Effective CRM versus Efficient CRM

Over the years the clarion call for CRM was that you must implement technology that would automate your existing sales, marketing and service processes. The mere thought of handing off work to your computer was enough for us to impulsively whip out our checkbooks. Just think, we’ll be able to do everything faster than we ever could before, and this efficiency will become our new competitive advantage. Efficiency: doing something extremely well.

Of course, there are the iconoclasts out there that view the world a little differently. They question whether that process you want to automate adds any value (to the customer). Does it receive (or hand-off) defects from the preceding (or succeeding) process, and simply do so faster? Have we taken a step back to understand how value flows through the organization, and not simply a small, isolated process? Have we gone an inch wide and a mile deep in the right places, and asked the right questions? Effectiveness: doing the right thing, even if y…