Earlier this week I had the pleasure of attending a meeting in London in our UK Web Manager Group. At the meeting I talked to Gerard Walsh from investment manager Schroders. With the unusual title of Head of Web and CRM, Walsh has a different perspective and broader mandate than most other web managers.
While listening to his experiences with implementing an effective global web governance structure in a federated organisation, I started wondering whether other organisations might also benefit from merging their Web and CRM teams?
Adding CRM to the web mix sounds is an very attractive proposition. Both are about talking to customers and both are enabled by technology. It would be really great if it could translate into the following organisational benefits:
- More emphasis on using measurement to guide Web decisions
- Moves focus from technology to marketing, sales and client-facing challenges
- Make the Web team think more about audiences, segments, ownership and messages
I know a few CRM Managers and I am fairly confident that most of them would hesitate to accept adding Web to their list of responsibilities. Compared to CRM, the Web in general enjoys much less management support. From the perspective of the usual Web Manager, many would probably also object to adding CRM to their list of ongoing headaches, as this might be seen as moving the Web team more in the direction of IT. In addition most Web Managers find their team understaffed, so why volunteer to manage yet another massive system?
Another practical issue the fact that most Web Managers don’t know much about CRM and vice versa. There are exceptions of course, but these are few and far between. Also, beyond UK-based Graham Oakes, you can’t find many experts that combine these 2 areas.
I’ve previously advocated that you should merge your Web and Intranet teams, to make better use of skills in the combined team and work together in solving challenges that often overlap. Web and CRM commonly fit under the Sales & Marketing banner. If either is owned by IT, that’s probably a bad sign.
Sometimes you need different catalysts to make lasting organisational improvements. What are your thoughts about merging Web and CRM teams?
Thanks to Graham Oakes for valuable input.
