Interchange Group Director of Business Strategy, Peter Neville, recognises that many businesses are struggling to implement a CRM strategy due to ageing technology.

If your CRM system is not:

Browser based

Browser  technology means that the desktop-management nightmare of Client Server based systems is banished overnight. System management is simplified, lower cost and completely de-risked and valuable customer, operational and financial data is returned to it’s natural place: a single corporate repository that is secure, enterprise-wide yet easily accessed from any location – on or off-site.

Fully Integrated

Many “Enterprise systems” are in fact a collection of separate vendors offerings, interfaced to make them look like a fully integrated system. Beware! Without a single, comprehensive database schema information cannot be shared instantaneously across the business and may end up being duplicated – even in a so-called Enterprise system!

Workflow Driven

Today’s businesses operate in a fast moving world where first movers take prime advantage. This means that processes often need to change – and fast! User-customisable workflow means that you can gain maximum opportunity without costly and time-consuming systems’ changes.

Enterprise wide

CRM promotes many of the visions and values inherent in a customer service organisation out of the customer service area to the total enterprise. A CRM solution that does not support a full enterprise-wide implementation cannot deliver the full benefits made available by sharing critical customer information to everybody that needs it – at the right place and time.

Single Instance

If you operate in multiple locations, business units, legal entities, across countries, or even continents, then the last thing you need are multiple databases containing the same type of data – and sometimes the same actual data – one for each system or software/database instance.  It is not only inefficient to maintain multiple copies of systems and data, but the consolidation of data to answer simple questions like “what were our sales of X, yesterday” create complex and time consuming activities that take many days, or even weeks to answer – unless you like trying to run your business with one-hand tied behind your back!

Self service Driven

The web changes everything” you may have heard it before – but it really does. Imagine cutting your administration and customer support costs in half, then in half again, and again, and again…… at the same time improving the quality and availability of your customer service and improving customer satisfaction!  This is no longer a dream; it is reality by enabling customer self-service processes on the web – but don’t accept half measures. E-business means taking real customer processes and making them available on the web, direct and integrated to real-time business systems, 24x7.
It does not mean providing “forms” that a customer can complete and e-mail to an administrative clerk, who then enters the details into legacy back-office systems!