Benefits of CRM showing – really

This one’s been all over the news today, and is apparently giving lots of web and print writers the opportunity to flex their facetious muscles. Typically headlines begin with something like “CRM systems starting to deliver real benefits,” followed by some temporarily sarcastic tag such as “at last” or “finally” or “finally at last.” It’s all about a PMP Research study commissioned by the Evaluation Centre stating that the proportion of companies who describe their CRM applications as “very successful” has more than doubled in the past twelve months.

Their positive experiences are reportedly encouraging other organizations to review their implementations in the hopes of achieving additional benefits. For the past two years, PMP’s annual survey on CRM found a very small number of satisfied customers of four percent. This year, the proportion stating that their CRM applications have been very successful in delivering all the benefits anticipated leapt to fourteen percent. A further thirty-nine percent label their CRM efforts as “successful” and say that the business has seen some, if not all, the benefits expected.

Put together, this means that half of this year’s sample (fifty-three percent, to be precise) reckons to be seeing real improvements as a result of implementing CRM applications. For some time, it has been a widely held view that up to fifty percent of CRM implementations are failures. However, companies are certainly not giving up on CRM, according to PMP’s findings. Sixty-six percent report that they are currently making changes and additions to their implementations in order to realize more of the benefits they originally sought, or say they have plans to do so shortly. Just eleven percent have ruled out further improvements completely.

Respondents were asked to rate their motivations for adopting CRM technology on a scale of 1 to 5, in which “1” means “not important” and “5” for “very important.” The aggregated results show that the two most common drivers for introducing CRM systems are the desire to improve customer satisfaction levels (3.96) and the requirement to improve customer lifetime value (3.70). Companies have clearly recognized that it is easier and cheaper to keep an existing customer rather than find a new one, and attracting new customers finished last on the list of desirable outcomes (2.84).

Organisations are also making headway in their long journey towards having a single view of customers over a wide range of channels. The company website (ninety-one percent), email (eighty-seven percent) and web forms (sixty-four percent) are all now common methods of online customer communication, along with established choices such as telephone (ninety-six percent) and fax (eighty-five percent). More than half (fifty-six percent) reports moderate success in integrating all these options, while only two percent have failed to tackle this particular problem.

Despite their acknowledged successes, organisations are still reluctant to spend much on CRM systems since the biggest proportion (forty-seven percent) estimate they have invested less than £250,000 on CRM over the past three years. The fact that many IT budgets are under pressure may be partly the reason for this, but organisations show little interest in alternative methods of sourcing CRM technology – only nine percent of those polled indicate any interest in hosted CRM applications and only four percent make use of offshore facilities.

Founded in 1990, PMP Research is currently the leading European independent analyst firm and part of PMP Group Services. The firm provides bespoke research, analysis and consultancy with foci on the IT, telecom and professional services markets. PMP Research has access to a database of more than 68,000 individuals. The Evaluation Centre is a website and service center which seeks to assist buyers of software, services and technology in the procurement process.