Redwood Shores, Calif. (May 2, 2003) -- Customer relationship management is a $30 billion business and number one in software license revenue and resellers should take more advantage, according to Barton Goldenberg, president of Bethesda, Md.-based customer retention and marketing analyst ISM.
Goldenberg addressed over 100 resellers at NetLedger’s 2nd annual Partnering for Profit conference, urging them to get educated about CRM and the revenue that could result from doing so.
“CRM may not do everything well; it’s not just a one-off technology, but a way of doing business,” Goldenberg said. “You need to be aware of the upward trend and the value proposition that is yet to be realized.”
He continued to stress that resellers and partners stand to make “a lot of money in CRM,” but they must first look at customer processes and decipher “what is reasonable and what is broken.”
ISM’s recent research indicates that when properly implemented CRM can significantly impact a company’s bottom line:
- A 10-20 percent increase in productivity
- A 10 percent decrease in customer turnover rates
- A 2-3 percent lift in customer loyalty and retention
Resellers at the NetLedger conference were fairly receptive to Goldenberg’s comments, though some failed to see the urgency about CRM.“There’s plenty of interest in NetLedger as a whole and other accounting products we carry, but CRM isn’t a big part of what we do right now,” said Rufus Lohmueller, president of Cary, N.C.-based Lohmueller Consulting Inc.
Lohmueller sells and recommends NetLedger accounting products as well as Accpac International and Microsoft’s Navision.
-- Seth Fineberg
