Are Businesses Getting Everything They Can From CRM Systems?

One of the not so fun parts of my job is turning down story proposals. But the proposals I'm guaranteed to turn down are those for articles that take as a given that using CRM systems is tantamount to failure. I reject whole cloth articles that begin, "Despite the high failure rate of CRM."

Although CustomerThink's Bob Thompson [1] and Gartner's Ed Thompson [2] convincingly beat that dead horse, the belief that CRM systems aren't doing what they're supposed to do and that businesses are running from them kicking and screaming lives on.

Now, though, we have more ammunition. Gartner has been predicting a rise in CRM adoption, and posted on CustomerThink on Sept. 26, are results of a survey [3] commissioned by T.H.G. Sales Automation and Microsoft, showing that CRM adoption is on the rise. Hallelujah!

The T.H.G./Microsoft survey shows adoption in small and midsize companies. So the question now is this: Are businesses getting everything they can from their systems? What's the next step?