Take a bow. Not just for sticking with me through my previous two blogs, ‘Good systems make business sense’ and 'I love it when a plan comes together' but for looking at ways to establish or improve good systems and processes within your organization. If you’ve come this far, you deserve a medal. However, the journey isn't over just yet. As you move further along the process and see what progress you’ve made, it’s easy to think that the job is done, but please don’t give up!

Whilst reminiscing over my beloved 1980’s memories – did Indiana Jones ever give up on his quest to find the Holy Grail whilst dodging bullets or did He-Man throw in the towel when it got too tough defending Eternia from Skeletor? The answer is no and it is no different or less monumental to what you are doing right now.

Systems and processes — we all know we need them. Every marketing textbook, industry expert, blogger, university lecturer, just about anyone you can think of in the marketing world, will tell you they are essential. They tie everything together, allowing marketing teams to measure activity and increase efficiency. Reading this blog you are probably thinking, yes we have them and yes we have a system in place that works.

However, have you ever wanted more? Is it easy to measure what you do and the contribution that you and your team make to the bottom line? Do you want to align more closely with sales to fully realize activity contribution to the pipeline? And have you ever wanted to re-jig your processes or even formalize the one you already have to make it better, faster and more robust?

If so, this blog is for you.

This is the next in a series of guest blog posts by IntraLinks’ collaborators, partners, and vendors. David Meerman Scott's book The New Rules of Marketing & PR opened people's eyes to the new realities of marketing and public relations on the Web. Six months on the BusinessWeek bestseller list and published in 26 languages from Bulgarian to Vietnamese, New Rules is now a modern business classic. Scott's popular blog and hundreds of speaking engagements around the world give him a singular perspective on how businesses are implementing new strategies to reach buyers. His new book, Real-Time Marketing & PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now, will be published on November 1, 2010. Download a free chapter here.

I'm thrilled to contribute this post to the IntraLinks community. Like me, IntraLinks straddles the real-time sales and marketing fields in the financial markets. When I first got out of school, I worked on a Wall Street bond trading desk and then moved into the real-time financial information business. While I spent most of my career in B2B marketing, for four years I was in B2B sales. So I've seen both sides.

I used to see frequent reports and blog postings about the success or failure of CRM systems. Lately, however, I hear radio silence. Has this technology finally turned the corner and achieved consistent ROI, delivering on expectations?

Probably not. The most recent survey from CSO Insights showed no appreciable change in CRM adoption within the sales community of the companies surveyed. CSO measures adoption when 90% of the sales force consider a CRM system a "must have." Lamentably, only roughly 39% of companies surveyed achieved that criteria.

Arguably, as major creators of information in a customer relationship, sales' failure to adopt a CRM system means that system has failed. I know from personal experience that salespeople cannot be bullied, nagged or even incented to use a tool they don't want. So wherein lies the answer? I always look at the "What's in it for me" (WiifM) measure. I suspect that WiifM drives behavior much more than we would wish to believe, and certainly has more impact than encouraging salespeople to be good corporate citizens. And why not? Depending on the industry, a typical sales person has to close $10,000 of business per day, which tends to create laser-like focus on what works and what doesn't.