Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems have recently been criticized: companies trying to get the right focus on customer needs have been investing millions in sophisticated CRM solutions providing enormous amounts of information. But then returns – e.g. sales growth rates - were not justifying the huge investments.

We believe this to be a typical project management failure. Top managers simply expected too much, requested too many features, too much information. While the basic concept of CRM can be of great value, its implementation is often unprofessional. The key to better solutions is to clearly define a projects scope and concentrate on the most relevant information providing the majority of benefits. Project managers setting up CRM initiatives should always apply the 80:20 rule: get 20% of the information providing 80% of the benefits.

What do we understand to be the basic concept of CRM? – CRM means to systematically acquire new customers, take care about existing customers and reducing customer churn. This basic idea can be explained by the following graph:

A well function CRM system features 4 different components:

• Analytical component: analyse customer data such as addresses, behaviours, preferences etc.
• Strategic component: define clear strategies for how to acquire new customers, how to care for existing customers and how to reduce customer churn
• Operative component: Gap-analysis and improvement of current systems or implementation of new systems
• Communication component: definition of communication channels used for CRM activities

APMC supports clients in every phase of a CRM project: starting with the general scoping up to implementation and making sure the CRM adds value to the company.