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Understanding why the high failure rate of Client Relationship Management (CRM) or Enterprise Wide Technology (ERP) deployments.
People don’t plan to fail however they do fail to plan in a meaningful way.
When we start the planning process we naturally only work with what we know and work towards what we know that we don’t know. Where we fall short is in the area of what we don’t know what we don’t know.
Technology deployments are used to fix a problem, however when we identify a problem, we are only working with the presented problem which is what we know we know and therefore not the real problem as that sits behind the presented problem. We cannot see what the real problem is, because it sits in the area of what we don’t know what we don’t know.
Everyone can only work with what they know and understand, which is our paradigm or point of reference and this defines how we respond to or fix a problem.
An example of this is when a senior person in an organisation said to IT “I don’t know how to use Microsoft Outlook properly”. The IT people supplied him with an iPad on the basis that it was more user friendly than Microsoft. What the person really wanted was training on how to use the significant business functionality of MS Outlook to make him more productive in his working day.
It gets worse when it involves an organisation’s capital investment in a CRM or ERP programme. What starts a CRM deployment is when a CEO asks the National Sales Manager some basic questions about sales performance and capability which the manager cannot answer. The CEO sees this as the justification to deploy a CRM. The deployment requires a serious investment of money and time. The investment of money with consume all of the organisation’s capital budget. The project will divert sales people and management’s focus away from customers. All CRM programmes require additional data which the sales people have to enter. Now the CRM deployment is burning financial capital, burning staff and customers. The reason for the CRM deployment was the sales manager did not work closely enough with and therefore understand the capability of the sales people. No CRM technology investment will fix this problem.
You already have the tools you need to revolutionise the way you and the organisation works by using the Balanced Score Card within Microsoft Outlook.
In my book “Revolutionise the way you work” I have devoted a section on how to use the Balanced Score Card within Microsoft Outlook.
