Saratoga Technologies Microsoft CRM Blog

CRM Implementation Management Tips – Part II – Know your hurdles in deployment

As a Microsoft CRM Consultant i get to interact with CRM clients on a regular basis, which i really enjoy. Spending adequate time with a client is needed to get an understanding of not only if CRM can work for a particular business, but is it the right fit for the organization.

I thought it would be helpful though to talk about some of the implemenatation quirks i have seen and hopefully it will help you along as well in your CRM project plan. Knowing some hurdles upfront will hopefully save alot of trouble down the implementation road.

First Thing is First….Processes!
The first thing to always look at is what issues are the clients facing? Why are they investigating CRM? It is funny that some “Consultants” do not even manage to ask this question sometimes and really get to what business processes that the client is looking to achieve. So what is needed here? Just an understanding of:

• Know What the customer is doing
• How they currently do it -> Detailed Explanation
• What processes the customer has in place to achieve operations – Manual? Automated?
• What users in the organization are needed to perform the work at hand.

Knowing these issues even at a high-level can mean the difference in user acceptance down the road.

Current Process Management
Take a hard look at how you are currently providing information to additional users in the organization. Do you have spreadsheets everywhere for tracking sales information, customer info and more?

Don’t underestimate goal-setting for the implementation!
Make sure that when you are performing an implementation that you have defined specific goals for your implementation. For example:

• What measurements does the company want to achieve?
• What processes are in place to achieve them currently?
• Does the company currently have any baseline measurements for these goals?

Do not just implement CRM in an organization without an idea of what the existing indicators are for matching at the end of implementation. If you do you could find that your customer will not believe that the application has valuable ROI for the organization. Especially if they don’t consider results of the system properly.

These results come in many, many ways:

• Cost reductions – whether it is a cost reduction for providing your services, repetitive tasks administrative tasks, or customer aquisition costs.
• Revenue Increases – Closed opportunities and quoting win rates.
• Others – customer retention rates, and lead capture and close rates.

Hand in hand with results is the fact that you have to make sure that your idea of success with your CRM implementation is in line with the industry average.

For example you wouldn’t expect 80% close rate for qualified sales opprtunities from CRM for an industry that typically averages 0.5%. Hindsight as well is never 20/20.

Set Realistic and attainable Goals
Setting relevant goals will ensure that you stay within reasonable expectations of the CRM system that you have invested time and money in.

Know your Resource Limits!
How is your company staffed in IT. Do you have someone knowledgeable in CRM? Knowing these limitations will help. If you plan to do a simple installation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM with no customization your technical staff can most likely handle the setup.

However, CRM is not just an application so you will not see value add to the organization simply from this. To get the value add such as automation, sales stages, workflow design, and additional reporting it does pay to find a Partner that knows how to truly implement Microsoft CRM.

Underestimating implementation time can kill a project that is under development so you should have a good idea going in what the overall project cost is going to be.

Start Out Small and Simple
I really cannot stress this topic enough, do not initially do everything you want with your CRM Deployment. Phased approaches are the best way in my opinion to go in a CRM deployment.

Starting with a test group in your organization, a CRM committee, or just a handful of users is normally the best way to start. You have to not only master the basics first from a user interface standpoint, but your employees have to understand the application as well. Luckily Microsoft CRM’s interface is integrated into outlook so most users will get it really fast. I am sure that we are all familiar with the Garbage In, Garbage Out Rule. Remember, Walk… Crawl ………. Sprint!

Know when you shouldn’t Automate Processes
Ok. Now i know that this may sound anti-progressive, but honestly there are times when processes should not be automated in your organization. Although the capability is there it just doesn’t make sense.

With this in mind make sure that the relevant people in the organization are involved with reviewing and approving your existing processes. Lose the processes that are no longer needed or used. Make changes to the ones that need to be made, and add functionality only where it is needed for the first implementation phase.

Measure.. Measure… and Measure Again!
The last point really is taking the measurements to help with indicators of how CRM is doing in the organization. You shouldn’t stop reviewing this information and comparing it to your original baseline. Let this be an aid to provide how CRM is doing in your organization.

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