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Improving Customer Relationships: An Integrated Approach
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Preface
Improving customer relationships: An integrated approach is an Economist Intelligence Unit white paper, sponsored by SAP.
The Economist Intelligence Unit bears sole responsibility for this report.
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s editorial team executed the survey, conducted the interviews and wrote the report.
The findings and views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsor.
Jeff Siegel was the author of the report, and Debra D’Agostino was the editor.
Richard Zoehrer was responsible for layout and design.
Our research drew on two main initiatives.
We conducted a global online survey in August 2007 of 114 executives from various industries.
To supplement the results, we conducted in-depth interviews with executives from around the
world about their thoughts and approach to customer relationship management.
Our thanks are due to all survey respondents and interviewees for their time and insights.
November 2007
Executive summary
Few executives would disagree that customers are critical to their firm’s success.
The very premise of a business, after all, is to make a profit by selling goods and services to others.
Following the Pareto Principle, which argues that roughly 80% of all business is generated by 20% of a company’s
customers (also known as the 80/20 rule), one can logically assume that improving relationships with customers will increase the odds of
repeat business and thus boost the overall success of the company as a whole.
Most companies still struggle to
come to grips with customer relationship
management (CRM) strategy.
Over the past few decades, technology has advanced dramatically to help firms to improve the organisation and management of important customer data.
Software suites have flooded the market, promising to help companies to track sales, log customer interactions and even notify sales agents of cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.
Yet for all their trumpeting of the importance of customer satisfaction, most companies still struggle to come to grips with their customer relationship management (CRM) strategy.
This paper aims to understand better the current state of enterprise CRM initiatives, the obstacles and challenges that companies experience in formulating and executing strategies, and how firms expect these initiatives to play out over the next three years.
The major findings are as follows:
- CRM success continues to elude most companies.
Eighty-six percent of survey respondents say that CRM will be important to their companies over the next three years.
Despite this, more than 40% of respondents do not have a formal CRM strategy in place.
Of those who do, 44% say that they have seen only “acceptable” results from their efforts, and another 22% say that it has been a disappointment.
When it comes to managing customers, most firms admit that there is room for improvement.
- CRM strategy lacks integration across the enterprise.
Part of the reason for the dissatisfaction with CRM initiatives could be that too many businesses see them as the province of just one or two departments.
Most companies lack an enterprise-wide CRM strategy, which prevents them from obtaining the coveted 360-degree view of the customer.
As a result, aligning sales and marketing strategies remains a challenge.
Nearly one-quarter of our respondents say that CRM is driven by individual departments—it is not a company-wide effort.
- Metrics for CRM success may be misaligned.
Companies adopt CRM to increase marketing effectiveness (52%), improve service delivery (48%) or drive new revenue (47%).
But companies most often gauge CRM success largely according to overall customer satisfaction (49%) and retention (43%)—wholly different metrics.
This indicates that few companies have an accurate idea of how valuable their CRM systems actually are to the business.
More than 17% do not measure CRM success at all.
- Increased spending on CRM initiatives could improve results.
While more than one-third of respondents say that CRM is “very important” to their companies today, more than 50% say that it will be “very important” in three years’ time.
More than 70% say that they will spend more or significantly more money on CRM over the next three years.
This presents an opportunity to improve data-sharing between departments, although most companies say that spending increases are likely to go toward sales (56%), customer service/support (51%) and marketing (45%), rather than systems integration.
In addition, 43% of respondents are either currently using or are considering on-demand solutions (software that is rented on a monthly basis and delivered over the Internet) as part of their CRM strategy, although for most the issue is not a question of proprietary software versus hosted options: companies simply want the solution that best meets their needs.
- CRM needs executive leadership.
In order to realise fully the potential of CRM systems and strategies across the enterprise, companies need an executive sponsor to help encourage collaboration and co-operation between departments.
With no one from the executive suite to support this endeavour, companies experience a palpable lack of commitment to improving CRM efforts.
Nearly 60% of companies that describe their CRM efforts as disappointing cite a lack of executive sponsorship as a major obstacle to CRM success, compared with 9% of those whose efforts have been successful.
Introduction
It seems like a simple enough idea: obtain a better understanding of your customer’s wants and needs, deliver on their expectations, and revenue will increase.
Few would deny that customer satisfaction is key to corporate success—61% of our survey respondents confirm that increasing revenue per customer is the top method of generating new growth (see chart, right).
In addition, nearly 86% say that customer relationship management (CRM) will be “important” or “very important” to their companies over the next three years.
Despite this, more than 40% of the companies participating in this survey do not have a formal CRM strategy in place.
Those that have initiated one still struggle with CRM at nearly every stage—strategy, execution and even measurement.
“Everybody can intellectualise the concept,” says Ben Ball, senior vice-president of Dechert-Hampe, a consultancy based in Northbrook, Illinois, “but to actually understand it, to create a real linkage in the company, to understand how it evolves and how it works—that’s rare.”
How does your company generate most new growth today? (Select three)
How rare? Although nearly 40% of respondents consider themselves either completely customer-centric or mostly customer-focused, and 61% view CRM as “important” or “very important” to their companies, only 30% say that CRM is a strategic, company-wide effort that extends beyond the front office. A scant 12% say that CRM is at the core of their business, and more than 11% either have no plans for a CRM strategy or have not yet figured out how to approach it.
These figures reveal a definite perception gap in exactly how customer-centric these firms actually are.
How important would you say customer relationship management (CRM) is to your company, and how important do you expect it to be in three years’ time?(Rate on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 = Very important and 5 = Not important)
Which of the following statements do you think best describes your company’s approach to CRM?
But they also indicate an opportunity for improvement.
Respondents say that creating superior customer value will be among their top three priorities in three years’ time, as will increasing revenue per customer.
They also place rising customer demands as the third-largest challenge that companies will face, behind price competition and pressure to reduce operating costs.
At least in concept, companies understand the value of managing customer satisfaction, even if they have not yet figured out how to turn theory into reality.
Underestimated challenges
hen it comes to customer relationships, most companies admit that there is plenty of room for improvement.
Unfortunately, the odds are that things will get worse before they get better.
Less than one-third of our survey respondents rate their company’s CRM efforts as successful or very successful, and about one in five say that their CRM endeavour has been an outright disappointment.
Despite the importance ascribed by respondents to CRM in terms of the future success of their businesses, 40% report only “acceptable” results from their efforts.
The pain is felt by companies of all sizes, in all industries.
In early January 2007, the Office National des Forêts (ONF), the French national agency that manages the country’s forest services, rolled out a CRM system that aims to develop and diversify the client base in the field of forest and landscape management and maintenance.
Rather than waiting for customers to approach ONF, officials wanted to create a sales-based model that would make it easier to woo potential customers who might not know about its services.
Adoption of the system is improving, but convincing employees to use the system took longer than expected: at mid-year, only about one-half of ONF’s employees were doing so.
“We knew this project was going to take a long time,” says Pierre-Edouard Guillain, a development officer in charge of customer relationships in ONF’s sales office.
“It’s difficult to have results in less than a year.”
By November, however, most of ONF’s employees were using some part of the system.
Perhaps the most startling finding from our survey is that while more than 64% of all respondents say that gaining a complete 360-degree view of the customer is “important” or “very important”, only 5% have fully achieved that goal.
Obtaining the single view of the customer continues to be a pipe dream for nearly all businesses.
How successful would you say your company’s CRM efforts have been so far?
“We knew this project was going to
take a long time. It’s difficult to have results in less than a year.”
Pierre-Edouard Guillain, CRM development officer, ONF
Silos and turf wars
Why are these figures so disappointing? In most cases, it is because CRM efforts are driven by individual departments for specific purposes, with little or no collaboration with other business units across the company.
For the most part, the bulk of CRM efforts are presided over by specific departmental heads (35%), product line managers (11%) or a lower-level manager who maintains the system (13%).
Because of this, almost one-half of all respondents confirm that the conflicting goals and priorities of different departments hinder their ability to realise fully the value of CRM.
Who is primarily responsible for managing your company’s CRM efforts?
Tactics for CRM success
CRM success is often sidetracked
because of cultural resistance to change and an inability to convince different departments of the need to work together. Consider these steps to bring everyone into the fold.
Publicise successes—especially in the beginning.
There is almost always entrenched resistance to CRM, which means the doubters need to be convinced that it can work. Letting people know about each success, no matter how small, will build a grass-roots effort to win over the company. “Everyone knows how difficult it is to change overnight,” says Jerine Rosato, manager of customer relations for the Port of San Diego. “But they can understand change one step at a time.”
Make CRM a team sport.
Does every department know its role in the effort? Does shipping understand, for example, that delivery delays reflect poorly on customer service agents? “The sales guy knows it’s important to get along with the purchasing agent,” says Ben Ball, senior vice-president of Dechert-Hampe, a consultancy based in Northbrook, Illinois. “Make him understand that what other people think matters too.”
Offer incentives.
By rewarding departments and individual employees for meeting targets and improving CRM success rates, departments will be encouraged to work together. Create an incentive scheme, and make sure that everyone is aware of the rewards.
Remember that technology will only bring you so far.
At the end of the day, customer relationships are still all about people. Building a culture that is sensitive to customer needs will ensure that CRM systems are put to best use.
“When most companies look at their
customers, they see a transactional
relationship—but they should see a
strategic relationship.”
Ben Ball, senior vp, Deschert-Hampe
This challenge is clear even in companies that have achieved success in CRM. Five years after setting up a comprehensive CRM initiative at Kendall-Jackson, a US$77m wine producer based in Sonoma, California, Brian Baker, vice-president of customer relations marketing, is still seeing cultural resistance from parts of the company that view customer data solely as a province of the sales department. Although progress has been made, it has required tremendous effort—Mr Baker spent years, for example, convincing various departments that data collected in Kendall-Jackson’s tasting rooms should be shared with the marketing team for branding and wholesale purposes. “We had to change people’s attitudes, break down walls and explain direct-marketing principles” to convince departments to share data, he says.
Would you describe your company as mostly product-focused or customer-focused?
This lack of co-operation, says Mr Ball of Dechert-Hampe, has two unfortunate consequences. The first is poor sales performance, because marketing and sales are unable to work together effectively. The second is that company objectives cease to be aligned with customer needs. For example, a winery might think that on-time shipment is its top goal, but the customer is more concerned about overall breakage. If attitudes regarding CRM remain splintered, it is unlikely that this information will be passed along to where it is most valuable, and customer demands will further diverge from corporate practices.
Much of this stems from a lack of insight into customer needs, says Mr Ball, which is more common than most companies realise. “When most companies look at their customers, they see a transactional relationship—they have product that needs to be shipped out to a buyer,” he says. “What they should be seeing, though, is the strategic relationship. It’s not always about inventory.” Indeed, nearly 30% of respondents report that their companies are either completely product-centric or mostly product-focused.
Understanding customer priorities—and aligning corporate strategies to meet them—is crucial to the success of any CRM strategy. When advising his own clients, Mr Ball asks companies if they know what their customers expect. Then he asks those customers what their actual expectations are. “There is almost always a significant difference,” he says.
Misaligned metrics
“Without understanding what’s behind the changes, you’re missing a huge piece of what CRM can do for you.”
Jerine Rosato, manager of customer relations, Port of San Diego
Another issue revealed in the survey data is that companies appear to use CRM for one set of purposes, but measure its success based on altogether different metrics. When asked what their companies expect to accomplish
through their CRM initiatives, respondents cited improving marketing effectiveness (52%) and service delivery (48%),
and driving new revenue (47%). Yet when it comes to measuring CRM success, top metrics include customer satisfaction (49%) and
retention (43%); increased revenue, at 30%, comes a distant third. Although these factors are certainly related, the figures indicate a misalignment,
further illuminating why companies are dissatisfied with the results of their efforts.
The data strongly suggest that few companies truly understand how CRM can be used to benefit their businesses,
says Tracey Altman, the senior director for Latimark, a Dallas-based marketing consultancy. “Companies need to understand
and measure CRM by how important it has become in stabilising pricing, increasing revenue and company rejuvenation,”
she says. At the very least, a clear assessment of CRM systems cannot be made unless companies
use metrics that directly reflect pre-defined goals.
How does your company measure CRM success? (Select all that apply)
Of course, measurement is always a tricky issue, and even companies that do have comprehensive CRM systems
in place find it an ongoing challenge. Take, for example, AmerisourceBergen Specialty Group (ABSG), a US$55bn
specialist distributor for the pharmaceutical wholesaling giant, which sells drugs and provides services such as insurance reimbursement
and medical education to doctors, pharmacies and hospitals. The company already has
an enterprise-wide CRM system in place, allowing all employees access to a single set of records.
In addition, because of the size and complexity of its business—ABSG has 12 divisions that offer various services to
healthcare practitioners, hospitals, patients and other healthcare companies—it is likely that several departments will serve
the same customer. This makes measuring the true value of the company’s CRM initiative a complex task, says its chief information officer (CIO),
Dale Danilewitz. For example: a physician who prescribes ABSG-distributed drugs to patients might also take classes from ABSG’s education division,
procure other prescription drugs from ABSG’s pharmacy and confer with the company’s customer service department on billing issues.
How can ABSG accurately track and measure the causes and outcomes of these events in its CRM system? For example,
did the physician register for education classes because he was contacted by an ABSG employee, or did the doctor find the class on his or her own?
Although the cross-selling is a positive result, obtaining deeper insight remains problematic.
Moreover, not all companies measure their CRM success based on increased revenue alone, says Jerine Rosato, manager
of customer relations for the Port of San Diego, California. The port’s customers include shipping lines, warehouses, cruise
lines, hotels and, of course, tourists and other visitors. As such, driving revenue, although important, is not the whole of the picture.
“If all you measure is revenue,” she says, “then all you get is the surface of what’s going on. You don’t know what caused the changes
that drove revenue.
Without understanding what’s behind the changes, you’re missing a huge piece of what CRM can do for you.”
Mini-case study: AmerisourceBergen
In the pharmaceutical distribution
business, margins are razor thin. Business is increasingly conducted on a fee-for-service basis, and firms such
as AmerisourceBergen Specialty Group (ABSG), a US$55bn Dallas-based subsidiary of the wholesaling giant,
do not mark up their products when they resell them but instead negotiate fixed-price service contracts.
To keep overhead costs low, says the firm’s CIO, Dale Danilewitz, company executives began looking for a
way to improve efficiencies, and found an answer—in the company’s CRM system. By integrating customer data systems company-wide,
ABSG is able to identify places where it can increase revenue through cross-selling, up-selling, strengthening customer relationships,
and devising new products and services. At any time, any employee in the firm’s 12 divisions can see how other colleagues are
interacting with a particular customer. “It’s critically important to have that,” says Mr Danilewitz. “When I click on a customer’s name,
I can see everything he or she is doing under the umbrella of our business. It helps drive the company’s priorities.”
As a result, today ABSG can focus its efforts on just-in-time delivery to its customers.
For example, a hospital does not want to stock more of an expensive cancer drug than it needs.
ABSG’s CRM system can track both the hospital’s historic use of the drug and its inventory, allowing the distributor to ship what
the hospital needs when it needs it. It also allows ABSG to suggest similar inventory maintenance for similar drugs,
even if the hospital is not buying those drugs from ABSG. “That’s part of our definition of operational excellence,”
says Mr Danilewitz. Although he cannot share specific metrics,
Mr Danilewitz says that ABSG’s sales and market share have increased significantly as a result of its CRM system..
Improving CRM success
Perhaps as a result of this dissatisfaction with CRM, coupled with the recognised importance of meeting
rising customer demands over the next three years, most companies will increase their CRM budgets, creating an opportunity to
address the obstacles that have held them back from achieving CRM success. More than 70% of those surveyed say that their companies
will boost their budgets “somewhat” or “significantly” in this area. In the past year companies have upgraded existing software (33%),
increased employee training (33%) and changed organisational structures (31%).
The momentum is building, and companies appear to be realigning their strategies.
Kendall-Jackson spends up to US$3m on its CRM effort each year—a substantial sum for a company of its size.
Yet Mr Baker says that figure will certainly increase over the coming years. Not only do legacy applications need to
be updated, but point-of-sale systems are too slow to handle tasting-room traffic
during peak periods, causing some customers to give up and leave the store without making a purchase.
“That’s the biggest challenge we have right now,” Mr Baker says.
For some companies, investments will focus on deriving more value from existing systems.
Kendall-Jackson’s initial CRM effort, for example, has paid off in increased sales, says Mr Baker; now it is time to look at
deeper issues, such as the firm’s wine club programme. At present, members of the exclusive club typically cancel after just 15.2 months.
What can be done to improve retention rates?
Mr Baker hopes that expanded CRM functionality will help to answer that question.
Unfortunately, Kendall-Jackson is a rare case. Over the next three years, survey respondents say that their
companies will focus their CRM IT spending efforts on sales (56%), customer service and support (51%) and marketing (45%).
Only 20% plan to focus their spending on analytics, and only 9% will invest in system consolidation or integration.
The news is disappointing, considering the clear need for firms to align strategies company-wide.
Other factors will affect corporate spending in this area. As workforces grow increasingly mobile,
and enterprises work to respond to customers more rapidly and personally, the need to share CRM data on handheld devices
and the Internet, and to apply intelligence-driven tools for price optimisation and real-time offer management, will significantly
affect CRM activities over the next three years. To accelerate this shift towards the web, some companies are considering moving to
hosted CRM solutions—software that is rented, often on a month-by-month basis, and delivered over the Internet. Forty-three percent
of respondents confirm that they are either currently using a hosted CRM system or are considering one. Still, for a resounding 81% of
participants the question is not about whether to rent or buy; they just want the best solution to meet their needs.
Four traits of best-practice firms
What do companies
with successful CRM efforts do that the others do not?
Successful CRM companies are:
- More customer-focused than product-focused.They take into account what their customers want before they think about
which products to sell them. The difference becomes more apparent among companies that consider themselves to have a successful
CRM strategy: more than 50% of those respondents said that their companies were completely customer-centric or most customer-focused.
“It’s all about the total customer experience,” says Mr Danilewitz. “We want to know how and when our customers do business with us.”
- Likely to have a formal CRM framework in place.Likely to have a formal CRM framework in place. Successful firms have identified CRM as a corporate initiative and put a senior manager or executive in charge of CRM efforts. Because of this, these companies are more likely to place emphasis on implementing new software (83%), changing customer-facing processes (70%) and employee training (60%).
- Focused on integration.About one-half of all survey respondents whose CRM initiatives are successful agree that getting a complete, 360-degree view of the customer is important, compared with only 21% for the less successful group. Companies that focus on integrating across various business lines and functions understand that the only way to get a 360 degree view of the customer is to have a 360-degree view of the business, from the initial sales order to the very end of the supply chain.
- Likely to have executive sponsorship—and leadership.Nearly 58% of companies whose CRM initiatives have not been successful lack executive support, compared with just 9% for successful firms. At Kendall-Jackson, says Mr Baker, the support of senior management, including the company’s founder, Jess Jackson, was crucial in overcoming resistance to the project. “That ownership has directly contributed to the success we’ve had,” he says, “because executives understand how important this is to the future of the company.”
What has your company done in the last 12 months to further its CRM strategy? (Select all that apply)
Which of the following trends do you expect to significantly affect your company’s CRM activities/investments in the next three years? (Select all that apply)
The importance of leadership
Considering the planned increases in
spending, new architecture models
and rising market forces that will continue to
drive competition, perhaps the clearest revelation
from the survey results is the need for executive
leadership when it comes to adopting CRM across
the enterprise. At present only 23% of respondents
can claim that their CRM strategy is managed
by a c-level executive outside the information
technology department. This may largely account
for companies’ widespread inability to overcome
integration and alignment issues, as lower-level
managers are unable to see how CRM initiatives
could benefit the company as a whole. “Without
leadership from the top,” says Ms Altman, “firms
won’t see CRM as a strategic tool, but as something
they are just supposed to do.”
For Waters SAS, a US$562m pharmaceutical
research equipment manufacturer and Frenchbased
subsidiary of US-based Waters Corp,
CRM success and leadership go hand in hand,
says Phillipe Payoux, the company’s European
information systems manager. Mr Payoux recently
helped to complete a CRM rollout in nearly three
dozen countries in which Waters operates, giving the firm’s sales force a single view of all the customers in their territories. It would never
have happened, however, without direct sponsorship from the executive suite. “It was one of their top goals,” he says.
Mini-case study: Port of San Diego
The Port of San Diego
employs some
600 employees and earns more than
US$120m in annual revenue. It is not only a
landlord whose customers include shipping
lines and warehouses; it also services cruise
lines, hotels and thousands of visitors. So
when quarterly surveys of customer satisfaction
began to dip, Jerine Rosato, manager of
customer relations for the port, turned to
the port’s CRM system for insight.
As a popular port of call for several major
cruise lines, passengers preparing to spend
a day or two in the city would often call the
port’s information line with enquiries about
how to plan their upcoming visit, requesting
information on special attractions and
restaurant recommendations. Call-centre
agents had been instructed to refer visitors
to the port’s website for such information.
Data collected in the CRM system, however,
revealed that callers wanted more than a
blanket referral to a website.
In the travel and tourism business, customer
satisfaction is a most important metric,
and Ms Rosato’s team quickly responded,
creating a packet of destination information
that could be sent in advance of a visitor’s
arrival. “They were just ecstatic about it,”
says Ms Rosato. Satisfaction rates, she adds,
improved significantly.
Today, customer satisfaction surveys
are written to tie in more closely with the
port’s CRM
system. Customers are no
longer asked general questions (“How was
your experience with us?”), but instead focus
on specific incidents (“Did we answer
your question about restaurants?”). The
agency can compare these responses with
incidents logged in the CRM system to give
customer service agents a clearer picture
of areas of customer care that are in need
of improvement.
Conclusion: the customer-focused enterprise
As the data reveal, customer relationship management will become increasingly important over the next
three years as companies experience greater price competition, pressure to drive down operating costs,
greater complexity of products and services, and rising customer demands. But technology and systems will only take firms part of the way.
“The biggest mistake companies can make,” says Mr Ball, “is failing to understand the relationship of all these touch points,
the sum total of all these interactions.” To build loyalty and strengthen relationships,
companies need to encourage employees to think of how to serve customers better at every opportunity.
At ONF, management officials are taking a proactive approach in attempts to avoid traditional
headaches and learn from the mistakes of others. “We need to get a better view of what
our customers need,” says Sébastien Gendry, who oversees ONF’s strategic customer relationships.
“We have to learn our customer’s needs, and match them with our services and expertise.”
Following these best practices can help put companies on the right footing:
- Consider the customer’s needs.Before planning or re-engineering a CRM strategy, consider how customers wish to do business with your firm. Better yet, ask your best customers exactly how service can be improved. Having this insight will then allow companies to plan a strategy that fully meets both customer and corporate expectations.
- Wield software more deftly.CRM is about much more than customer contact data and order fulfilment. At Waters, for example, sales representatives have insight into everything that happens in their territories, even if it does not specifically include their product. Does the customer’s equipment require maintenance? Is there a billing issue? “All that stuff is useful for the sales team,” says Mr Payoux, “because it’s all about integrating the business. You get a full picture of what’s in the pipeline.”
- Tie metrics to appropriate goals.Do not base CRM success on customer satisfaction if the goal is to increase revenue. Doing so will further muddle alignment among departments and hinder companies from understanding how best to make use of their data.
- Carefully consider future investments.Spending should be based on overall corporate goals. If, for example, a single view of the customer is a priority, budgets should focus on that rather than on, say, lead generation.
- Take a high-level view.Unless CRM systems are managed from an enterprise-wide standpoint, the goal of obtaining a complete view of the customer and his or her needs will never be reached.
Appendix: survey results
Improving customer relationships: An integrated approach
Appendix: Survey results
In August 2007, the Economist Intelligence Unit conducted a global online survey of 114 senior executives from various industries. Please note that not all answers add up to 100% because of rounding or because respondents were able to provide multiple answers to some questions.
Which of the following are your company’s corporate priorities today?(Select three)
How does your company generate most new growth today? (Select three)
Which of the following are likely to be your company’s corporate priorities in three years’ time?(Select three)
How do you expect your company to generate most new growth in three years’ time? (Select three)
Which of the following does your company see as key challenges in the market today?(Select three)
Which of the following do you expect will be key challenges in three years’ time?(Select three)
Would you describe your company as mostly product-focused or customer-focused?
How important would you say customer relationship management (CRM) is to your company, and how important do you expect it to be in three years’ time?(Rate on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 = Very important and 5 = Not important)
Does your company have a formal CRM initiative in place?
Which of the following statements do you think best describes your company’s approach to CRM?
What does your company expect to accomplish through its CRM initiatives? (Select all that apply)
Which areas will be the focal points of your company’s CRM efforts over the next three years? (Select up to three)
How successful would you say your company’s CRM efforts have been so far?
What has your company done in the last 12 months to further its CRM strategy? (Select all that apply)
Who is primarily responsible for managing your company’s CRM efforts?
How does your company measure CRM success? (Select all that apply)
How important are the following objectives for your company?(Rate on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 = Very important and 5 = Not important)
What has been your company’s level of achievement for those objectives?(Rate on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 = Fully achieved and 5 = Not at all achieved)
What has been your company’s level of achievement for those objectives?(Rate on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 = Fully achieved and 5 = Not at all achieved)
What do you believe are the main obstacles to increasing CRM systems integration at your company? (Select up to three)
Do you expect your company to invest more or less in CRM technology over the next three years?
Which of the following trends do you expect to significantly affect your company’s CRM activities/investments in the next three years? (Select all that apply)
Is your company using, or considering using subscription-based CRM on-demand solutions?
Do you agree or disagree with the following statements about subscription-based CRM on-demand solutions?
Have the following aspects of your business improved or worsened as a result of using CRM software?
In which region are you personally located?
201052.5How would you characterise the relationships withyour customers?
What is your primary industry?
What are your organisation's global annual revenues in US dollars?
Which of the following best describes your title?
What are your main functional roles? (Choose up to three)
While every effort has been taken to verify the accuracy of this information, neither The
Economist Intelligence Unit Ltd. nor the sponsor of this report can accept any responsibility or liability for
reliance by any person on this report or any of the information, opinions or conclusions set out in the report.
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