WhatTheyThink

Premium Commentary & Analysis

Print Business Front Office Modernization: Part 2—Prospects and Customers

Think about your front office in terms of what “objects'' you need to manage there. In part 2 of a five-part series, we discuss customers and prospects. This means tracking sales activities and inserting more valuable information (both quantitative and qualitative) into your Print MIS regarding your customers.

Wednesday, March 03, 2021

(This is the second of a five-part series. Read Part 1 here.) 

The first step of modernizing your front office is not to purchase Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Please don’t make this mistake. Software is a tool that you buy once you have determined your business goals and decided what you need to track and measure in order to determine whether you’re heading in the right direction. When you go to remodel your house, you don’t start with buying a hammer.

Did you know that the majority (more than 50%) of CRM implementations fail? And not just don’t meet expectations—but completely flop! My guess is that some percentage of the readers of this article have experienced a failed CRM implementation or are right now wondering if they are still paying for Salesforce or not because nobody uses it.


Continue reading your article
with a WhatTheyThink membership.

WhatTheyThink Annual Membership

Less than $4/week.

Get unlimited access to in-depth commentary and analysis covering the latest trends, emerging technologies, operational strategies, and key events across every segment of today's printing industry.

Stay informed. Stay competitive. Stay ahead.
WhatTheyThink Day Pass

$5 for 24 hours

Unlimited access to all of WhatTheyThink. Get your Day Pass

Already a member?
Sign In

About Jennifer Matt

Jennifer Matt is the managing editor of WhatTheyThink’s Print Software section as well as President of Web2Print Experts, Inc. a technology-independent print software consulting firm helping printers with web-to-print and print MIS solutions.

Recent Articles from Jennifer Matt

Utilizing CRM Tools to Sell Print

A CRM tool needs to deliver value to your sales team in the form of time savings or differentiation in how fast they can get quotes out to their customers. Read More

Manual Steps are Piling Up in Customer Service

When the power dynamic is uneven across the functional areas of your print business, more powerful areas (production and sales) tend to shift manual steps to the less powerful areas (customer service). Read More

Stepping Over Dollars to Pick Up Pennies

We tend to discount the time of our full-time employees because we are paying for it already—looking at them like sunk costs. So, when we ask them to do things that are non-value add (aka a complete waste of their time), we don’t see it as a cost. Well, it has real costs. Read More

Deciding What’s Important

In a print plant, it is easy to come to work and fall into the drama of getting jobs out the door. There is always something you can focus on in your day-to-day work life. The art of moving your business forward happens when you direct your focus to areas of your business that you can impact the most. Read More

This Plant Wouldn’t Run Without Me

In conversations with a label converter recently, the General Manager told me that more than once in the last few years key employees had voiced the core belief that “this plant wouldn’t run without me.” Now, you can take this statement a lot of different ways. My initial reaction is concern for the business because the employee that says this is both likely a key player and potentially a risk. Read More