An actionable Roadmap for CRM and a Customer-centered, customer based business model

"The Answer is always already there", J Derrida

No what could the defining father of French deconstructionism have to do with CRM ?

I have to confess a quirky characteristic so that some of my "proclamations" appear to touch ground, lest they seem to come out of nowhere at all, let alone "left field"

Although I have been deeply involved and sometimes at the center of integrated, data-based sales, marketing, Call Centers and CRM over the past 3 decades, my background is as a student of structuralist linguistics and comparative anthropology.

With that aside, let me then add that I have been blessed to work with some of the world's leading creators of CRM and that putting it all together is just as simple as a dot-to-dot game.

Yes, each of you who reads this knows the results of the gartner reports: unfailingly disappointment is declaimed. 

Although building an integrated business model wherein (or, perhaps defined as a business model that is ) we have a customer-based, customer-centric business model  is as straight-forward and easy to complete as finishing an elaborate series of interrelated dot-to-dot games that touch and effect all elements of the business and, optimally, its entire value chain.

I believe it is predicated upon some simple analytical tools and methods, primarily originating out of Harvard. Tools such as the Service Profit Chain, Activity Based Costing and The Balanced Scorecard "Initiative".

Is our failure that we are unable to stand above the "dust and smoke obscuring the horizon to gaze upon the course of the world" (de Chardin) - too myopic to see all the pieces in this completely interrelated set of business principles and data practices and the social interaction implicit with our customers

Or have our software engineers convinced us that it is the package and not the integration of the processes, strategy, technology, people and learning that draw it all together into a successful whole.

Remember the value of your company is the value of all the relationships with all of your customers

It is not the sum of you physical assets

It is the customer portfolio which must be actively managed in order to optimize our market coverage models and our customer relationship and loyalty and excellence efforts

regards

nick