Depending on the source you're reading, as many as 50-70% of CRM initiatives fail to deliver as expected. Observing these situations, it's possible to discover some common reasons for failure.

CRM Strategy Errors

The right leadership is not in place

A business leader needs to be in charge of the CRM effort, not IT. Successful CRM is a major business initiative, not a technology initiative.

CRM Strategy not clear

Your CRM strategy and vision need to define what customers experience at each touchpoint, and how will they be handled at each touchpoint. The vision needs to be clear to everyone. A major pitfall occurs when your business constituents have differing expectations of CRM's benefits. Sharing a common vision is key.

The CRM strategy is different from the business strategy

CRM is sometimes seen as a lower level automation step or patch, rather than a top level re-thinking of how customers are served. Your CRM strategy and business strategy need complete alignment.

Processes not re-designed

CRM is an expensive way to automate inefficient or ineffective processes.

Companies get better results from CRM when they begin by focusing on sales processes: how do customers need to be approached, convinced, served and satisfied? Only when these questions are answered should steps be taken to plan software or process changes.

By managing and measuring the sales processes (‘opportunity management?and "sales method?in CRM terms) it is possible to take full advantage of CRM's potential. The steps taken should include:

• Defining and developing new market segments
• Increasing the ability to:
• Cross-sell
• Up-sell
• Retain
• Acquire
• Reactivate
• Experience (Enhancement through better customer interaction strategies)

Customers not consulted

What do your customers think of your company before, during, and after the CRM implementation? What are they happy with, and what are their complaints? How are other suppliers serving them in ways that they like? Too often, surprisingly enough, the "C" in "CRM" is not consulted in all phases of the initiative.

Unclear metrics

It's critical to review your plan to measure key performance indicators, and ROI. Can your metrics truly determine the real business value of your effort? The quality of metrics has been a deciding factor in making or breaking many CRM projects.

Implementation Errors

Inability to link channels

Have you considered ALL customer touchpoints and processes? CRM projects often have focused on some parts of the customer experience, but ran into trouble when they were unable to link with or serve well all parts of the customer experience.

Lack of preparedness for continuous improvement

Be ready for bumps in the road. Be ready to refine strategies, revise goals, re-set metrics, and learn from feedback. Successful CRM projects are rarely completely successful from the outset.

People errors

Introducing CRM to hundreds of employees at a time

It's easy to want to do too much, too fast. Get it right first with a small team of employees chosen to represent a cross-section of your company. Choose an initial project that can make a dramatic difference, with clear key performance indicators. Strong pilot results will help you avoid the next pitfall:

Changing the system, but not the people

It's easy to focus too much on the new technologies and processes rather than focusing first on the people who will use them successfully. You need employee excitement about doing a better job for customers. You need employee feedback and overall buy-in. The entire company needs to own "customer-first." They need to see that the CRM vision you all hold takes them to a better place than where they are now.

Process errors

Instead of enhancing new processes, changing the CRM system to fit old processes

To avoid the pain of revision, some companies don't take the opportunity to re-engineer and optimize their processes. They look to CRM as a patch rather than an opportunity from the ground up to increase customer satisfaction, revenue, service and overall productivity.

Technology Errors

Customer data is in more places than expected

As implementation gets underway, key data can turn up in salespeople's PDA's, spreadsheets, handwritten notes, and legacy systems. To avoid surprise integration nightmares, the requirements gathering stage needs to be careful and thorough.

Different CRM solutions are in place but do not work well together.

Often marketing, sales and service departments already have different types of CRM software, from different vendors, to track the same customers. As a result, these departments can't share data, and have redundant support and administration costs.

Customer Management Errors

Customers do not experience new benefits

The ultimate test is to be able to demonstrate increased satisfaction among customers, along with increased customer value to your business. This goal can inform every choice you make during planning and implementation. But just like the adage "watch the ball" in sports, it's a fundamental often overlooked.

Your vendor's experience with CRM implementation is one of your best assets. See a selection of leading vendors.