Take usability over functionality when choosing CRM software, AMR Research advises

The feature/function battle in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is over, according to technology market think tank AMR Research.

But the struggle to ensure the software truly earns its keep is just beginning.

“For any given selection process, there are multiple qualified vendors and, based on the most needed CRM capabilities, the market has reached relative functional parity. Yet, with all this capability, only 16% of users can quantify value. Why? Because the tools are still far too difficult to use,” comments Rod Johnson of AMR.

He criticizes most CRM vendors for paying “little attention to the usability and the overall look and feel of their products, pouring the vast majority of their development resources into winning the features and functions race.”

Johnson says the use of these applications has shifted from sales, marketing, and service organizations to a host of new users, including management, knowledge workers, and less technology-savvy field personnel.

“These users interact with the technology completely differently than the core users for which many of the functions were intended, yet the user interface has not adapted to meet their needs. Why? Because the application vendors are still competing for their portion of the desktop,” Johnson says.

He says in the end Microsoft’s CRM will be successful because Microsoft is committed to making products work the way users want them to.Microsoft pretty well owns the desktop and every manager, salesperson, or knowledge worker spends the majority of their time in Microsoft Office or Microsoft Outlook

“If you are a CRM buyer, you need to ask yourself what’s better: near 100% use of an application with 50% of the potential functionality or 50% use of an application with 200% of the functionality you need,” Johnso says.

He addes that some vendors have begun to respond by changing their approach to usability. This includes hiring outside firms, creating usability labs and recruiting experts, and, most importantly, no longer allowing the core development organization or developers to define how users will interact with the application.
SAP, Siebel, PeopleSoft, Onyx, and E.piphany have all demonstrated major strides in their most recent releases, he says, but they have not gone far enough. "While we don’t expect them to give up the desktop completely, since there will always be specialized users who need deep capabilities, we do expect them to give individual users the power to choose how they access the application or the data. The applications need to work the way the user works, and not force them to learn an entirely new system in order to access the data or contribute the data needed to make the application deployment successful. Users should demand nothing less from their providers."