Anyone who knows me understands how much I like the sport of baseball and movies about sports.  So what does a "Field of Dreams" reference have to do with CRM?  Funny enough...everything.  If you haven't seen the movie starring Kevin Costner you can consider him your CRM project leader.

His challenge is that he knows the benefit of doing the project in front of him but he cannot quantify the benefits of this project to anyone in his family or those around him.  For the sake of argument lets call these people his internal team members.  Even so he remains steadfast and eventually brings everyone together to reap the benefits of the completed project (I know, it's a baseball field in the middle of nowhere).

This vision came to me last week when I was sitting in the middle of a meeting an executive of one our existing customers.  They have been running CRM for over five years with some success but they have not made the turn with CRM to where it is a competitive weapon.  People rely on it and non one argues its relevance but the user community does not embrace it like they can't live without it.

I asked him why he felt like his team was CRM saavy but not CRM evangelists and his answer was very enlightening.  He said that his team had always talked about a "dream screen" early in the days of CRM and it never came to fruition.  I dug a little deeper and he said the team wanted information from various sources all in one screen.  I dug even deeper and asked what that would do for the front line employee.

He thought about the "dream screen" and what it would do for his company.  After a while finally responded and said they would give faster service, do more transactions, alleviate internal bottlenecks and process more orders.  So, as it turns out, the dream screen was actually a "value" screen that exemplified everything that CRM could do for the operational capabilities within his own firm.

Needless to say as we proceed to the next upgrade of CRM the "fields of dreams" will be on a screen that will take CRM to the next level for my customer and his organization.  The lesson learned is that there is always value in listening to your users and the value can be mutually beneficial...not mutually exclusive.