CRM On Hold

Met a thoroughly engaging chap running the £109m salesteam at a major 30,000 industrial products supplier.   They seemed to be doing well according to the numbers.  Their crm though, has fallen in to disrepute.  Their main database was Pivotal.  They also had some data mining capability, including from Cognos.  As a business, they’re moving to a single global platform.  This means implementing JD Edwards financials during 2008.  I visibly whinced when I heard that.  The poor sales team will get nothing done for ages now.

Anyhow, ‘integrating’ JD Edwards and Pivotal is a stated aim of the project later in the year.  Yet presently, everyone’s stopped using their crm.  Sales Management’s plan is to re-introduce the system once said integration has taken place.  The reason why Management reckon the sales people no longer use Pivotal is because there’s nothing in it for them.  So when they do recommence with it, he aims to get them starting off by updating their database, so that HQ’s internal sales teams can start to build relationships with the road-based reps’ clients which should of course, lead to extra revenue for them.

It’s a laudable plan, and one I believe I can help him with better than with the current idea of getting some temps in to help.