[flavaz]

A classic example of this would be how some roles require endless spreadsheets, or individual updates to a CRM tool like Pipedrive.

CRM tools add a lot of overhead to what should be a simple process- letting your manager know what you’re up to.

[onthecanposting]

If that bookkeeping overhead is fed into analysis and process mining to drive improvement, it might be a net gain. More often though, I see yet-another-spreadhseet applied as panacea, then it's forgotten in a few months and the process repeats over many years.

[AnimalMuppet]

That is being fed into analysis and process mining. But nobody's doing the meta-analysis to look at the overhead of all the analysis tools, and see whether they are a net win.

[datadrivenangel]

Big Analysis doesn't want you to think about that.

That is one of the points of the article though: If you double productivity of the worker, but require a second worker to maintain the computer/do the analysis, have you really increased productivity? The answer is yes, but it's important to think about the shape of your work contact patch and how increased productivity increases value.

[pnut]

I'm not a CRM end user, but I'd be very grateful for such a tool if I had to suddenly cover for a coworker, or inherit an existing business relationship. What is the alternative, each person individually cobbles together some godawful workflow management system? With no centralised repository of information?

Totally unsustainable, and not at all related to keeping your manager informed.

[flavaz]

I think there is a tendency to overcomplicate things, and human nature is such that most of the time colleagues don’t bother to update records properly. That’s the real-world experience CRM salespeople won’t tell you.

What also happens is that we have all these CRM tools in parallel with these “godawful workflow management” systems.

Theoretically there is a productivity gain, sure, but senior executives don’t make use of these tools, they hire a PA. The implementation of these CRM systems is usually done really really badly.

A good superset dashboard on the other hand- then we’re cooking with gas

[ElevenLathe]

Good to know sales people have their own version of JIRA hell.