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While many industry research firms have been strong boosters of CRM
and have pointed to the area as one with great potential for future
growth, Gartner stands out by being a piquant naysayer. It has just
announced the results of some of its research into real-world CRM
implementations, and these they paint a grim picture for corporations
hoping to use CRM to improve performance.

Through 2006, Gartner said, more than half of all companies
implementing CRM systems will view those implementations as
failures. Although this sense of failure will be drawn from many
customer-specific problems, Gartner said it feels that the software's
inability to link various channels, the lack of true process redesign
and the failure to provide any real customer benefits will often be
the main culprits.

In addition, Gartner claimed that while many businesses are
implementing CRM strategies, most of them will severely underestimate
the costs of such projects. The researcher claims these underestimates
will be as high 40-75%.

Gartner analysts said there are three key areas that enterprises must
implement to effectively use a CRM business strategy. To emerge as a
market leader, a company needs to excel in at least one of these
areas, and it needs to be as good as the competition in each of the
others:

To help thwart the heavy cost overruns, companies will need to adopt
specialized project management tools and metrics to track, analyze and
influence the CRM implementation. Gartner estimated that a large
enterprise can blow through between $30 million to $90 million over a
three-year period on technology, labor, consulting services and
training related to their CRM projects. Companies can trim those costs
by using tools such as a TCO (total cost of ownership) tracker, which
offers a view of true IT costs over time, including all three major
areas of any company: people, technology and processes.

See
http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/newsItem/0,289139,sid11_gci769545,00.html