| | OCTOBER 20158CIOReviewopinionin myo say that Edgar Codd changed the world of commerce might be an understatement. While working at IBM's San Jose Re-search Laboratory in the 1970s, this unsung hero of modern mercantilism invented the re-lational model for database management--and in so doing, planted the seeds for SQL, Oracle, DB2, SAP, Teradata and a host of similar systems that introduced a new way for organizations to conduct business. In establishing the Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) approach, Codd pro-vided the world with more than a new technology. He introduced a new mindset.RDBMS thinking has, at its core, the notion of relations--which, according to the Oxford English Dictionary is defined as "The way in which two or more concepts, objects or people are connected or the state of being connected." This notion is so fundamental to RDBMS that Codd began the baker's dozen of his Twelve Rules with Rule 0: "A relational database management system must manage its stored data using only its relational capabilities. The system must qualify as relational, as a database and as a management system. For a system to qualify as a relational database management system (RDBMS), that system must use its relational facilities (exclusively) to manage the database."As effective as the RDBMS approach has been, it may be in this very definition that we find a serious, if not fatal, flaw in how we have come to define Customer Relationship Management (CRM).Thus Spoke ZarathustraIn establishing the RDBMS mindset, Codd paved the way for decades of otherwise impossible capabilities, efficiencies and extensible technologies. HRIS, with its capacity to better understand and track HR activities and process transactions electronically, has certainly proven to be a boon; RDBMS applications in accounting have similarly saved millions of hours of labor. Yet when it comes to CRM, the promise too often fails to live up to its full potential. A report from Gartner in 2013 estimated that more than $2 billion had been spent on CRM software that is not being used. Research firm CSO Insights similarly found that less than 40 percent of 1,275 participating companies had end-user adoption rates above 90 percent, and according to a cover story in BtoB, many corporations only use CRM systems on a "partial or fragmented basis." The all-knowing oracle of Wikipedia likewise reports: "In a 2007 survey from the UK, four-fifths of senior executives reported that their biggest challenge is getting their staff to use the systems they had installed" and "43 percent of respondents said they use less than half the functionality of their existing systems."The dismal performance of CRM in so many organizations led Graham Hinde, a manager at Business & Decision UK, to lament that "despite By Dr. J T Kostman, Chief Data Officer, Time, Inc.It's Time to Redefine the "R" in CRMTDr. J T Kostman
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