Customer relationship management (CRM) modernization with Deloitte Digital

The importance of Relationship Activation

Modernizing your customer relationship management (CRM) program

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31 Mar 2025

5 minute read

Are your customer communications holding you back? Many of today’s marketing programs struggle with the same inefficiencies and fail to achieve their desired results. Our Relationship Activation team is designed to help clients overcome these challenges.

The Deloitte Digital Relationship Activation team enables today’s leading brands to build enduring relationships with their customers to increase lifetime value across marketing, sales, commerce, and service. They help clients drive more scalable, efficient, and effective relationships with an end-to-end approach to marketing operations.

In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, the optimal time to gain a competitive edge via modernization is now. Customers are increasingly demanding more personalized and relevant communications, and they expect brands to understand and anticipate their needs. At the same time, brands are eager to learn more about their customers, build loyalty, and find efficient and effective ways to communicate. However, many have not taken the necessary steps.

Fortunately, technological advancements have finally caught up to these demands, offering sophisticated tools and platforms that can revolutionize CRM strategies for marketing and advertising departments. But many brands are still falling behind due to outdated processes, resource constraints, siloed teams, a lack of data literacy, and a lack of strategic insights that they can take action with to optimize their campaigns. These challenges prevent brands from prioritizing the necessary shift towards modernizing their CRM capabilities to better reach today’s customers. Our Relationship Activation team focuses on helping clients navigate current market tensions, identifying potential internal barriers to success, and embracing this pivotal moment to modernize customer communications.

The imperative for modernization

Market tensions, like changes in customer spending habits and increases in production costs, are putting pressure on organizations to tighten their budgets and maximize the ROI of the customer experiences they deliver. This requires the strategic allocation of every dollar to channels and tactics that are proven to drive engagement and conversions. It also requires marketing professionals to add “marketing technologist” to their skillset. Leveraging advanced technologies and adopting a customer-led marketing strategy demands a shift in mindset. This shift enables marketers to gain deeper insights into customer behavior, optimize campaigns in real-time, and measure performance with greater accuracy—ensuring that no opportunity is missed and that every marketing dollar is used effectively.

Traditional linear customer journeys are largely becoming obsolete. The new dynamic approach enabled by today’s rapidly evolving digital technology requires businesses to be agile and responsive, meeting customers where they are. Organizations must harmonize data, strategy, and creative efforts to maximize the potential of a modern CRM. Customers are increasingly aware that they are providing data, and marketing and advertising teams must seize the opportunity to use this data effectively and drive value for both the customer and the brand. Our recent research shows that customers are significantly more likely to purchase from brands that personalize their experiences compared to brands that do not.

The cost of inaction is high, and failing to modernize your CRM approach could lead to deteriorating customer relationships. Old habits won’t bring in wins, and competitors with more agility and customer-centricity have the advantage in today’s market.

An infographic that illustrates a process flow, from content strategy & planning, to content technology & implementation, to content production, to review, approval & publication, to content optimization and measurement

Hidden obstacles

Across various industries, our Relationship Activation team sees a strong appetite for change among our clients. Many clients are eager to harness the benefits of modern CRM strategies but often find themselves unsure where to start.

Why can modernization be so challenging for today’s marketing and advertising teams? Modernizing CRM strategies is laden with obstacles that can impede progress. Our teams frequently observe three common types of hurdles.

Hidden obstacle #1: Resource constraints

Budget limitations. Modernizing a CRM program often requires a significant financial investment. Many organizations operate with tight budgets. They may be able to find the necessary funds for new technology, but are unlikely to find budget for training, process revisions, and change management. This financial strain can delay or even halt modernization efforts.

Skilled talent. Activating modern CRM strategies requires skilled personnel for planning, execution, and ongoing growth. Many brands lack the necessary in-house expertise or the capacity to hire additional staff with the required skills to initiate strategies alongside technology upgrades. This shortage of qualified personnel can impede the modernization process.

Hidden obstacle #2: Complexity of integration and customization

Disparate, incomplete, or inaccurate data. Data continues to be a persistent issue for brands, as outdated or incorrect data can undermine the effectiveness of CRM initiatives and lead to poor customer insights. Data initiatives can be costly and time consuming, but data standardization and centralization don’t need to be completed for a customer relationship update. Even with partial data, a CRM program can provide valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences.

Integration challenges and scope creep. Even with a martech stack implemented and a CRM strategy defined, it can still be difficult to know where to start. It's crucial to begin with specific use cases that demonstrate quick wins, even if they are narrow in scope. Look for use cases that showcase the treatment of personalization and audience segmentation. Achieving buy-in for continued leadership support depends on driving customer behavior change through simple and rapid implementations.

Customization needs. Every business has unique processes and requirements, and a one-size-fits-all CRM strategy is rarely effective. Customizing a CRM to fit specific business needs can be challenging and resource intensive. Average customization applications could include modifying data fields, personalization, data science and predictive modeling, integrating third-party applications, and developing custom reports and dashboards. The complexity of tailoring the tool to meet diverse and evolving strategies can slow down the modernization process.

Hidden obstacle #3: Cultural and organizational barriers

Changes in process and ways of working. One difficulty can be getting employees on board with new processes, which often includes training and a period of adjustment. This temporary disruption of daily operations can affect productivity as people get used to new methods and processes. Additionally, a new strategy can sometimes highlight or even worsen existing siloes within the organization, as roadblocks become more apparent. Overcoming these siloes requires intentional cross-functional collaboration and communication to unite teams, improve customer interactions, and streamline processes.

Resistance to change. Organizational culture plays a significant role in the success of CRM modernization efforts. Employees and management may be accustomed to existing processes and systems, and changing these can be met with resistance. This resistance to change can stem from a fear of the unknown, comfort with the status quo, or concerns about job security. Be prepared for this pushback with a plan.

Leadership buy-in. Successful modernization requires strong leadership and a clear vision. Without buy-in from top management, modernization efforts can falter. Leaders need to champion the change, allocate resources, and communicate the benefits effectively to ensure organizational alignment and support.

Want to get started?

The Deloitte Digital Relationship Activation team recognizes how challenging the shift to modernization can be and has helped many clients at all points of the maturity scale navigate the transformation. This practice developed exclusively for CRM modernization helps clients connect with their customers in smarter ways. By using advanced analytics and technology, the team turns data into actionable insights, enabling personalized interactions that can build stronger relationships and improve marketing efforts. This approach can help you close the gap between your technology and strategy, and it gives a clearer view of customer journeys founded on tailored experiences that can boost customer satisfaction and loyalty.

By shifting from traditional CRM to a more dynamic, digital-first approach, the Relationship Activation practice helps clients drive growth, enhance customer retention, and foster lasting loyalty with more effective and meaningful customer engagement. These potential benefits have measurable outcomes, and organizations that make the shift are seeing stronger performance metrics across the board.

If you’re interested in accelerating the CRM success of your organization’s marketing and advertising teams, we invite you to answer the following questions to better understand your CRM maturity and appetite for change.

Is your team leveraging data to its full potential, or are you drowning in it without extracting meaningful insights?
How effectively does your current CRM support the loyalty value chain, and can it provide actionable insights to enhance customer retention and advocacy?
How quickly can your brand adapt to changing market trends and customer behaviors with your current program?
What is the cost of inaction? How much revenue and customer loyalty are you potentially losing by sticking with outdated communication?

If you’re curious to learn more about how the Deloitte Digital Relationship Activation team can help you reach your goals, get in touch below

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About the authors

Olivia Balicki is a digital marketing and Relationship Activation lead at Deloitte Digital. Olivia brings together data, technology, and content to help clients develop better relationships with their customers and drive business value. She has extensive advertising and digital marketing experience across B2C, B2B, and distributed models spanning brand strategy, integrated campaigns, go-to-market planning, mobile and web development, social activation, CRM/relationship development, content at scale, and end-to-end email development.

Brooke Dunnigan is a digital marketing lead at Deloitte Digital with over 15 years of experience focusing on better marketing across the customer experience. Her data-driven approach to modern marketing is focused on personalization to build loyalty for many high-profile clients in the consumer and travel industries.

Lindsay Korstange is a marketing operations and customer experience lead at Deloitte Digital and has over 20 years of experience in marketing technologies and operations, spanning years in consulting and in-house corporate leadership. She has worked across industries, specializing in customer data solutions and experiences. She brings experience in CRM, campaign management, digital marketing, customer experience and e-commerce solutions.

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