Over the years I have experienced the foibles of many many CRM systems from SAP to Seibel , Oracle to Onyx, Pivotal to Peoplesoft. Why is it that most out of the box CRM systems seem to apply all the sophisticated work flow to opportunity management and leave lead management  as an after thought.

I think this largely due to the history of CRM and its roots in SFA. The workflow associated with SFA is relatively mature and the major demand for CRM is most often sales led.

Lead management on the other hand is often more complex with many stakeholders crossing multiple departmental boundaries and applying a generic workflow is often problematic. I’ll give you an example.

We recently worked on an event for a major IT hardware manufacturer. To encourage attendees several product offers were designed spanning several product lines. The invites to the delegates were personalised for each market segment. Invites (both electronic and printed) were sent at intervals of three weeks starting six months before the event. The first three invites contained additional “early bird” offers. Click-thru ads were distributed amongst various publications and websites with offers matching the specific target segment. At the event itself leads across the different product streams were captured and collated. All the offer take-ups, leads and enquiries required distribution to the appropriate sales team. The Sales teams were given the option of accepting the lead or passing it back for nurturing into a telemarketing queue. Attendees/non attendees  were contacted after the event to follow up and further enquiries required assignment to the appropriate sales team.

Now this event was an annual conference and the workflows and matrices were relatively complex and intensive and required tailoring to the clients needs. But in many companies, especially in retail where volumes are high the general lead management process is equally or yet more complex.  Campaigns may last a few weeks or a few days. The workflow for a campaign may not be reusable having been tailored so specifically.

As a result the workflow required for modern campaign and lead management is most often beyond the scope of a standard CRM package. They are not designed  for project based “throw-away” workflow.

This leaves a huge gap. Campaigns often start life as a record within a CRM system but it is then necessary to move to another system or agency to run the campaign. Then leads need to be import back into the CRM system – possibly losing vital information. Only then can the leads be assigned and generate opportunities.

We have been helping companies run campaigns such as this for the past  8 years. We know that the limits of campaign management in CRM systems. We have helped plug this gap for many successful companies. Whilst CRM vendors continue to rely on static and inflexible workflow management techniques the need for services such as ours will remain necessary and lead management will continue to be the poor relation.

Marketing is about change. It’s the nature of the job. We are constantly trying to re-invent the way we present ourselves/our companies. Marketers are judged on their creativity and it is likely to consume all your time and effort. Creativity has always been the most highly prized skill. But recruiting marketers with the right credentials and experience seems to be well nigh impossible. Some research says that 95% of companies are finding it difficult to recruit the skills required.

It appears that training for marketers is still light on the technical aspects of marketing including: Digital marketing, eMarketing, Social marketing, Data Protection legislation, building communities. Courses do cover these aspects but its no good having a great idea if you have no idea how or if it will work in practice.

Marketing has become a more  technical discipline.  You either need technicians with marketing acumen or marketers with a technical bent. This is where providing a Marketing Operations service to marketers has been successful. It’s a blend of the right skills. Our agency model allows marketers an interface  they know and understand.

If we are expecting marketers to perform creative summersaults everyday they need to understand the deeper technicalities of marketing. The lack of appropriate skills and the rapid changes in marketing techniques reinforce the need for services provided by CRM.