When Everything You Do Is For The Customer

Great Article by Joshua Greenbaum on CRM, hat tip to Jim Berkowitz of CRM Mastery. Here's a favorite passage:

Sure, it’s all about the customer – that’s the easy part. But, if you really look at what’s happening in enterprise software, everything is all about the customer. It’s hard to find software that doesn’t impact the customer relationship: working with customers imbues activities in every part of the organization, from sales, service, support, marketing, and product development, to finance, supply chain, document management – and on and on.

Where the rubber hits the road today in the competitive CRM market turns out to be all about the non-CRM parts of a vendor’s offering. Tom Siebel talked about an important version of this issue in what I call his concession speech – the speech he made when the deal for Oracle to buy Siebel was announced. Remember, Siebel was always the CRM feature/functionality leader, and there was Tom saying he was selling out to Oracle because it was in that non-CRM domain, called connectivity to the back-office, where his company had failed to thrive.

I have also questioned "Is There A Future for Stand-Alone CRM?" The value proposition for CRM must be that it is part of a complete view of the customer. Sales Force Automation is great, but as the Sales Person I should also be able to quickly see if the order shipped or if the implementation project if moving forward on time. In other words, taking care of the customer extends, as Greenbaum acknowledges, into every facet of the company, from service through operations and finance.

CRM properly understood is everything your company does. Can you afford a stand-alone solution, as if it's all about the sales and marketing effort?