On CRM and User Adoption (2)

A little while ago I posted about the difficulty in getting Sales Representatives to use CRM applications, as opposed to Service Reps. A recent survey in California, by the Sales Lead Management Association, shows some interesting results, as quoted in this Chris Bucholtz article on Inside CRM. Chris quotes the survey's somewhat suprising results:

"83 percent of the respondents don’t track ROI on investments in lead generation. Just 5 percent tracked ROI on SFA. How do these companies know whether their systems are helping or if they’re just making busy work for consultants or IT people?"

One could arrive at a number of conclusions based on this survey, such as:

1. SFA Solutions are implemented for the simple reason that everybody's doing it.
2. It's still difficult to measure ROI for CRM implementations.

I believe the main reason for not tracking ROI on SFA investments is the latter. Most companies simply do not know how to measure return, because the benefits of an SFA application are not always tangible and realized immediately after implementation. A series of blog postings on ITToolbox contains observations with regard to measuring CRM ROI, and can provide interesting insights for those who are struggling with the issue of CRM ROI.