The manufacturing sector has been heating up in the United States as the economy has been expanding. Additionally, recent tax law changes and government policy initiatives have accelerated the resurgence of domestic production. While that’s good news for America’s manufacturers, competition is intense in most industries and there’s constant pressure for improved productivity in all parts of a manufacturing enterprise, including sales and marketing operations.
Over the past two decades, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions have become mainstream in manufacturing organizations in an attempt to automate sales and marketing processes. In recent years, CRM projects have become the top software application investment priority. Although companies that have successfully implemented CRM report that CRM investments return over $5.00 for every dollar spent on CRM, surveys have shown that between 30% and 60% of CRM projects result in failure.
C5 Insight conducted a research study on CRM implementation results so that businesses can understand the risks of CRM projects and how to avoid the risks. The result of the research is an executive briefing paper, “CPR for CRM.” The white paper describes user experiences with CRM failure rates, root causes of failure and principles for CRM success. The company has also developed a workbook to use as a starting point in developing and automating a sales process. The workbook, “Rapid Sales Process Design Workbook: Develop a CRM-Ready Sales Process” and the executive briefing paper are available upon request at https://www.c5Insight.com/Resources/DownloadseBooks.
Geoff Ables, C5 Insight Managing Partner, said, “One of the most common causes of CRM projects not meeting expectations it that the project is started with the understanding that the business has a technology problem and selection of the right solution will solve that problem. It becomes easy to fall into the trap of believing that selection and installation of the right software will produce rapid benefits.” He continued, “This leads the buying process to focusing on the software and vendors instead of the business needs, processes and collaboration that CRM solutions are designed to facilitate.”
Ables is the author of “The LUCK Principle: Business Results at the Intersection of People & Profit.” In the book he teaches how to harness the power of people, process, and technology to transform a business into a workplace that balances a people-first culture with bottom-line results. Ables is frequently requested to speak to manufacturing groups around the United States as well as internationally on the topics of the future of work, digital disruption, customer relationship management, social collaboration and big data.
C5 Insight, based on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, was founded in 2002 and is a leader in delivering customer engagement and employee collaboration projects. The company has consulted with hundreds of companies around the world in a broad range of industries. The firm has twice been named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies. For more information about C5 Insight, visit https://www.C5Insight.com.