Good news about ROI

"Blueprint" data undercuts the 70% failure rate story, along with the 60% version and even the 50% version. Despite applying a relatively rigorous standard of success, these data indicate that 45% of implementations are or will be clear ROI producers (within two years, based on typical outlays); 35% are clearly failing and may never return their investment; and 20% are in a gray area where they'll likely show positive returns over time, but not as quickly as most implementers would like to see them. On balance, the majority of the 20% "gray area" implementations will wind up successfully paying off their capital investments in a time frame generally acceptable to financial management, especially in better economic times.

Obviously, these are "good news" numbers from an implementer perspective. So what's not to like about them from a vendor perspective? For openers, analysts still proclaiming 70% or 60% failure rates now have well-earned egg on their faces—in some cases enough to beg questions about whether they just might have "research" clients that want technology spending steered towards non-CRM investments—in ERP or SCM or data warehouses, etc. But that's not the only potential disappointment in better-than-commonly-expected CRM success rates.