August 31, 2009 9:37 AM |
Posted by Amy Fielek |
Print this page
For the last session of the last day of ILTA 2009 (whew … I made it), I attended the session “The Marriage of CRM & ERM: A Meaningful Integration”. The session was given by Chris Fritsch of Clients First Consulting and Ed Schechter formerly of Duane Morris. They kept the session fun, playing up the marriage concept with wedding themed music, pictures, and champagne!
The session started with a brief review of current CRM & ERM solutions, including Hubbard One’s Contact Manager and ContactNet products. Chris & Ed reviewed the function of each tool and the effort level needed for their implementations. The primary message was that while each tool has a distinct purpose (contact management, communications, & mailing for CRM; relationship discovery & scoring for ERM), they complement each other. ERM helps firms discover more relationships than CRM alone and can cut down the time needed to drive revenue from CRM.
Chris & Ed then took us through a humorous review of the selection and implementation process of CRM and ERM by playing off of the marriage theme. They started with “Dating” and “Courtship, moving through a number of phases including the “Wedding Day” and “Honeymoon”, and finally ending with “Marriage Counseling”.
Some of the points I found interesting during this discussion were:
- Define the problems you are trying to solve before selecting your CRM and ERM solution
- Really get to know the people at the software provider who you will be working with before selecting a solution
- Know all of the costs involved in implementing and supporting the products
- Marketing and IT should partner together for the implementation
- Define a long-term owner for the solution and task this person with coming up with ways to drive revenue from the solution
- Look for ways to make the data more accessible to professionals – perhaps through a SharePoint intranet
It was an informative session and a great ILTA 2009!