A while ago I watched a video from one of the executives from a leading Financial Services company in the world on how he watched his Customer Management initiatives go down the drain.

Yet another case to add 55% of failed CRM cases. As a result of the failure, he is prone not to recommend anything pertaining to Customer Management to his official and social peers in an open way. Well, what is the idea behind this post?

The gentleman in the aforesaid story must have been one of those who must have fallen prey for one of the Campaign Management vendors that would impressed him and his team on user friendliness and ease-of-use of their software application. As a result to their sales discussion, they have forced him to get convinced on their offering as the end-of-all solution all challenges pertaining to customer management – Result? Substantial failure and another company helped the soaring CRM failures.

It is important to hold back for a moment and think….. Think what?

Please! Please! Please! Do not see Customer Management as an area in isolation, but as a part of the overall organization’ fabric and importantly part of the enterprise’ culture.

And, it is essential to look at Customer Management in totality NOT as one omnipotent software application. Please ensure the data that are to be managed from Customer Management perspective can be handled by the solution you are evaluating, it includes cleansing (if applicable) as well. Ensure, the constraint/limitation you have on storage does not have impact the Customer Management initiative. Ensure, in addition to accessibility to data, you have statistical analytical capabilities to be able to derive meaning out of all possible you may have. Ensure a campaign management application that is functionally rich and truly usable. Ensure, anything pertaining to Customer Management can be thoroughly report to various individual as various levels in the enterprise.

If you are one of those thinking of Customer Management, please do drop in a line-here with your thoughts.