notes and views on products and people who make them

How to start with CRM

When is a good time for a company to start thinking about CRM?

There’s a thread at The Business of Software forums about CRM for μISV. An entrepreneur asked about CRM that integrates with MS Outlook; from what I’ve read there, a desktop quasi-CRM such as Act! could help him out nicely.

It prompted me to think about a) at what point should a business owner start with CRM, and b) how to build the CRM infrastructure for your small business that will grow with you.

And, c) whether it makes sense to think about it this way at all.

Upstarts and new businesses don’t have to traverse the same warped path that their predecessors have. They are starting out in the customer ecosystem; they can build their organization and processes around the customer from the get go. And if they do, will they still have to talk about CRM? I think not.

What organizations used to do was:

  1. Find a market
  2. Develop a product
  3. Sell

Companies are still moving around this axis but instead of defining just the “market”, they can drill down to micro-segments and individuals easily; using e-mail, social media, etc. Being able to interact at the individual customer level is natural for them.

Hence I am becoming convinced that for *new* businesses, CRM could actually do more harm than good. Instead of adding a customer management app into their mix, they should be building their whole infrastructure around their customers and conversations they have.

In other words, we won’t need the CRM acronym once CRM has become a defining architectural component of an organization.

December 15, 2008 | Filed Under CRM 

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