Customer Relationship Management: The Bottom Line to Optimizing Your ROI

To Avoid Major Pitfalls in CRM Implementation, Start with the People

The status quo in approaching CRM is to start by looking for technology solutions (Figure 2.1). We found it imperative to start with people, then go to processes, and then pick the technology based on the people (customers' and employees' needs) and the process (how the work will get done) (Figure 2.2).

Figure 2.1. In the old strategy of CRM the technology drove the process and the process drove what the people did.

Figure 2.2. In the new CRM strategy the people drive the process and the process drives the choices in technology.