When you know that something is going to provide you good results in terms of increasing your sales as well as your productivity I am sure that you will pay attention to this. During the years 2007 and 2009 more than 60 per cent of companies in Europe and other locations around the world will have clear investment priority the implementation of new ICT applications. That’s why, between 20 and 30 per cent of this budget will go to CRM solutions. This is the main conclusion of a study by Pentheus ICT Analyst. Moreover, the results of this research indicate that the CRM market has experienced strong growth in the use of standard CRM solutions. In 2004, only 37 percent of Spanish companies using CRM packaged a figure that rose to 62 percent in 2006 thanks to solutions from vendors such as Oracle, SAP or Microsoft. Also, Pentheus notes that investment levels have reached an average of 650,000 per year. “In the last two years have seen a clear energizing the CRM market in Spain, companies have realized the need to develop sophisticated strategies for recruitment, retention and customer service,” said Manuel Ángel Méndez, director of research of Pentheus ICT Analyst and author of the study. However, we still face serious problems in securing value of software and getting a clear return on investment.
Thus, among the main obstacles identified by the analyst is the fact that the measurable impact of CRM applications in the business is limited. In this sense, the satisfaction of the Spanish directors of Information Technology regarding the direct impact of CRM is very poor. Specifically, on a scale of 1 to 9, the satisfaction level of 5.23 means is referring to the possibility of mediating a clear ROI from CRM investments. Another problem identified by the study of ICT Analyst Pentheus is the poor quality of data. Almost 40 percent of Spanish companies say working with poor or erroneous data, while 23 percent thought that the data quality is acceptable. Only 8 percent of respondents say managers have a very good quality of your corporate data and customer information. Using a CRM application should be a priority in this time for all kind and size of business.
Finally, the third problem identified relates to the complexity of deployments. Thus, the report says that 46 percent of Spanish companies employing between six months and one year since launching the CRM project to full operation. In addition, nearly 40 percent additional need more than a year to get to have a fully operational CRM. To avoid these problems, Pentheus recommended boosting ICT directors CRM projects within their organizations. It also notes that the success of each project will depend on the detailed planning of the project in three main blocks of activity: strategy, technology and data. Each, in turn, consists of several lines of work as a segment of cost, to define a data quality policy or mediate the scalability of the pre-selected CRM tool.
Tags: CRM Application