Significant value is yet to be realized across most CRM deployments, according to Nucleus Research.

No surprise in that statement. So, what should we do about this sad state of affairs, afflicting most, if not all CRM platforms?

Nucleus says value-creating efforts must be focused around integration, extension and collaboration:

• Integration – integrate front and back office, desktop applications, and social business applications.
• Extension – deploy content and collaboration tools to replace multiple content repositories.
• Collaboration – add social collaboration to CRM.

There is no doubt integrating data sources and leveraging social collaboration tools will generate superior value from your CRM platform.

Yet conservative corporate cultures all too often get in the way. Integrations, for example, are seen as hard work, especially if standalone legacy solutions are more or less functioning regardless of the amount of manual effort that may be required to maintain them and extract value.

So, prioritize and get started, if you haven’t already on rounding up your disparate data sources and start trialing collaboration tools such as SFDC’s Chatter and Microsoft’s Yammer.