Gene Marks, in his recent Forbes article, has stated several facts about customer relationship management (CRM). According to Google, around 30 to 70% of CRM systems do show results as expected and fails in achieving the organizational objectives. Surprisingly, many companies do not pay attention to their CRM systems as they do on their accounting systems, and as a result, they fail in creating effective CRM.

There are many other reasons why these systems fail. This happens from poor planning and inadequate training for using CRM systems. Apart from these, there is one major reason why the CRM systems do not reach their potential; it is its people. Well, actually, it is one person who is the administrator of the CRM system. Notably, if, as a business owner, you fail to invest in an administrator for your CRM system, then your system will definitely fail.

Let us first discuss who the administrator is and what he does!

An administrator is a person who is in charge of the CRM database. It doesn’t matter which type of CRM system you have; you need to have an administrator for it. Precisely, his job is to make sure that the data in the database is complete and accurate. If anything is wrong, out of date or missing in the database, then it is his responsibility to fix it and implement effective data entry controls to make sure that such issue does not happen again. Furthermore, an administrator is in charge of ensuring that everyone is using the CRM system properly and effectively. He is also responsible for ensuring that answers are provided, goals are set, problems are fixed, and advanced tasks such as creating design reports, workflows, adding fields, sending customized messages, and integrating with other applications are performed efficiently.

If you do not have an administrator, then you should hire one so that your CRM system does not fail. You can hire him depending on the size and usage of your CRM system. He works with different areas of the company and plays an important role in the designing process and maintaining valuable data in the big data world. If you already have an administrator for your CRM system, then make sure that you have a backup plan so that if they leave, you can manage the system effectively.

If you are still not convinced about hiring and investing in an administrator, then you should not invest in a CRM system as well, as it will eventually fail in some days.

Source – Forbes