Chapter 8. Go! Developing Your CRM Strategy

Okay, we're ready to get to work. As you know, the first step you must take is to determine how your company is going to approach CRM; what is the right strategy for you? To create your CRM strategy, you start by defining where you want to be and decide what kinds of relationships you need to have with your customers in order to stay competitive. You need to understand where your company is now, and you must select the best path to get to your goal.

The questions you have answered at the ends of the chapters are preparing you to think about your organization and begin to formalize and articulate what direction your company's CRM should take. This chapter considers how to bring other important viewpoints into your strategy definition. We will identify all the steps that help us collect the knowledge and perspective of the organization's executives, customer experts, process experts, technical experts, and external experts (our customers). We will see how to organize everything that's been learned so the knowledge you collect leads you to define the right strategy and sets guidelines for the organization to make continuous progress and still get started quickly. Figure 8-1 shows where we are in the overall CRM methodology; we are at the beginning—launching our CRM efforts by developing our strategy.

We know that there is no magic wand, but with your strategy and roadmap in hand, you will be able to build a successful CRM program for your organization. It might even start to look like magic!