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CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP management for the online business era - or eCRM - is the next major multiyear IT initiative. It's a mix of data mining, call center management, customer profiling software, sales force automation, "clickstream" analysis, marketing process automation, Web site personalization, e-mail auto response, segmentation algorithms and other exotic software species. It's by far the biggest and most complex venture in the history of IT, even bigger than ERP.
Here's a formula to remember: P = ERP2.
The P stands for "payoff" or "problem." The payoffs and problems of eCRM will be exponentially greater than those of ERP On the surface, eCRM looks like just another software and database management environment. So did ERP Many companies evaluated the features of fered by leading package providers like SAP,
J. D. Edwards, Baan and PeopleSoft and went through the standard systems development planning and project management procedures.
For most, ERP turned out to be anything but standard. The work required to clean up processes and interfaces, and to rationalize procedures and...