Critique of the article
The authors, writing this in 2002, were insightful and even prophetic in
the statements made specifically regarding business strategies and
processes being the primary determinants of demand for CRM.
While Siebel Systems had enjoyed a meteoric rise and many credit Tom Siebel
with originally defining the term and software category of CRM, in 2002
there was still a strong focus on features, functions and benefits in CRM
applications. This was an era of big-bang CRM deployments, with literally
thousands of seats of software delivered. The authors refuse to get on the
"big is better" bandwagon of CRM however and choose to be prescriptive from
a customer loyalty, intimacy, and long-term customer value perspective.
It's clear that Frederick F. Reichheld made major contributions to this
article as it stresses customer loyalty and its impact on profitability, an
area Mr. Reichheld has written entire books about. The landscape the
article paints as a result is one that shows how disjointed customer and
selling strategies can be when technology for its own sake is thrown at
complex, difficult to fix customer problems. At its foundational focus on
processes, it is an excellent article, and the four perils serve as strong
supports...
What is missing however is a stronger and
more thorough overview of the financial implications of failed versus
successful CRM deployments from a scorecard approach. The authors need to
provide a more thorough accounting of the total cost of failed CRM
implementations and be prescriptive first from a strategy standpoint, and
second from a systems integration perspective, as to how these problem
cases would be fixed. Then the article would tie back to financial
performance and the key performance indicators ultimately by which
strategies are judged. The lack of a summarization of the costs of
failure, even in a pro forma format, is missing, and with it, the costs of
change management. The authors fail to mention the cost of making change
management a success, and many firms are stating that even in best-case
terms it is 10 times the cost of the software. That is a critical message
the authors, in future articles, need to convey in order for the full role
and cost of CRM to be fully defined for the reader.
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[1] Harvard Business Review (February, 2002) - Darrell K. Rigby, Frederick
F. Reichheld and Phil Schefter, Avoid the Four Perils of CRM. Harvard
Business Review. February, 2002. pages 101 - 109
