Moore Medical Corporation

Moore Medical Corporation

Introduction

At the end of a hectic day in February 2001, Linda Autore, the CEO of Moore Medical, Inc., sat in her office reviewing a fax she'd just received (see Exhibit 1) from Clarify, a vendor of customer relationship management (CRM) software. Clarify had responded to her company's request for a quote on a CRM system to improve Moore's ability to sense and respond to customer desires. This had always been a crucial capability for Moore, a distributor of medical supplies that had built its business around taking excellent care of specific groups of practitioners such as podiatrists and emergency medical service personnel.

While Moore's strong tradition of accurately and quickly filling customer orders had not deteriorated, Autore had begun to question whether this was sufficient for the company to win new customers, or indeed even keep its existing ones. She wondered whether the kinds of capabilities that CRM software could provide-providing an integrated record of all customer contacts through all channels (phone, fax, Web, etc.), assembling an "optimal" schedule of appointments for salespeople, increasing the consistency of Moore's interactions with its customers-were the ones that might make a difference now and in the future. If so, the company needed to seriously consider investing in a CRM system.

Autore knew, however, that the decision to purchase CRM was not as simple as comparing costs and benefits, even assuming that benefits could be quantified. It was not clear that Moore's issues with customer acquisition and retention stemmed from deficiencies that could be corrected by CRM. If they did not, and there were other efforts that would be more productive, then the large investment in the Clarify system might not be a good one, especially since Moore had many other uses for any available funds.

Some of these funds could be used, for example, to purchase other software products, ones that were intended to correct shortcomings with another large system Moore had implemented previously. While this system, which automated and facilitated many internal functions such as finance and logistics, worked largely as intended, some problems had emerged. "Bolt-on" software was available to address these problems; should Moore purchase it instead of, or in addition to, the CRM system?

Or should the company simply stop spending money on enterprise-level software, at least for a while? Moore had spent heavily on information technology in recent years, and Autore wondered if it was time to slow the pace down. No new systems meant no new IT investments and expenses, and also meant no new large, lengthy implementation projects. All of this sounded good to Autore, but she wondered whether she had the luxury of turning her back, even for a while, on the promises and perils of "big" IT.