CRM Visions
Unless you can imagine it, you can’t achieve it. Unless you can imagine a way your business can build more value in your client base, then it won't happen. If you don’t use your CRM system to help you make more value, you are not getting the return on your investment that justifies the cost in terms of time and money.
In this article, I examine why a Client Relationship Management approach is visionary and how it can inspire the actions needed to realize that vision.
CRM Facilitates a sharing of vision
Forward-Looking
The traditional approach to business is financial accounting. This conventional approach focuses on measurable past results, such as revenue and profitability for the last month, quarter, or year. This is the acid test and what matters rather than the nice fluffy stuff.
Of course, businesses try to detect trends that indicate the future, but it is essentially backward-looking and thinking about the future in terms of what has happened in the past. For that reason, it is inherently unvisionary. It can’t be creative and can’t predict Black Swan events like disruptive changes in technology. You can’t “train” an accounting approach on data that is in the future.
The CRM approach, however, is different. It is focused not on value today but on what value its clients will represent in the future. In accounting terms, this is “Goodwill.” If you are confident about this value, you can apply Net Present Value calculations based on future profitability. However, the CRM approach is fundamentally based on having a vision of the future that drives the business in that direction.
Collaborative
Traditionally, businesses are functionally led. Different people manage each department that touches a single client on their journey, which has its own culture and world of meaning. The data collected by each department and what it will likely be different, along with the technology they use.
The communications issues are apparent in the traditional Marketing, Sales, and Finance departments. The teams managing each product will act differently even where the business is Product rather than functionally led.
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A CRM approach is client-centric, and clients don’t care what department they are talking to or what product they are buying; they are dealing with one organization. So, the CRM system (should) manage the whole client journey to deliver a coherent and “branded” client experience. It does this by nurturing collaborations across departments, products, and their worlds of meaning.
Promotes a shared understanding
Because the CRM system is inherently visionary and collaborative, it enables stakeholders in the client journey to have a shared and complete understanding of what that journey looks like and should look like.?
CRM inspires action
CRM succeeds when it inspires change in how the organization works and while the technology can facilitate it. Inspiring change needs to be the focus of CRM projects rather than technology. The counter view is that technology's capabilities are the driver for change; however, that leads to solutions looking for problems to solve, which is why many projects run into the sand.
Ideally, the CRM project should begin with sharing a vision of what client relationships should look like, which means something to the stakeholders they can commit to (not bland marketing statements like 'we value our customers' or 'we are committed to excellence '). A shared vision is key to uniting and aligning everyone in the organization.?
All very aspirational, but can it work??
Yes, it can! But it's about adopting a human-centric understanding of Client Relationships and how to manage them. Something that I am committed to- [email protected], 07983784816. This practical approach should reassure you of its effectiveness.