CIOIN

It was about the rockiest start to a major IT initiative I've ever been involved in. Because I'd implemented IT marketing programs (now called client relationship management, or CRM) earlier in my career, the CIO charged me with doing the same for his organization. Of course, projects that sail along smoothly, with no resistance, are great. But it's the ones that throw lots of roadblocks in our way that end up teaching us things.

We were in trouble from the start. In a meeting with all of his direct reports (which included me), the CIO declared his intention to establish a CRM program. He didn't offer any reasons for this. He just announced that I would be directing the effort and stated that he expected everyone's full cooperation. The reaction from my peers was mostly silent, but I could feel the tension in the room. A few comments were made that made it clear why this initiative was receiving such a cold reaction. The one that best summed things up: "We're up to our necks in work, and we're now supposed to pony up resources and time to create whatever CRM is?"

I said that I would be answering the question of "whatever CRM is" at a meeting in a few days. I didn't sense much enthusiasm for that, either.

In the days that followed, several fellow IT managers called to ask about this "CRM thing." Most of them implied that we didn't need it at all. The more accommodating said it could wait until next year.

Negotiating Buy-in

I could understand why some of my fellow managers might be panicking. We all had more than we could do already. Any new initiative was bound to sound like just another thing that we couldn't give the proper attention to.

It's been my experience that change can't be mandated. For it to really take hold and transform an organization, you need buy-in. Tell a group of people you plan to make some major changes in the way things are done, and the thought going through the head of each and every one of them will be, "What's in it for me?" We hadn't even attempted to answer that question yet, and as the days passed, there was nothing to stop the resistance from growing.

Winning buy-in from stakeholders can be tricky in the best of circumstances, but I had a taller wall to scale than normal, simply because there had been time for rumor and misinformation to foster discontent. I wasn't sure how to overcome the resistance that was building at my upcoming meeting, so I talked to someone else from IT. She didn't hesitate. Her advice was to show our peers what happens in an IT organization that doesn't have a CRM program and then show how things work in an IT organization with a mature CRM program in place. Then, she said, "explain the differences and ask us which one we'd rather be." It was a brilliant idea.

I prepared my material, scheduled the meeting and informed everyone that I would identify the pros and cons of CRM programs. In an effort to ensure attendance, I said that each manager would be expected to tell me what they thought CRM would mean for their part of the IT organization - in other words, they would be asked to vote.

At the meeting, I began by saying that, whether we had a CRM program or not, we should view our IT service organization as a business and ourselves as its owners. While IT wasn't itself a profit center, the decisions we made affected the costs of our clients on the business side. We had to seriously consider that our clients viewed outside IT service firms as our competition.

"So, CRM will help us prove we're the best alternative?" one manager asked.

"It will," I said, "but I don't expect you to take my word for it. Let me show you instead." I then laid out what defined us now, as an IT service organization with no CRM program in place:

We don't have a formal marketing sense about our clients.

We don't know what services they use, what they're happy and unhappy with, what their measures of success are, what their billings are, who the IT decision-makers are, what their IT usage profile is (by line of business) or what our role is or is supposed to be in supporting their success and managing their risk.Clients and even other parts of IT service don't know how to best obtain our services.

We don't have any repeatable way to ensure we have the resources to honor every commitment we make. We tend to promise things and then try to figure out what's required later.

We don't have any cross-functional management or coordination capability - we react.

We lack a consistent notion of how to create and add value to each business we serve.

We don't manage the expectations of our clients with a comprehensive description of our services.

We don't appropriately capture revenue for all services, and our billing can be unpredictable.

We sometimes blame other parts of our own organization for a missed commitment, giving clients the impression that IT is a dysfunctional organization.

We don't share our direction and strategy with our clients or seek feedback on how we could be more responsive.