Too much data, too much bad data, too much stale data. It takes a thousand clicks and to many screens to get anything done. Users hate the system and don’t understand why they have to use it (I’ll just use a spreadsheet) or there’s one report/dash the boss likes, but besides that it’s useless. Lastly it costs so much to maintain and improve that it’s like it’s own department. Any of these feeling close to home?
Bad data is the most common issue that exists across the board in all CRM implementations. If you have a systems that has perfect data that is up to date and everything is relevant to all of your users please email me as I have never seen it in my 20+ years in IT. According to The National Law Review bad data (all bad data, not just CRM) costs U.S. businesses a total of $3 trillion or, to put it into perspective, ~10% of the total US National debt. It’s a problem. For CRM the issue is typically due to trying to accommodate to many business objectives in one system. If you need to provide solutions for Marketing, Sales, and Customer Support/Success (of course business also evolve and change) then you are bound to have too much data and enough custom fields to describe 3 dimensions to a 2 dimensional person.
CRMs come from a time when user interfaces were meant to mimic databases. Each table in a database was a list and each row of data was a form, every save was transactional and updated an entire row. Although many CRMs now support better interfaces, this underlying design still causes many headaches for users. The paradigm causes users to not want to use the tool or just do the bare minimum based on what might be required.
“Why do I need to do this?”, most likely many of your users have this complaint/question. Typically the answer is “Because my boss made me” when it should actually be “Because it helps me with my job and makes me more successful”. This is a huge disconnect and overshadows the actual value that users should be getting from their CRM. Current technology should provide users with insights on how well they are doing, how well their customers are, and help them improve and increase their effectiveness.
The final major issue I see is that of cost and legacy. Some CRM implementations are dependent on having a full time team to maintain with at least 1 full time administrator. This is typically because the business users don’t have the technical capabilities or time to do it themselves. It can also be caused by implementations where the CRM was used for things outside of serving marketing and sales (operational business processes). Sometime it happens when leadership tries to throw money at a problem and think investing in the CRM is a way of doing that. All of these reasons come from legitimate problems, but unfortunately end up creating systems that cost more than they benefit.
Do any of these situations feel like I’m reading your mail? If they do then know that you are not alone and this is happening across many businesses and many industries. I think that the main root cause if losing focus of what a CRM was supposed to do, Increase sales by making your sales team more effective. Unfortunately once legacy sinks in and the fear that changing the norm is too risky it feels like it’s too late, but it’s not. There are new ways and new solutions, but we’ll touch on that in the future.