Wine vs. Scotch

As Mark Twain said, "I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead", which I think is a perfect statement to my current situation. I could consider my traditional way of think as to over complicate things. I tend to look too far down the road and consider ALL variables and options. Which in many situations is a good thing. But what I am discovering now that the it may be better to go with the simple(r) ideas.....at least with technology.

When you consider how fast technology changes why invest in the biggest and best solution today when there will be a bigger, faster solution tomorrow? When is the right time to pull the trigger on an investment? Compound the change in technology with the change in economy and who knows what tomorrow will look like for retailers, developers and other businesses.

Which is why I am exploring the idea of integrating 3 to 4 businesses that each specialize in one area of CRM, instead of looking for one fully integrated solution. Some of the disciplines include:

• Campaign Management


• Business Intelligence


• CRM Platform/Data Hygiene


• Loyalty


• Email management

The beauty of this strategy is it keeps my initial (capital) investment low and provides a best of breed solution to each discipline. In addition, if some new widget or strategy becomes available down the road, my investment is minimal which gives me great opportunity for change.

One downside of this solution is the fact that I have multiple vendors to manage and I need to rely on making sure they all play nice together. And the fact that I have to look at my payment structure as being spread out over time (paying for each sip of wine vs. purchasing an entire winery). However, this might not be a bad thing if we decide scotch is our drink of choice after a few years? okay bad analogy but you get the idea.

As of right now this direction is only an idea. I have defined a few players but now all. I am not sure if I can make this a reality or not in the time frame I have been given...but i am going to give it a shot.