CRM best practices are not always best practices for Latin American companies

I heard this many times from many CRM vendors (I am very sure you have heard it too) - we have the best practices to make your business a success. And this one - let your company adopt our out-of-the-box functionality and processes, and we can implement the solution within weeks. All of these could be true based on the type of company or industry... and if possible you should keep your CRM implementations simple and less complex; and, implement in phases using proof-of-concepts and pilots.

But in Latin America, I still believe CRM vendors are not doing a good job selling CRM from a Latin America perspective. Why? many best practices of the CRM packages are based on practices from United States or Europe. These practices are not always best practices for Latin American companies.

Let me give you some examples:

Managing contacts and account: This is a typical functionality of all CRM packages. In the region all relationships are based on two types of customers - Personal Moral (the legal company that will buy from you, the company that will get the invoice) and Persona Fisica (the legal consumer that will buy from you and will get the invoice). And, yes, you have decision makers, influencers, sponsors, etc, but each country has different rules, laws and procedures to manage these relationships. 

Address Formats: Many CRM packages do not have address validation rules to manage local addresses. Most of the time you need to buy additional software to manage Latin American addresses. The same happens with Spanish names - First and Last Names -vs- First, Middle, Last and Maiden Names.

Billing and Collections: I have written about this before. Many CRM vendors do not have this as part of the CRM. It is part of the ERP functionality. In Latin America you start collecting funds as soon as you produce the invoice. Collections is a front-office function.

Companies need to understand that best practices become best practices once you measure them with metrics (read my Spanish post about this). Some best practices are standard practices but that does not make it a best practice. It is a proven best practice until it has been tested and measured. CRM vendors need to understand this as well, specially for the Latin American region.

Now, the reason, I still believe that the major CRM vendors are not doing a better job selling to the Latin American market is because there are many local CRM vendors (here and here) from Colombia, Brazil, Spain, Peru, Mexico and Argentina, that have adopted their solutions to each local and regional market. I have seen many of these tools in action and in demos. These solutions are good (some are excellent), with local support, and with processes and functionality unique to the region. And their pricing adapts to the market.

I strongly recommend that for 2010, CRM vendors need to take a good look in how they sell best practices and need to provide real functionality that is required by the region.