I always like to reiterate how important TCO/ROI is and remind stakeholders about that. I talked a lot about TCO/ROI and the cost-value matrix in Chapter 3, Conceptualizing the CRM Design from Business Requirements.

In this chapter, we're going to focus on designing a solution for the future. To do this, you will need to have some basic measurement metrics that have been agreed on by your business leaders in order to improve processes and outcomes. This is a key success factor for the design and the justification of the investment. All stakeholders need to be on board with the CRM metrics before starting with the design.

The metrics are driven by requirements analyses and are instrumental not only for a TCO/ROI measurement but for the design of the solution, and more importantly, for user acceptance by business departments.

Typically, CRM metrics define the sales, marketing, and customer service process improvements at the very highest levels of a company. You'll define them at the...