The Case for the Internal CRM
I promise I’m not trying to sell a product. Honestly, I wish I was because this would be incredible if I had one of these. Without a doubt the hardest thing about documenting a huge company’s digital transformation is uncovering the things you don’t even know you don’t know. A good friend and business partner of mine says we are simultaneously starving for and drowning in information. How can that be? How can a global organization with hundreds of thousands of employees, partners and customers not get the right information to the people who need it?
There are so many “communications” organizations sprouting up at large companies. You have the functional poster child, Communications. Then you have the educators or training or some form of learning development. After those teams you have your in-house creative agency. Oh, and don’t forget about the project/product/program managers who don’t actually produce any real product. Their job is usually communicating with customers, suppliers or teammates via reports, presentations and all the meetings.
While there certainly are teams that are more gifted at communicating than others, communication is a part of everyone’s job. I’m excited by how more people are taking advantage of storytelling recipes. Content is getting more polished and people are beginning to confuse the amateurs for the pros, making it difficult to also decide which content is worth your attention.
Therein lies the problem.
Most cease to open those corporate emails anymore. Others find the unofficial office gossip online suspect. What to do?
Successfully mapping the networks of people in your organization that interact and trust one another is huge. Why? Because today we listen to people we trust and have the power and choice to ignore those we don’t.
Who are the people who trust you and your team?
Companies have been using CRMs for years to track leads and convert those leads into clients. No one really thinks to do that in a large company. Instead, they just assume people in certain departments will listen to them because of some org chart. Or they think the only person’s opinion that matters is their boss. Wrong.
If you want your corporate team to be successful, you have to do what any other thriving business would do. You have to obsess over your customers. Work with them. Learn from them and help them succeed. A Customer Relationship Management tool just helps you show your work.