In long-distance navigation -- like in a boat or an airplane -- if you're going to make an error, it's better to make it later than to make it early on. A half-degree mistake can multiply itself into hundreds of miles over the course of a long voyage, but the same error made toward the end of the trip needs just a slight jog to set things right.
That's very much the way it is with the CRM decision-making process, and it's what makes choosing and deploying CRM so tricky. The errors you make early on will reverberate through the entire lifecycle of the CRM application -- and if you don't make a course correction, your entire investment is likely to run hard aground.
Many of the victims of "CRM failure" suffered that fate because of errors made very early on in the process. These sad, easily avoided mistakes are purely human in nature. Avoiding them is a major step toward getting your CRM decisions right. But that's not easy -- unless you're aware of the problems in advance.
