The idea behind CRM is to collect, in one place, all information about a customer and use that information to develop more targeted marketing and customer servicing strategies and at the same time, reduce costs. Companies came to believe that by using technology to tailor their offerings to individual customers' needs, customer loyalty - and company profit - would soar.

But there's a large gap between theory and practice. According to a recent global survey of senior executives worldwide conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit for AT&T:

• Only 29% of respondents are satisfied with the quality of their CRM.
• Research indicates that more than half of all initial CRM implementations fail.
• One in five CRM users have completely abandoned their initiatives.
• Despite these sobering statistics, Gartner predicts the worldwide market for CRM services, will grow by an average of 16% to
• $47bn by 2006. But spending the money and getting CRM right are two very different things.

In More than numbers - CRM in the networked organisation, the fourth in a series of thought-leadership articles written by AT&T in co-operation with the Economist Intelligence Unit on the future of networking, we examine how customer relationship management applications can be made to deliver on their promise.

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