CRM Market Recovery
CRM Market Recovery
Takeaway: The CRM market is evidently beginning to recover from the current economic downturn as discussed by the Gartner Group’s Vice President, Ed Thompson and additionally new business that ISM has obtained in the past few months:
The Gartner Group’s recent report, “Three Steps to Create a CRM Strategy,” aims to help CRM project managers, executive sponsors, and operations executives create an effective CRM strategy. The report is an assemblage of findings collected since 2002 by Gartner’s annual CRM Excellence Award committees, comprising hundreds of CRM initiatives. In the report, Gartner identifies the factors that drove the winners and finalists above other entrants.
Ed Thompson, the report’s author and vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, attributes returning interest in CRM strategy initiatives as the reason for the report.
“As things have been picking up [economically] we started to see conversations again about CRM strategies and cross-departmental stuff,” Thompson says. “This paper reflects the return of big CRM projects to the agenda. The $100 million project or program is quite rare now but they’re starting to appear again.”
Thompson says that there was a year-and-a-half-long period during which he fielded few questions about CRM. With the surging economy, however, companies are now financially able to return to the strategy.
The Gartner Group’s recent report, “Three Steps to Create a CRM Strategy,” aims to help CRM project managers, executive sponsors, and operations executives create an effective CRM strategy. The report is an assemblage of findings collected since 2002 by Gartner’s annual CRM Excellence Award committees, comprising hundreds of CRM initiatives. In the report, Gartner identifies the factors that drove the winners and finalists above other entrants.
Ed Thompson, the report’s author and vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, attributes returning interest in CRM strategy initiatives as the reason for the report.
“As things have been picking up [economically] we started to see conversations again about CRM strategies and cross-departmental stuff,” Thompson says. “This paper reflects the return of big CRM projects to the agenda. The $100 million project or program is quite rare now but they’re starting to appear again.”
Thompson says that there was a year-and-a-half-long period during which he fielded few questions about CRM. With the surging economy, however, companies are now financially able to return to the strategy.
At ISM, Barton Goldenberg and the ISM staff are seeing a definite upswing in the economy as noted through the following recent engagements:
• Oil: ISM has assisted one of the world’s largest oil producers/marketers with their global utilization of CRM processes and tools. This includes both the internal use of CRM by their sales reps and other customer-facing personnel as well as the use of CRM by their global distributors.
• Fashion: ISM has been awarded a long-term engagement with a leading global Italian fashion house to assist them with using CRM to perform more detailed market segmentation and to help successfully drive their customer touch program activities.
• Port services: ISM has been engaged by Dutch global leader in the marine port services business to help them deepen their current CRM efforts as they think through the best way to expand their customer relationships that will take into account social media capabilities.
• Financial services: ISM is pleased to be working with one of Canada’s leading banks to help them expand their Web and CRM efforts aimed at expanding existing distribution channel services with the goal to launch multiple new products/services via these channels.