Is something rotten with the state of your CRM?
Early last year we set up a vegetable garden. We peeled back the lawn and grew some chillies, a couple of cauliflower, and a kind of hybrid Roma tomato/triffid.
Then life got busy again, and overwinter the weeds gained control. I would sit on my back porch with a coffee, and a line from Shakespeare would float through my head: “…’tis an unweeded garden/That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature/Possess it merely.”
So a whole year went by until I decided I’d had enough, and over a weekend got it back under control.
And the thing is, I knew that if I’d kept it in order in the first place, I wouldn’t have needed to have exerted anywhere near the energy.
Now, it takes even less effort to keep the weeds at bay…because it is in constant use.
While I was working it occurred to me that a CRM is no different – once it falls into disrepair, once data entry is an afterthought, your CRM devolves slowly into some kind of wasteland. Cue tumbleweed and wasted licence fees.
It happens, and it’s nothing new, and it can be rescued. On the other hand, if your organisation is getting continuous value from your CRM, the collective energy required for weeding will be minimal.
