Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

This story is particularly interesting to me because I have been involved in several CRM rollouts using several different products and I was not at all impressed with any of them. The effort was of course enormous, taking years and tons of cash, and the end result, it the few cases that actually made it to end result, was in my opinion, not much value.

News.com has a story (linked) that states many recent reports are coming to the conclusion that CRM software is not effective. AND on top of that a recent Gartner report (take with grain of salt, Gartner is about as non biased in its IT reports as Jerry Falwell is in his religious views) states that 42% of purchased CRM stuff just sits on the shelf.

Considering the ENORMOUS cost and effort that goes into major SAP, Peoplesoft, etc, installs one can certainly see how these software investments should be carefully considered and very scrutinized. For the 2 years and 2 kabillion dollars a major SAP project takes at a large corporation, you could quite frankly roll your own and have it much more suited to your needs and therefore more effective of a solution (which is what you end up doing anyway, you just customize the hell out of the product you bought.)

Its interesting stuff considering the money thats on the line, checkit via the link.   CRM software or CRM shelfware?: news.com