Point, Counterpoint - Part I by Dr. Jon Anton October 27, 2005   One reader wrote, "I strongly disagree that there are insufficient reasons to benchmark. To deploy a successful CRM solution, you need to have quantifiable objectives. Examples would be 'Reduce new sale rep ramp-up time from 6 months to 3 months as measured by ...' or 'Increase the percentage of sales to qualified prospects from X% to Y% within 6 months of project launch.' In almost every example you need a baseline measurement. Without quantifiable objectives you cannot define your ROI, you cannot tell whether or not your project succeeds, and your project will not have the focus necessary for success."   Gary Lemke’s response, “I wholeheartedly agree that you need baseline measurements to measure improvements and calculate ROI but I don't believe you need benchmarks to create the baseline. Isn't the baseline a measure of your operation rather than the average of other operations?”   Dr. Jon’s Counterpoint, “In this case, I think both the reader and Gary are completely correct in the context in which they see the issue. In my opinion, for your initial ROI calculations for any CRM solution, it is best to use your own internal key performance indicators (KPIs). For example, as the reader indicated, a perfect KPI for an order-taking sales center would be “ the percentage of actual sales achieved as compared to qualified prospects.” Let’s say your KPI in 2005 is 1 sale for every 20 qualified prospect, and you predict that the new CRM solution that you want to purchase can improve your KPI to 2 sales per 20 qualified prospects (a 100% improvement). This KPI improvement can easily be turned into a very credible ROI calculation. What benchmarking to best practices can help the reader do is to also understand how well the competition is doing on this important performance KPI. For example, in this case what if the competition, operating in similar order-taking call centers, are in fact reporting an average KPI of 5 completed sales per 20 qualified leads.” This does not change the ROI calculation that uses the internal baseline, but it should get the center’s management attention to launch a discovery effort to better understand which of their internal processes may be impacting their sales performance negatively. The “gap” in KPI performance does not give you the answer, but it does motivate “action” on the part of management to better understand industry best practices, and to discover improvement initiatives to achieve them…