Success Accelerators and C5 Insight found that over one-third of CRM projects are failing and that some companies have experienced 2 or 3 successive failures. As buy side CRM providers, we wanted to provide insights into why CRM projects fail and ways to prevent yours from doing so.
The Most Common Reasons Why CRM Projects Fail
While CRM projects will differ from business to business, we have noticed some commonalities in recent years as to why certain CRM projects perform better than others. Failing CRM projects usually stem from issues in four areas:
Lack of a Coherent Strategy
When implementing any project in your business it is vital to have a clear plan. A CRM project is no different. Not defining a set of goals for your CRM, and steps you plan on taking to ensure they are reached, can prevent you from implementing a successful CRM project.
Failure to Drive Process Improvement
A second common issue that can cause a CRM project to not succeed is a failure to drive process improvement. Few things can be more harmful to a business than being stagnant. You should constantly be looking for areas for improvement in your CRM project to ensure that it is efficient and effective.
Little or No Executive Support
Creating a coherent CRM project strategy and driving process improvement will be almost impossible without executive support. Support from sales and investor relations executives is imperative in building an effective CRM project, as their support is needed for process change, gaining traction and CRM adoption.
Poor Data Quality
For a CRM project to be successful it needs to be supplied with quality data. Failure to import useful accurate client data into your CRM will result in an ineffective platform for your business.
How to Avoid CRM Project Failure
Addressing the issues discussed above can help ensure that your CRM project is on the right path. Here are some ways to avoid making common mistakes:
Seek Executive Involvement
Leaders of your sales and investor relations team understand your business better than anyone. Your CRM project needs that leadership and vision in the mix. When leadership stays completely on the periphery of the CRM selection and implementation, the project will have a hard time gaining traction and an even harder time driving process change.
Break Things – Drive Business Change
Eliminate “off-line” reporting on sales and client activities. Your CRM should be front and center for tracking. If management tolerates off-line (non-CRM) activity and sales reporting, you will undermine the value of CRM and create an environment in which the CRM data is incomplete and not trustworthy.
Demand Adoption
The greater the usage of the CRM for management reporting, the more your users will care about the data. When no one in management is looking at the CRM data, compliance is spotty. Data quality will suffer. Data will be siloed by users with some trying to make the CRM work, and some going around it altogether. You will not get to the underlying issues of why your CRM is failing and you are likely to repeat those mistakes in your next project.
Use an Industry Specific CRM Software
Using a CRM built specifically for your business’ industry will provide you with specific features unavailable from a ‘one-size fits all’ platform, and will set your CRM project up for success. View our blog on how to choose the right buy-side CRM to learn more about which software may be right for your firm.
A Buy Side CRM for Success
SatuitCRM was built for asset management professionals. We have worked in the asset management community for two decades. We understand the pain points. We provide an out-of-the-box solution that provides management reporting and business processes that will help avoid the failures you may have encountered with other CRM’s. We can’t guarantee success, but we can give you a better starting point. Our US and UK-based client success teams have an average tenure of 8 years. Our management team comes from a background in asset management and will engage directly with your management to help assure their involvement.
Addressing the reasons mentioned above of why CRM projects fail will not be effective without utilizing an industry specific, quality CRM software. Contact us today to learn more about how Satuit’s suite of products can help grow your business.
