为2021年的CRM提速

今年可能是CRM的大年。我说可能，是因为我不是千里眼，而谦虚是决议清单上的。

在我看来，CRM已经经历了五个5年的周期。所有的数字都是大概的，但它们是这样的。

从90年代中期的客户端服务器到2000年 一小群公司带着对前台软件的新想法上街了

到了2000年，有了托管产品，成为软件即服务，最终成为云计算。SaaS非常流行，因为它解决了购买和实施一个大系统的经济问题。我们刚刚做了千年变化的ERP，许多人和组织都被它烧坏了。相比之下，SaaS至少具有成本效益。但那个时代到十年中期就基本结束了，因为大部分的网络公司都崩溃烧掉了，或者被收购了。

从2000年代中期到十年末，我们被人群和社交网络的智慧所迷惑。我们离不开社交、社交、社交。它是一个名词，也是一个动词，它能治愈癌症--或者说看起来是这样。但到了十几岁的中期，Facebook及其亲戚给社交媒体起了个坏名声，Marc Benioff宣称它类似于抽烟，从此社交就进入了狗窝。监管或许就在眼前。

在过去的五年里，专注于高级分析、机器学习、把客户放在中间，以及开发平台作为精确定制CRM以满足你的需求的方式的组合。

这个趋势在这一点上感觉和SaaS一样古老，我认为我们将开始一个新的周期，大概需要五年的时间才能达到履行。现在最大的问题是： "它将是什么？"

很高兴你问了这个问题。

从我在2020年做的所有研究中--我做了很多，因为没有什么其他安全的事情可做--我得出的结论是，尽管有这么多精彩的新技术，但按照我的标准，很多很多公司都在和古老的CRM相处。太多老旧的模块互不相干，共享数据需要付出艰巨的努力。

我调查的很多人都说，他们宁愿和自己的另一半吵架，去看牙医，甚至打扫厕所，也不愿和CRM打交道。哎哟!

下一个CRM

就像我喜欢说的那样，旧的CRM完全按照它的设计来工作，但我们人类已经不是这样工作了。首先，我们甚至不怎么进办公室了。

所以，我们的情况是，人们为了工作而支撑着CRM，这给他们带来了很大的负担。除了努力赚取他们的数字外，他们还在一次工作中使用多达8个屏幕来进行营销、配置、定价和报价，将交易拉到一起，获得批准，并在别人做之前回到客户那里--而这并不总是成功的。

这是个坏消息。好消息是，所有这些都有解决方法，但这意味着升级，这也带来了一系列的麻烦，有点像一边跑马拉松一边做心脏移植手术。

下一个CRM将需要整合之前的所有内容，再加上提供一个平台，在我们每次修改流程时都会生成代码。但这不是问题。它已经存在了，像Salesforce、Oracle和Zoho这样的公司都有货。

如果我对自己诚实，另一个解决方案，我不得不说，技术不会是这次CRM的问题。去年，当Salesforce、Zoho和甲骨文开始在创纪录的时间内提供应用程序来支持大流行的一些独特要求时，我们都惊奇地看着，所以我们知道这些平台是符合要求的。

持续改进的文化

但现在需要的是一些东西来消除变化的刺痛感，一些让那些不愿意的用户从牙医或车管所回来的东西。我们从来没有在CRM方面进行过真正强大的培训，因为我们总是假装它是如此直观，任何人都可以在短时间内学会它。如果这个想法是真实的，它死在第一个（W.）布什政府。

今天，CRM是一种文化变革的推动力，是一种如何开展业务的哲学，也是一套技术--虽然你可能能够弄明白如何浏览屏幕，但其他的东西却需要一些协同的努力。

数字化颠覆是另一个CRM时代，虽然它并没有结束，它是僵尸还是常青树，这取决于你的世界观，我们已经把它当成了CRM购物狂欢的意思，而不是一个问和回答简单问题的机会，比如。"在我的业务中，什么是好的，什么是不好的？" "有什么软件可以让它变得更好？"

所以，我轻易地对2021年CRM做出预测，我们需要大量的培训和讨论商业是什么。关于第二点，我们有商业圆桌会议强烈建议，我们正在从股东资本主义的时代走向利益相关者资本主义的时代。如果这是真的，企业将以不同的方式看待员工、合作伙伴、客户和当地社区。事实上，这已经开始了。我所做的其他研究表明，大多数（尽管不是所有）公司都明白这一点，并正在寻找解决方案。这些解决方案是从文化开始的。

我们需要在企业中灌输持续改进的文化理念，这将帮助我们避免永远陷入员工宁愿打扫厕所也不愿使用CRM的境地。所有这些都说明，我们需要和自己认真地谈谈企业的未来，以及我们企业在未来的发展中的位置。这要从一个更有意识和适应性的员工队伍开始，这也是为什么我认为今年开始努力了解的原因。

原文题目：Revving Up for CRM in 2021

原文：This might be a big year for CRM. I say might because I am not clairvoyant, and humility is on the resolutions list.

As I see it, CRM has gone through five 5-year cycles. All numbers are approximate, but they go like this:

· Client-server from the mid-1990s to 2000 when a small group of companies hit the street with a new idea for front office software.

· By 2000 there were hosted products which became software as a service and eventually cloud computing. SaaS was hugely popular because it tamed the economics of buying and implementing a big system. We'd just done ERP for the change of millenniums and many people and organizations were burnt out from it. SaaS was at least cost effective in comparison. But that era was largely over by the middle of the decade because most of the dotcoms crashed and burned or were bought up.

· From the mid-2000's to the end of the decade we were enthralled by the wisdom of crowds and social networking. We couldn't get enough social, social, social. It was a noun and a verb, and it cured cancer -- or so it seemed. But by the middle of the teens Facebook and its kin gave social media a bad name, Marc Benioff declared it akin to cigarette smoking, and social has been in the doghouse ever since. Regulation might be around the corner.

· The last five years have focused on a combination of advanced analytics, machine learning, putting the customer in the middle of things, and the development platform as a way to exactly customize CRM to your needs.

That trend feels as old as SaaS at this point, and I think we're going to embark on a new cycle that will take roughly five years to reach fulfillment. The big question now is: "What will it be?"

Glad you asked.

From all of the research I did in 2020 -- and I did a lot because there wasn't much else to do safely -- I concluded that despite all of the wonderful new technology on offer, that many, many companies were getting along with ancient CRM by my standards. Too many old modules don't talk to each other, it takes Herculean effort to share data.

A lot of the people I surveyed said they'd rather have a fight with their significant other, go to a dental appointment, or even clean the bathroom rather than deal with CRM. Ouch!

The Next CRM

As I like to say, old CRM works exactly as it was designed to work, but we humans don't work that way anymore. For starters, we don't even go into the office that much.

So, we have a situation where people are propping up CRM in order to do their jobs and that's placing a big burden on them. In addition to trying to make their numbers, they're working up to eight screens at a time to market, configure, price, and quote, pull deals together, get approvals and get back to the customer before someone else does -- and that's not always successful.

That's the bad news. The good news is that there are fixes for all that, but it means an upgrade, which comes with its own set of troubles, sort of like running a marathon while getting a heart transplant.

The next CRM will need to incorporate all that's gone before it, plus offer a platform that generates code every time we modify a process. But that's not a problem. It already exists and companies like Salesforce, Oracle, and Zoho have the goods.

If I'm honest with myself, another resolution, I have to say that technology isn't going to be the issue with CRM this time. We all watched with amazement last year when Salesforce, Zoho, and Oracle began offering apps to support some of the unique requirements of the pandemic in record time, so we know the platforms are up to snuff.

Culture of Continuous Improvement

What's needed now though is something to take the sting out of change, something to get those unwilling users to come back from the dentist or the DMV. We've never had really robust training in CRM because we always pretended that it was so intuitive anybody could pick it up in no time. If that idea was ever true, it died in the first (W.) Bush administration.

Today, CRM is a culture change agent, a philosophy of how to do business, and a technology set -- and while you might be able to figure out how to navigate a screen, the other stuff is going to take some concerted effort.

Digital disruption is another CRM epoch though it doesn't end, it's a zombie or evergreen depending on your world view and we've taken it to mean a CRM shopping spree instead of an opportunity to ask and answer simple questions like: "What's working well in my business and what's not?" and "Is there software to make it better?"

So, my wet finger in the breeze for CRM in 2021 is forecasting that we need a whole lot of training and discussion of what business is about. On that second point, we have the Business Roundtable strongly suggesting that we're moving from an era of shareholder capitalism to one of stakeholder capitalism. If that's true, businesses are going to be looking at employees, partners, customers, and their local communities in different ways. In fact, that's already started. Additional research I've conducted shows most, though not all, companies get it and are searching for solutions. The solutions begin with culture.

We need to instill the idea of a culture of continuous improvement in our businesses which will help us avoid ever getting to the same point where employees would rather clean the bathroom than work with CRM. All of this says we need to have a serious talk with ourselves about the future of business and our companies' places in what lies ahead. It starts with a more aware and attuned workforce, and that's why I'm thinking this year begins an effort at understanding.