Is CRM dead?

03/24/2008 12:34 PM by Chris Toohey

CRM was once the industry buzz-solution... but it was always such a broad-scoped thing. The need for CRM began to assume the need for SFA, CS, and countless other buzz-acronyms until you were left with a technology investment that required 50 internal sign-offs because the required budget could properly fund a small nation. Not to mention that the more the solution could do, the more departments across an organization you would impact - and thus the more champions you have that have their own specific needs. And if your experiences mirror my own, you begin to wonder if these departments 1) ever talk amongst themselves or 2) even work for the same company.

So, you have this kichen-sink application suite consisting of 300 modules that don't quite address the original business need that started this whole process in the first place... but you've spent all that money already so you make it work.

For some people, that's "sucking it up" and dealing with the functionality gap. For others, it's modifying the codebase of the purchased solution. The problem with that... you can't (or can't easily) upgrade once you modify the codebase to include the functionality that you need to address the original business need.

And people win awards for this...

So what's a better way to do things? Now - please keep in mind that Clearframe has it's own CRM/SFA/ET AL solution... but I'm beginning to think that it's time to move onward to something better - something that allows for both real collaboration and something that meets the real business needs of the customer. What that is... I dunno. This post wasn't anything more than a brain-dump (sorry for those expecting a coming-soon commercial or something like that)... something that was (and has been) on my mind for quite some time now.

So is CRM dead? Has it evolved into something else? Does it have a need to evolve, but we're not quite there yet? Random thoughts on a Monday...