After two years, a Microsoft CRM rollout pays off

Many network executives acquire shelfware in hectic times, such as when merging with another company.

James Kritcher, vice president of IT at White Electronic Designs in Phoenix, encountered shelfware when his company bought another company a few years ago. He says the IT team quickly decided to put the acquired company's CRM software -- Microsoft Dynamics CRM -- in place to gain better "visibility of the sales pipeline." Yet positive project results were further off than Kritcher initially anticipated.

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Many network executives acquire shelfware in hectic times, such as when merging with another company.

James Kritcher, vice president of IT at White Electronic Designs in Phoenix, encountered shelfware when his company bought another company a few years ago. He says the IT team quickly decided to put the acquired company's CRM software -- Microsoft Dynamics CRM -- in place to gain better "visibility of the sales pipeline." Yet positive project results were further off than Kritcher initially anticipated.

Click to see: James Kritcher, vice president of IT at White Electronic Designs in Phoenix

"We could see that the project was bound for failure as we realized that [the acquired company's] sales processes were much different from ours," Kritcher recalls. "We ultimately pulled the plug and sat on quite a few CRM licenses for a couple of years and paid maintenance fees in anticipation of ultimately using them."

Kritcher says a lack of sales leadership on this particular project doomed the software to start its life as shelfware at White Electronic Designs. Yet after securing sponsorship from the sales group and completing a business-process reengineering project, Kritcher reports the Microsoft CRM software is up and running today.

"It was executed more as an IT-driven project than a business project. There was no strong high-level sales leadership involved," he says. "It was a good lesson to learn."

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