Need for Simpler Integrated CRM

Most companies failed to take advantage from CRM systems. Four major reasons of such failures, as underlined by Robert J. Schmonsees in his book “Escaping the Black Hole – minimizing the damage from the marketing-sales disconnect“, are:

1. Didn’t articulate a strategy for aligning marketing and sales organizations and increasing customers’ long-term marketing and sales effectiveness.
2. IT objectives and implementation issues often became more important than the business processes and cultural issues.
3. While CRM systems were focused on control and data collection, the user interfaces were too complex and salespeople rejected the software.
4. Marketing and sales had implemented systems from different vendors that ended up duplicating data, creating multiple information silos that further widened the gap between marketing and sales professionals.

A lot of companies now understand that simpler integrated systems are needed for processes like lead tracking and pipeline management. Only then they can align marketing and sales organizations around a common information flow, and make them fare more effective.