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CRM: Myths and Realities! Panel discussion
New York , NY — Customer relationship management (CRM) — the ideas, the software, the strategy—are big budget items for many marketers these days. But is CRM an idea that represents all that’s forward thinking in direct marketing? Or, should CRM be “buried, as soon as possible,” as one panelist at the Zicklin School of Business’ recently convened panel, “Customer Relationship Management: Myths & Realities," asserted?
 The Panel, from left, Robert DeSena, Managing Director at Mars Direct; Erik Wennerod, VP, Director of Database Services at Draft; Robert Rothschild, VP, Director of Strategic Services/Account Planning at MRM Partners Worldwide; and Ernan Roman, President, Ernan Roman Direct Marketing |
“CRM is important because it’s controversial, and it’s controversial because it’s important,” quipped panel moderator Dr. Marjorie Kalter, professor and graduate program director at New York University’s Master's Program in Direct and Interactive Marketing. “These three letters are critical to the other important three letter combinations in marketing — LTV and ROI.”
Kalter’s observations, and the sometimes-heated debate of the five panelists, came thanks to Zicklin’s Direct and Interactive Marketing Resource Center and the Graduate Marketing Club, which hosted the panel. More than 40 students attended the event, which was sponsored by The Direct Marketers Gateway and Baruch’s Graduate Career Management Center.
Panelists included Erik Wennerod, VP, Director of Database Services at Draft; Robert Rothschild, VP, Director of Strategic Services/Account Planning at MRM Partners Worldwide; Robert DeSena, Managing Director at Mars Direct; and Ernan Roman, President, Ernan Roman Direct Marketing.
Below are the top 7 (somewhat controversial) realities about CRM,as discussed by the panelists.
- “We can’t build a future on anything that has failed at such a catastrophic level as CRM has. Going forward, the premise has to start with the customer,” says Ernan Roman, president of Ernan Roman Direct Marketing.
- “Most of the definitions of CRM talk about the company managing the customers. I’m not sure any of us agree it’s not the customers managing the company,” says Robert Rothschild, VP, Director of Strategic Services/Account Planning at MRM Partners Worldwide.
- “CRM had such a bad reputation in the past because most companies will buy million dollar Siebel or other solution and not have any idea how to use it. They maybe use five percent of what it’s capable of.” says Erik Wennerod, VP, Director of Database Services at Draft.
- “CRM very quickly falls into the IT department. And as a group, they don’t have customer satisfaction and customer value as their measure of success,” says Rothschild.
- “So many companies have over-invested in technology. CRM doesn’t have to be an enterprise-wide solution, it can be a campaign solution,” says Wennerod.
- “If you look at the very term `customer relationship management’, and at your own experience, ask yourself, `How do we really approach a relationship?” asks Roman. “We don’t `manage’ it. Management is an operations and IT driven concept.”
- “One of the biggest problems related to expectations is the idea that increased sales should be an immediate expectation. If it is, the CRM initiative is guaranteed to fail,” says Roman.
 Prof. Marjorie Kalter (right), Director of the Master's Program in Interactive and Direct Marketing at NYU and moderator of the event, poses with Prof. Harvey Markowitz (second from right) and the student organizers of the event. |