Five Reasons Why You Don't Need to Change Your CRM

By Cavan Downes, CIO, Current Asia

Five Reasons Why You Don't Need to Change Your CRM

Most companies seem to go through a recurring and familiar technology cycle…

The company has a technology platform that isn’t being used as it
was intended and isn't fulfilling the dream/vision that a previous
sales person had sold alongside the software
A new vendor’s aggressive software sales guy appears and says "Is your CRM working for you?" to which you reply "NO". He then proceeds
to demonstrate several of the latest sexy, slick features that – if you
purchase their platform -- will transform your and your team’s life.
You buy into the dream, install the software, and 18 months later you've supposedly completed the transformation project.
The new platform is "fully" functional,” “fully integrated,” and "fully adopted into the company culture.”
Strangely, it has exactly the same performance as the last
platform. It is underused, you can’t get the reports you want, and
once again your management is being wooed by the
latest application/software vendor who claims they’re going to
revolutionise your business.

Here are 5 reasons why you shouldn’t change your CRM platform.

Whatever system you have, you probably already have just about
all the features you need. Sure, you’ve just had a sales person tell
you that you need the latest “social AI beacon bot” functionality
and how it's going to improve your life. In reality, you probably
don't need it, since you’re only using 20% of the functionality of the
product you already have. Before you consider changing, figure
out why what you already have isn't working.
Cost of adoption - The sales person will tell you how much
cheaper the new system is month-to-month and the financials
might initially look great paper. However, it’s a false promise when
you consider the total time and the people cost of changing.
Moving from one technology requires a huge investment. Yes, it
may only take two weeks to turn the new platform on, but the new
system still needs to be configured and integrated and you need
to train everybody who needs it to use it. You also need to build it
into the culture of the organisation to make its adoption second
nature. Don’t forget you will also need to make it work with all the legacy systems that are linked to your existing platform. The
migration project alone will usually take from a few months to over
a year.
Just because the existing system is not working for you does not
mean the new one will. Despite what the really nice sales guys
says, your business issues rarely come from the technology itself
but usually the people, or the process, or the strategy.
Lost opportunity cost - Instead of focusing on your business and
building a strategy and enhancing your existing processes to drive
more leads and sales, you'll be focusing on transitioning to a new
system.
It's potentially a waste of time and money. Unless you have
genuine business need that is not met by your current system,
don’t do. Experience shows it’s generally not worth the effort and
expense.