A key to CRM success is getting an accurate expectation of what it is, and what it can and can't deliver.

The easiest way to define Customer Relationship Management is to look at the main benefit when you've deployed it successfully: increased business from happier customers. As they get more value from your company, they deliver more value in return.

The need for CRM is obvious. Competition is increasing. In an Internet age, customers are more educated about choices and can switch between competitors more easily. Meanwhile, companies have more and more touchpoints where customers make contact, such as field sales, call centers, website, email, partners, etc. There's a growing need for a single, unified, enterprise-wide picture of all customer interactions. Set up properly, that picture can also be used to deliver better visibility into marketing campaign effectiveness, buying patterns, product preferences, the potential for add-on sales, and more. For the customer, CRM helps ensure the experience of dealing with a single organization which understands that customer's needs and preferences and can serve them effectively.

Achieving the benefits of CRM takes a broad and ongoing commitment. This aspect is easy to overlook.

Instead, many associate "CRM" with the software that empowers a CRM effort. CRM can seem like it's a technology. But it's not. If a CRM initiative is going to work, and customers are going to be better served, the catalyst will be much more than new hardware and software. Technology is an enabler, but it isn't a solution.

An Enterprise-wide Management Strategy

CRM needs to be an enterprise-wide management strategy. It's about increasing the total value and satisfaction that your organization delivers to customers. Your CRM initiative will affect all the people, systems and processes that are touchpoints for your customers. It will affect all your employees, especially those in the sales, marketing and service groups, and your partners. There will be new attitudes, new practices, a new corporate culture, all focused on empowering your customers.

It's not the new technology that makes the difference. It's the people who use it.

Taking Ownership of Customer Data

A CRM initiative gives people the information they need to serve customers better. Right now, your most important customer information is probably difficult to access, and in danger of being lost. It's in the heads of key employees. It's also in assorted emails, PDA's, documents, spreadsheets, notebooks, and other disconnected data silos.

If your key people were to go over to your competition, much of your customer data could walk out the door with them, or be otherwise lost.

A CRM initiative puts your customer information in a secure system, easily available to all the people in your company authorized to use it on behalf of your customers.

A Commitment from the Whole Company

Because CRM is an enterprise-wide strategy, it takes an enterprise-wide commitment to bring about its benefits.

CRM is often seen as an IT project, because it involves technology. But the IT group should not lead the initiative. CRM deployment should have Board-level support. The initiative should be spearheaded by a senior business leader who can sell the entire company on the effort.

There have been thousands of successful CRM implementations. Studying them, it's possible to observe some common reasons for success.

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