The extended enterprise has embraced the internet as the best way to get closer to the customers. This has normally been implemented through portals and exchanges as part of the supply chain initiatives based on the ERP applications.

The next wave of hype is the CRM even though the dot.coms are plummeting out of the skies because the technology is not able to deliver at this time.

When are we going to wake up to the fact that its not the technology that is going to deliver the required changes - it requires an integration of the diverse business process chains and a massive change in culture to embrace a totally different way to operate business.

Lets hear it for the Integrated Process Chain

It is not the supply chain that is important but the integrated process chain (IPC) and a change of business culture that will make the difference.

With only 15% of business leaders thinking CRM is critical to their futures it is strange to find that 82% of companies say they are implementing it. This is good for the customers and the authors of CRM products even though nearly 50% (Gartner Group) of all implementations have failed as have the suppliers.

Why are we doing this to ourselves?

Some of the companies are stuck on the "must-have" treadmill. The competition have a web site so we "must have" one. The competition have implemented an ERP system so we "must have" one. The competition have implemented mauve Post-It stickers so ......

Lets step back and think about this sensibly.

We are all part of the supply chain. Some will be at the beginning whilst others will be at the end. To speed things up we have implemented technologies like Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) to automate the exchange of agreed data. This has slowly been supplanted by portal capabilities where instead of exchanging data we all look at the same information at the same time. When we look at CRM we are trying to automate what a good salesman does naturally - know his customer. With some clever technologies we are letting the applications make decisions about our customer needs from his previous behaviours.

All this helps improve efficiency but is it effective?

All we have been doing is electronifying our existing processes. If they are wrong then all this effort and expense is not a good investment. This does not mean that the technologies are bad or wrong or even inappropriate - it does mean that without changing the processes and the business culture these investments will never reap the projected benefits.

So what is the answer?
The first thing to do is embrace the technologies and think about how the business processes can be changed to exploit them. Rather than getting the customer to fill in a paper form get them to fill in an electronic form is the traditional efficiency action. Asking why the form is necessary is the real answer.

Supermarkets changed their processes once the loyalty cards started to capture information that they had never had before. Supermarkets now offer a wide range of services based on this "intelligence". This has also led to a change in culture from the super efficient grocer to a service organisation. They understand the process chains of the individuals and have adapted their offerings accordingly.

What will be the problem?

If the processes and culture are not addressed the normal IT response is to capture everything and then the CRM will have superfluous data and no way of interpreting it.

The culture change must engender principles of the new processes and an acknowledgement that technology can only enable and support effective processes and cannot create them.

So what is the integrated process chain?
The IPC is the way of getting the diverse processes to work together. This requires the acceptance that businesses will have different processes and that just sending data electronically is not enough. This means that CRM is really all about understanding the diverse customer processes because they will dictate the customer behaviour which is where we came in - trying to understand the customer.