Diego Ventura
Founder and CEO
noHold, Inc.
diego@nohold.com
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Q: Best-of-Breed CRM Solutions: Is Consolidation the Only Way?
Several industry articles recently have claimed that there's only one
way for best-of-breed CRM companies to survive. They must consolidate.
The thinking goes like this. Since small companies provide only
individual solutions rather than an integrated package, they must join
to form larger companies. Or at least, they should be acquired by the
"bigger guns" in CRM.
But let's not be hasty. It may sound valid to argue that all integration
is good. After all, an individual solution can't do much by itself. So
why not bundle everything under one brand and deliver a complete
package?
On the one hand, that makes sense. Few companies can afford the
necessary time to test and integrate products from several best-of-breed
vendors. It's much easier to buy a whole package, plug it in, and have
everything go live at once.
On the other hand, I believe companies that practice this philosophy are
very short sighted. Just because it's easier for a company to
buy, sell,
or install a complete package all at once, it doesn't mean that's the
best solution. Here's why:
- Function for the sake of function is a poor priority. A
one-size-fits-all solution may sound powerful, but often it contains
more than most companies really need. You've seen what happens when you
buy a computer with bundled software. You actually may use only a
fraction of it, but you've still paid for it all.
- No individual CRM provider can say that they have the technology
market cornered. The best developer of VOIP technology isn't necessarily
the best developer of self-support. In the end, companies may be
compelled to take a pre-packaged solution even when individual
components may not perform the way a company requires.
- It's almost impossible to take advantage of individual component
upgrades. A company can't always go out and substitute a
better-performing best-of-breed email manager for a disappointing
bundled product. It may not integrate with
the rest of the package. So
the end user still cannot get optimum customer support across the board.
This is not to claim that best-of-breed providers are free from
challenges, nor does it mean that enterprise solutions cannot fit
certain needs. It does mean that the CRM industry should be a place
where a full range of choices is available to companies. Ultimately we
all must keep our attention on the end users and how we can deliver the
services and support that will provide the most benefit to them. That
also means the industry - including best-of-breed as well as enterprise
companies - must work together to solve our shared problems.
Interoperability is the primary key. We must work diligently to develop
standards that would make it simple for companies to plug together a
variety of customer support products into the best overall solution for
their particular end users. That way, we're providing a way for
companies to assemble modular packages to fit their
specific needs
without having to sacrifice speed, special features, or other
necessities.
Standardized process integration is another key. Companies must be
assured that they truly can "plug-and-play," allowing them to implement
individual products without having to learn specialized processing for
each one. In other words, all email management processes would be
similar no matter who created the product.
And then we must work in concert to develop processes that allow us, as
a group, to deliver a holistic view of the customer. Our own processes
must work seamlessly to deliver data that can be consolidated on the
back end so our mutual customers can have the critical insights they
need for strategic decisions.
Consolidating best-of-breed companies into larger entities is not
necessary, nor is it a reasonable goal. The CRM industry has only
scratched the surface of its potential, and there is a great deal of
room for everyone to find a well-grounded
place. But it will be a more
difficult task unless we address the issues that will allow us all to
thrive - and more important, to serve the end user well.
noHold (www.nohold.com) is the creator of
Instant Support, the leading Web-based diagnostic self-service customer
support solution
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