Why Companies are Performing so Poorly, Despite the Investment

The findings in this book have led us to the following conclusions.

Senior executive ownership and leadership is required

This appears to be less of an issue now than it was, although still only one in five companies have executives on the board with responsibility for CRM (that is, constituting more than 50 per cent of their role). But our results show that, as yet, these executives are not increasing their companies' CM effectiveness. Why is this? Our explanation is as follows:

Managers have a short-term focus; financial objectives are often set quarterly or at best annually. CM approaches often take longer to pay back, unless activities are carefully planned. Also, managers are often in a role as a stepping stone 'career development' move, and their performance in a function is only judged over a short period of time.

Managers do not see change through. For example, investment in CM systems is clearly taking place, but not enough is invested in changing the behaviour and attitudes of employees, so little actually changes.

Senior managers ignore the basics of what defines good CM and business performance. Some consultants and senior managers are obsessed with 'dramatic change' and new concepts. Plans that take a company's current business model, tighten it up in places and adapt it slightly in others, do not seem to appeal to managers obsessed with dramatic change. Unfortunately, there are just too many of these managers, and some consultancy firms encourage this attitude and even feed on it. Our research shows that significant benefits can be achieved more quickly and easily, and certainly more cheaply, through incremental change, often fixing areas that senior management do not know are broken!

Senior managers do not recognize their companies' CM strengths and weaknesses. Our research shows those senior managers' views on their company's strengths and weaknesses are often different before and after a CMAT. So, project priorities and implementation programmes developed without a thorough review of the current position are likely to be founded on myths.

Senior managers appear to rarely have the real authority or appetite to challenge the status quo and work across the enterprise.