March 9th, 2010

Six ways CRM projects go wrong

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 8:05 pm

Categories: CIO issues, CRM, Cultural issues, IT issues

Tags: Project, Project Failure, CRM, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Software, Software, Michael Krigsman

CRM projects have earned a notorious reputation for being difficult and expensive. Despite endless statistics and discussion of the topic, many of these projects come in late or over-budget.

• Related: Three big reasons CRM initiatives fail

For this reason, I was delighted when Laurence Buchanan sent me an unsolicited article he wrote that dives under the surface to explain why CRM projects fail.

Laurence heads up CRM in the UK for Capgemini (cross industry and vendor agnostic) and has been in that role for the last 12 months. Previously, he spent 10 years at SAP and was VP CRM. As you can see from his background, Laurence certainly has the chops to teach us something new about CRM projects and why they don’t always go as planned.

Laurence wrote this guest post and supplied all the images below.

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The first generation of CRM saw many failed projects. Some analysts reported failure rates as high as 60%.  Since then, as an industry, we have learned much about the causes of CRM failure and while most projects are still tough, success rates have soared.

CRM is tough to get right. I’ve been involved in around 200 projects and I have never seen a project succeed that has not grappled with difficult issues like cultural change, performance and incentives, or integration. Some of the major reasons for project failure, like lacking executive sponsorship, ignoring change management or failing to deal with basics like data quality have been well documented. I don’t aim to repeat what has already been said.

Read the rest of this entry »

December 21st, 2009

Five failure predictions for 2010

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 11:56 am

Categories: Blog annoucements, CRM, Enterprise 2.0, Governance

Tags: Service Availability, Social Computing, Failure, Relationship Failure, Social Networking, Online Communications, Marketing, Advertising & Promotion, Michael Krigsman

Failure has been around since the time two people first starting working and collaborating together, so it’s safe to assume that it’s going to be with us in 2010. Let’s spend a few moments thinking about and predicting the shape of failure in the coming year.

1. Traditional enterprise failure rates will remain unchanged

Despite hype from pundits about the imminent demise of on-premise computing, that day isn’t here yet and it’s not coming during 2010.

Next year, organizations will continue to buy heavy-duty backbone systems from major vendors, such as SAP and Oracle, and some percentage of those implementations will just not meet expectations.

Historical CRM failure rates, to use an example, are abysmal:

2001 Gartner Group: 50%

2002 Butler Group: 70%

2002 Selling Power, CSO Forum: 69.3%

2005 AMR Research: 18%

2006 AMR Research: 31%

2007 AMR Research: 29%

2007 Economist Intelligence Unit: 56%

2009 Forrester Research: 47%

Nothing on the horizon changes this picture substantially in 2010, so enterprise computing failure rates will continue to remain stable during 2010.

2. Cloud-based relationship failure becomes even more important

In the on-premise enterprise world, failure means implementations that are delayed, run over-budget, or do not achieve planned expectations or scope.

Since Software as a service (SaaS) deployments tend to be shorter and smaller, and therefore carry less attendant risk, failure has a different meaning than it does with traditional software. Failure in the cloud takes two forms: relationship problems and service availability issues.

Relationship failure arises when a cloud vendor does not follow through on service quality, pricing, or other commitments. Service availability fails when the the cloud vendor goes down, effectively locking the customer out from his or her own data.

The accelerating growth of cloud computing means that both relationship and availability failure will increase during 2010.

3. Social computing and Enterprise 2.0 adoption failure hit the jackpot

Social software — Twitter, Facebook, Chatter, Enterprise 2.0, and a zillion other concepts and services — are becoming increasingly important to the enterprise. During 2010, the trend toward enterprise social computing will continue to grow as an unstoppable force.

Unfortunately, many enterprise buyers learn too late that deploying social computing successfully is easier said than done. These poor folks will implement blogs, wikis, and undertake a variety of other social computing initiatives, only to discover a sad truth: just because you build it doesn’t mean they will come.

Social computing adoption failure will be a big hit in 2010.

4. Large companies recognize that Social CRM failure sucks

The Social CRM perspective suggests that customers are important — sure, this is basic, but many companies forget the obvious. During this coming year, many large companies will learn painful lessons about what happens when you stop paying attention to customers.

Remember United Breaks Guitars? United Airlines broke a guy’s guitar and then refused to compensate the owner. As a result of United’s steadfast refusal to do the right thing, he took matters into his own hands and created a music video about the incident. That video has received almost seven million (!) views so far on YouTube.

For your enjoyment and edification, here’s the United Breaks Guitars video:

Social CRM can help companies develop greater responsiveness and a more intimate conversation with customers. Companies that recognize this and take active steps to foster genuine customer relationships will find success in 2010.

However, companies that do not pay attention to social CRM will suffer rapid reputation failure, as social computing spreads damage wider and faster than ever before possible. United Airlines knows this all too well.

The growth of social computing means that the intensity of CRM failure will magnify during 2010.

5. “Expectation gaps” are the 2010 winner

Social software relies on relationship and collaboration among “trading partners.” Successful relationships between an organization and its customers, or between two individuals, depend on the parties coming to tacit or explicit agreement around basic expectations for both process and results.

Disappointment with either process or results drives failure of all kinds. These alignment dynamics are rooted in human nature and therefore form the basis for failure of all types.

Collaboration and expectation mismatches underlie every kind of failure, from traditional IT problems to the new cloud-based variants. Therefore, expectation gaps are the big failure kahuna for 2010.

[Waste basket of cash, illustrating the devastating and significant effects of failure, from iStockphoto.]

June 29th, 2008

SlideShare: user communication failure

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 9:20 am

Categories: Availability and reliability, End-user impact, Enterprise 2.0, Failure 2.0

Tags: Object-oriented Programming, File, SlideShare, Ooa/Ood/Oop, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Michael Krigsman

While Enterprise 2.0 applications can be useful, hassles sometimes abound. In this case, I innocently tried to upload a simple file to SlideShare, only to learn things aren’t always straightforward.After attempting to upload the file, I received an error message stating in part:

There’s a big chance this is just a temporary/random glitch with our servers; just retry after 5 minutes and see if it works.

Here’s a screen capture, highlighting the relevant message:

The troubleshooting FAQ offers a bit more information:

I am getting a file conversion error while uploading my file. It gives me an “OOPs”. What is this?

This means your file could not be converted to our format. Reasons could be varied
- it’s possible our converter is temporarily down, try uploading once again
- if your file is password protected or contains macros, you might get an OOPs; remove them and upload again
- sometimes uploading the pdf version instead of the original ppt/odp file (or vice-versa) helps to overcome the OOPs

If none of the above helped, this could be due to some incompatibility between our converter & your file.

While every application suffers bugs and errors, I don’t understand why SlideShare doesn’t state whether or not their converter is down. As the screen capture shows, I spent 41 minutes screwing around — converting the file, uploading, re-converting, and so on. SlideShare, if your converter isn’t working, please speak up so I don’t waste my time.

Although I generally like SlideShare, communicating errors and problems clearly to users is obviously not a strong point. It’s time the company learned this important skill.

Update 6/30/08, 8:30am EDT: The SlideShare blog reports the upload problem has been resolved. Amit Ranja, one of SlideShare’s founders, sent the following comment by email:

Regarding your suggestion to add intelligence to upload error messages, it is definitely a good idea. Let me discuss this internally and see if we can incorporate that.

June 16th, 2008

Selling SOA: Stating the obvious

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 7:02 am

Categories: CIO issues, IT issues, SaaS, PaaS, and SOA

Tags: SOA, David, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web Services, Middleware, Enterprise Software, Software, Michael Krigsman

Successful IT projects, including Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) initiatives, begin with a clear rationale designed to help an organization solve specific business or technology problems. Practitioners frequently ignore this obvious point, which causes many failed projects.

With this in mind, I had mixed reactions reading a post by David Linthicum on How to Sell SOA. David says the following:

So, how do you sell? Let’s look at a few key concepts, including:

1. Shining light on existing limitations
2. Creating the business case
3. Creating the execution plan
4. Delivering the goods

From one perspective, it’s easy to dismiss this general advice as a form of insipid business pablum applicable to any large organizational endeavor whether IT or not. However, David’s discussion of these basics suggests the degree to which many enterprises misunderstand SOA. Failure remains an integral part of the entire IT landscape, so David is absolutely correct in offering such admonitions.

Selling expensive SOA projects depends on defining a business case, developing a workable implementation plan, and presenting benefits to senior management. However, there’s also a fine line between selling hyped-up concepts and offering something practical and achievable within stated times and budgets.

How do you sell SOA internally? Please share your thoughts.

April 19th, 2006

Stating the Obvious?

Posted by Michael Krigsman @ 4:21 pm

Categories: Project failures, Project management

Tags: Michael Krigsman

According to KPMG, lots of IT projects fail as a result of poor management. From the article:

KPMG International’s survey of 600 organisations across 22 countries revealed that 86% of respondents reported the loss of up to a quarter of their targeted benefits across their project portfolios.

Nearly half of respondents reported at least one project failure in the past year, an improvement from KPMG’s 2003 survey where 57% experienced one or more project failures in the previous 12 months.

Standish Group has been saying the same thing for years in their CHAOS Report. Please, Mr. KPMG, give us specific advice on how to actually solve these project failures. Generalizations about management are nice, but I want hard news.

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