When someone suggests they want a portal the very first question to ask is, “what does a portal mean to you”.

Portal, like CRM - and many other terms in IT - tend to be all encompassing words designed to solve a complex raft of problems.

“We can’t get to our information easily” “I spent ages trying to find a document that I know is here somewhere and gave up” “We have heaps of copies of the same document” “I want a dashboard or traffic light to let me know when problems have emerged so I can immediate action” “I am sick of signing in to lots of different systems”

There is actually a fair bit of complexity in this - but the answer seems to be Portal (or intranet / new enterprise content management system - take your pick).

Same with CRM:

“I can’t get a single view of our customers” “..no one understands who is doing what with whom” “I was trying to cross sell and they already told us they can’t buy it” “The client told me that they were already dealing with another of our divisions and our company should already have a heap of information on them already”

Again, complex issues - people, process and technology at play again.

So what do we do? Start with the business problems to be solved, then resolve the process issues - and then the technology solution becomes much more simple - and effective.

Any experience good or bad? Do share….

IF you are thinking of refinance mortgage, be careful. It is still a mortgage loan in the end. With every mortgage, there are always the chances of foreclosure.

I was speaking with a friend today who was feeling pretty frustrated. You see, he had purchased a CRM product for his business, but it wasn’t doing what he wanted. The vendor had considered that he had done his part - sell the product, install it on site, provide the user documentation, all thumbs up….

What the client actually needed was:

1. Assistance to clearly understand how to implement CRM as a strategy

2. Get the people on the bus committed to the approach

3. Define the new processes, and define these into an agreed requirements document

4. The vendor to configure the application to meet the defined requirements

5. The vendor to train the users and the administrator in exactly how to make CRM technology deliver on the CRM strategy

6. The vendor to come back and check / realign things after staff have been using it for awhile

My recommendation to you - be very, very wary of buying any software that runs across your business without buying implementation services (not just technical ones, but solid business analysis).

So, what is your experience? Please share the good, bad and the ugly, I’d love to get your feedback….

See my post on people, process and technology for more on getting software implementation right.