Why MR Should Own the CRM System
Posted by Vovici Blog on Tue, Jan 18, 2011
I recently saw the results of a survey that showed 100% of organizations had deployed CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems. While I have no doubt that 100% of the survey’s 97 respondents had, many industry analysts forget how many companies have not yet adopted CRM.
For instance, last week I talked with a multibillion dollar company that still doesn’t have a CRM system. It was one of many such companies that I run into each month. And many of those companies that say they have a CRM system really only have a SFA (Sales Force Automation) system, a way for sales staff to log calls and forecast deal size and likelihood of closing. A true CRM system spans the organization, providing a central repository for all customer and prospect data: information is collected and collated not just from sales staff but from the website, the Customer Service department, the Finance department and so on. Any system that interacts with customers should be tied into the CRM system.
Traditionally, CRM systems are owned by the Sales, Marketing or IT departments. Yet I think a compelling case can be made for Market Research departments to own new CRM systems.
Corporate market researchers, after all, have more experience conducting data analysis than their counterparts. They are used to conducting research to uncover valuable market intelligence. A CRM system can provide a wealth of just-in-time marketing intelligence – what customers are doing today, what they are buying, who hasn’t bought in a while or who hasn’t renewed. Researchers are also adept at understanding when data can be extrapolated from, and when it can’t: how representative it actually is, and what the methodological issues were encountered when collecting in.
Market researchers are also used to cleaning data sets, and new CRM systems suffer from tremendous problems with data quality – duplicate records, missing data and out-of-date information. Initial records will come from many different corporate IT applications.
Managing CRM systems sounds pretty intimidating to most researchers. But think of it this way: you have been charged with conducting a census of your customers, and then keeping that census up to date, much the way Denmark and other countries have moved from periodic censuses to maintaining registries instead. The CRM system does the hard work for you.
For a CRM system is that constantly updated census of customer activity. Sales uses it to track prospects and deals; Service logs calls. Marketing cares about the information in aggregate, but typically for creating marketing campaigns. The Market Research department will recognize it as an irreplaceable source of information about the “State of the Customer”. Who better to leverage that information in aggregate, steering the business in the right direction, then Market Research?
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