Elizabeth Shahnam Roche

Given tight IT budgets, customer relationship management (CRM) project teams ready to acquire technology often do not have the luxury of buying a new best-of-breed solution. Instead of putting these CRM projects on hold, teams should examine their organization's present software inventories for technology components (perhaps) not obviously related to CRM that can be recycled to meet new CRM needs. Not only does this save money in purchasing and installing new solutions, but also it serves as a means to test new customer processes without having to make substantial initial technology investments.