CRM - Product or Strategy?

I gave a presentation last week at LawNet, and my co-presenter was Peter Lamb, IT Direcor at a customer of ours in Toronto. They’ve been ridiculously successful with the product – they report 96% of the lawyers using the system regularly, and senior management sees it as critical to their overall success.

Peter made a number of outstanding points. In no particular order:

• Lawyers don’t have to participate in the CRM product to participate in the CRM strategy.
  
• When Peter asked for a show of hands for how many had a CRM system already, about half (40 or so people) raised their hands. When asked how many had a CRM strategy, only two hands remained up.
  
• Less than 1/3 of the people in the room knew of a written firm busienss strategy. (Several others said one existed, but that it was a verbal strategy. To which Peter replied: what good is it if it’s not written down?)

It’s always encouraging to see customers share their successes. His firm has worked very hard to make InterAction successful – but to their credit, they’re also very willing to share the details of how they got there.