Go for the brass ring: Reach for the CRM challenge

It's the old story. Customer relationship management systems are expensive and risky, but can yield big dividends.

Building a system that can provide your organization with a complete view of its customer relationships—including order status, on-time delivery statistics, receivables, returns and call center inquiries that remain unresolved—is increasingly viewed as a prerequisite for success, along with having an e-commerce strategy. Unfortunately, the risks and complexities involved in linking existing and new customer relationship management (CRM) applications into a system are quite high.

To help CIOs assess the risks of CRM relative to their organizations, the Enterprise Executive Connection team polled vendors, users and consultants to determine which organizational characteristics are hazardous to a CRM project. The team then converted their observations into a series of questions. To determine if CRM is likely to be cost-effective, merely useful or a waste of time and money for your business operation, you are invited to take the test on the following screens.

For more information about customer care and how it impacts your budget, see the following stories on the Enterprise Executive Connection Web site:

The questionnaire and formulas on the following screens were developed with extensive input from vendors, users and consultants. The Enterprise Executive Connection would like to offer special thanks to Peggy Menconi of AMR Research Inc., Bob Scott of International Data Corp. and Alain Petrissans and Erin Kinikin of Giga Information Group for their contributions.