and time....