One of the major mistakes that organizations across diverse verticals do is go for the ONE CRM SOLUTION that is prevailing. This is one of the biggest mistakes any organization can do. A wrong CRM implementation can wreck the customer relationship strategies and hence derail the entire process. This could result in a loss of productivity and hence revenue.
If the businesses across the verticals are to be closely looked at, the CRM needs across almost every industry is 25 – 35% diverse.
The way a customer is handled in the, say Manufacturing vertical, is not the way he/she is handled in the Real Estate industry. The needs of the Service industry are completely different in the terms of Customer management while that in the retail industry is different from all of the above.
The ideal solution for organizations is to find such a CRM solution that fits their needs rather than a solution that cramps the
organization in its own capabilities. In my experience, I have seen organizations fail the CRM test and then fallback on a spreadsheet based solution to maintain the leads, track orders and manage customers.
This is not a failure of the process or the software. The organization is largely at fault here since the decision making failed to interpret the right requirements of its processes and its users that led to the faux pas.
So the right act? Interpret your requirements clearly. Find a CRM system that matches these requirements and then go for the implementation. This, after all, affects the sales process within the organization.