Newly Published CRM Reviews & Articles

	Seismic Shifts in the CRM Software Market
	The beginning of a new year is an opportune time to assess the trajectory of the CRM software market. A clear understanding of CRM direction aids planning to tap into new capabilities, better leverages CRM software with other technology movements and can significantly accelerate your business and systems objectives. Here are four market shifts that will impact the trajectory and value of CRM software.

	The Customer Relationship Management Evolution in 2022
	There are a lot ways the Customer Relationship Management software market has evolved. But from my vantage point I find the most telling evidence of market maturity to be based on who benefits. And over three decades I have observed a clear pattern of evolving beneficiaries - from managers to users to customers to communities.

	The Future of Sales
	The sales industry is in transition. It's shifting from an offline, seller-driven, push-based model toward a digital-first, data-driven and buyer-focused response. There are four unmistakable buyer-led trends that will define the future of sales. Those salesforces that adjust and embrace these trends will outperform those that do not.

	What is CRM?
	For many people evaluating CRM software, CRM is not what they think it is. Well, that is, if they think that CRM is software. It's an easy mistake to make. The truth is CRM software is a tool to achieve CRM, and CRM is a business strategy aimed at growing mutually beneficial customer relationships at scale. Understanding how the two work together delivers the most impactful results.

	Is Salesforce Worth the Price Premium?
	Salesforce is the market share leader. That position has earned the company a significant price premium when compared to alternatives such as Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle CX and SAP CRM. Whether the price premium pays dividends or just results in higher total cost of ownership (TCO) depends on how you use it. This article explains when the price premium makes sense, and when it does not.

	How CRM Software Automates the Delivery of Customer Experiences
	Customer-centric businesses research, map and automate customer interactions in order to deliver consistent, predictable, rewarding and memorable customer experiences. However, it's easy to get overwhelmed when trying to identify all the possible customer journeys. Fortunately, that's not necessary. Research shows that 20% of customer journeys often account for up to 70-80% of occurrences.

	The Top Reasons CRM Fails
	Analyst firms report that 30-50%+ of all CRM deployments fail to achieve their objectives or fail outright. As CRM is a 23 year old industry, and these CRM failure reports repeat themselves year after year, the statistics are cause for proactive risk analysis and mitigating measures. Here are the top causes of CRM failures, and the preemptive measures that can prevent, mitigate or respond to these challenges.

	Agile versus Waterfall CRM Implementation Methods
	Waterfall deployment methods remain the norm, but agile methods such as Scrum offer some unique capabilities to improve CRM software implementation success. It’s important to recognize there is no one size fits all CRM implementation methodology. Here are the key advantages, disadvantages and differences between these competing approaches.

	A 10 Step Change Management Framework That Works
	CRM software implementations move staff away from the status quo and outside their comfort zone. If resistance to change goes unaddressed, the hidden agendas and failure to embrace the needed change will challenge the project, and likely result in time and cost overruns. Here is a 10 step change management framework to reduce risk and improve your CRM implementation.

	The Future of CRM Software
	The next generation of CRM software is needed for two reasons. First, businesses need new strategies and supporting technologies to respond to more empowered customers. Second, CRM software is a 23 year old customer data management technology that lies somewhere between mature and commoditized. It's time for a technology refresh. Here's what's needed for the future of CRM software.

	Best Practices to Rally CRM User Adoption
	User adoption is a perennial challenge with CRM software deployments. Slow or low user adoption is a top cited contributing factor to CRM deployments that fail to achieve their objectives, or just fail outright. Here are the top CRM best practices designed to counter CRM user adoption challenges and get more payback on your technology investment.

	How to Design CRM for the User Experience
	Successful CRM user experiences increase CRM application utilization which leads to better data input, more process automation, enhanced information reporting and a much bigger payback on your CRM software investment. But achieving CRM user experience objectives is hard. Here's a proven approach and some best practices to achieve the elusive CRM user experience benefits.

	Mobile CRM – Why it Fails, and How to Succeed
	Despite a spectacular rise in smartphone and tablet adoption, mobile CRM remains sporadic and under-utilized for most businesses, and of the few mobile CRM adopters, most fail to achieve sustained user adoption and a positive ROI. Here I examine the disconnect between mobility and CRM, why so many mobile deployments don’t go well and how to achieve mobile CRM success.

	The Business Mandate For Customer Experience (CX) Management
	Customer Experience (CX) has become the go-to strategy to satisfy increasing customer demands, deliver consistent and rewarding service, retain customers and grow profitable customer relationships. The business strategy is well understood, but the execution is complex and many times elusive. Here we examine the business problem and share a proven framework to deploy a CX strategy.

	The Business Case For An Integrated Revenue Cycle
	When companies move beyond just a sales cycle and get to a complete lead to customer revenue cycle, they more effectively advance those leads through the pipe, increase sales wins, grow customer acquisitions and earn more revenues. But getting there isn't easy. Here we share the business case, along with a proven framework, to achieve an integrated revenue cycle.