My clients ask for help quantifying the financial impacts of implementing a CRM technology solution. CRM initiatives must not only be technically sound but must answer the question, "What will we get for our money?"

In my new report – Quantify The Business Value of CRM – I provide an overview of Forester’s Total Economic Impact (TEI) methodology and how to use it calculate whether the benefits to be derived from investing in a CRM solution will be greater than the costs

The first step is to estimate how investing in a CRM solution will help grow revenues, cut operating costs, and boost IT efficiencies:

•  Power up the revenue engine. You need to define the objectives associated with increasing revenue. Can you capture more of our current customers' spending on your product category (capturing larger share of wallet)? Can you improve your product mix value by encouraging more sales of higher-margin products? Can you improve price realization by better matching discounting policies to the appropriate customer groups? Will your CRM initiative help you increase the average length of our customer relationships by reducing irritants that cause attrition? Will you be able to attract profitable new customers?

As more signs point to strengthening economic activity in the US and selected regions of other parts of the world, corporate austerity is fading and growth is back in the spotlight.  Acquiring customers, improving the customer experience, and growing revenues have returned to center stage.  

Forrester asked more than 2,000 global business decision-makers at large organizations what their “critical” and “high” priorities are for the next 12 months. We found that:

• Their top priority is acquiring and retaining customers (73%).
• Tied for the top spot is growing overall company revenue (73%).  
• The third most important priority is addressing the rising expectations of customers and improving customer satisfaction (68%).
• Lowering operating costs now only takes sixth place on the priority list (63%).

The only source of competitive advantage is the one that can survive technology-fueled disruption — an obsession with understanding, connecting with, serving, and delighting customers. But as organizations strive to succeed in the age of the customer, business and IT professionals responsible for customer-facing processes still struggle with how to define CRM strategies, re-engineer customer-facing business processes, acquire and deploy the appropriate supporting technologies, and lead and sustain the necessary organizational changes.

Technology is radically changing your customers and your business. So how do you cope with digital disruption? The CRM playbook is a practical guide that focuses our research and recommendations to help you: discover opportunities; plan for success; take action; and optimize your customer relationships. Read the CRM executive overview and companion reports to take advantage of research, methodologies, and tools to guide you through these critical phases:

I spent the past few months talking with enterprise users of cloud CRM solutions. Most are happy, but others say they still face obstacles in getting the value promised from software-as-a-service (SaaS) CRM solutions such as saleforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

The CRM solution landscape has experienced considerable change, including significant vendor consolidation and a rapid rise in the popularity SaaS solutions — often referred to as "CRM in the cloud." Organizations adopt SaaS CRM solutions because of low upfront costs, good usability, proven scalability, better flexibility, and faster time-to-value compared with traditional on-premises applications. Forrester surveys indicate that nearly 70% of organizations are interested in, or are currently using, SaaS solutions for horizontal business processes such as CRM and HR.

But clients tell me they cannot capture the promised benefits if they do not have certain prerequisites within their own skill sets, such as the right developer talent and governance model to work in an agile, iterative approach that leading organizations use to be successful. This is not your father’s CRM anymore, so don’t make these mistakes:

As result of “big data” mania, there is an explosion of interest in business intelligence solutions and advanced analytics techniques. In particular, organizations of all sizes want to sharpen their ability to track the health of customer relationship management (CRM) business processes. A common question that I get from my clients is: "What are the best sales metrics that we should track, and how do we do it?"

Recently, my colleague Boris Evelson and I responded to an inquiry on this topic. Our answer is summarized below.

Question:

"How do we set up BI dashboards for a sales-focused company? We currently have Cognos, IBI, and various cubes around a 6 (+) year old Teradata warehouse. We are upgrading our Teradata to its latest technology and have purchased IBI's BI suite to use in conjunction. Our focus is on sales -- How did other organizations start out? We would like to know what works best for different roles from the CEO down to an inside sales rep?"

Answer:

We believe the answer to your question relies in adopting best practices around analytical sales performance management. You should take a top-down approach that has five steps:

1.     First, define the overall sales strategy.

2.     Then, identify goals and objectives that you need to achieve in order to make your sales strategy successful.