Here are our 6 ways to approach a CRM implemention best practice, steps to success. If you are on the road to thinking about a CRM implementation we offer best practice to keep you on track and to ensure you get results from your CRM software.
Initial Scoping and Lack of CRM Strategy
All too often we get questions like what is the best CRM solution? Or eager to implement CRM, customers sometimes do not see the benefit of initial scoping and diagnostic. We often attend sales meetings and cannot see what people want to gain or what the processes are. Unfortunately, without diagnostic any CRM company would be unable to provide documentation to clearly state what you want, what is in scope and what is out of scope. Without this clarity, it would also be difficult to then keep things on track and ensure project delivery timescales.
A CRM strategy will offer focus and provide key performance indicators so you know if your CRM implementation is a success or not and is a way to ensure best practice.
CRM is a vast system and can bring together disparate systems, therefore to take full advantage of a CRM implementation, it is worthwhile bringing together several teams to collaborate to ensure their CRM needs are met. Focusing on the objectives is a key point. By looking at business pains and working to make these efficient and exciting for your customers is an absolute necessity.
Be clear about why you want CRM and how you want to work.
- Download our CRM implementation powerpoint, packed with hints and tips to ensure your strategy hits the mark!
- Download our pre-diagnostic questionnaire to make sure you are ready to successfully start a CRM project. Contact Catherine@caltech.co.uk for your free copy.
Leadership buy-in CRM implementation best practice
Board level buy-in is an essential requirement for any successful CRM implementation project. Not only can directors help to communicate the project benefits and get their teams involved and on board, but they will need to be sure it will work for each area of their teams, and importantly, cohesively with every team across the organsiation.
It will be crucial to ensure that senior leaders understand the value of CRM and can use it to get their own management information. The leaders are so important; not just about signing off the budget for CRM.
We work with board level members to ensure they know where the project is up to and to ensure that the process supports the management information required. By ensuring that the project and the system are in harmony, means that the users will be more likely to get on board and love CRM!
Check out our top tips to help you on your way to CRM success.
- Get buy-in from Leaders.
- Download our paper How to get buy-in when building a business case
Clear goals and lines in the sand
Often businesses will want CRM for their sales teams. For example, the sales manager will ask us to come in so they can use CRM for social selling and to get ahead with sales leads and opportunity management. It is, without doubt, a great way to get ahead and CRM will certainly help with sales. However, by having the information of what does success look like, will not only drive your sales team in this scenario but will also ensure that they are focused on the benefits.
The kinds of measures that can offer that line in the sand are:
- Number of leads
- Lead quality
- Sales funnel time
- Win or lose rates
- Upsell / cross sell rates
And these are just some. With CRM being such a vast system there are many measures that can be a focus when drawing a line in the sand. Take these measures pre and post CRM implementatation. This a clear way to a great CRM implementation best practice.
Be clear about what you will measure prior to the CRM implementation and after the CRM implementation.
- Consider : How will you know if CRM is a success? This is a clear way to ensure benefits are reaped and is a critical steps in CRM implementation best practice.
CRM implementation Processes for best practice
CRM is an excellent way to transform your processes making them more efficient. Ensure that the processes are mapped with touchpoints across the business.
For example, sales and marketing processes overlap, as do sales and service, or service and operations. It is important that the processes have clear definitions so that CRM can help these areas.
CRM can also seek to delight customers. By putting communication touch points in place at the right points in your processes can really set you apart from your competitors. For example, voice of the customer is best as part of an ongoing communication rather than sparking a new conversation or interjecting into a conversation, which can be poorly timed.
Another key point when you map out the processes is what you call things. The terminology you use must be conveyed to your CRM project team, as what you call a lead they can call an opportunity; and so the confusion is set.
As Microsoft Dynamics CRM specialists we can help you to clarify your processes and add clarity when bringing them into the CRM solution.
Make sure you have your processes ready for starting your CRM journey.
CRM User Adoption CRM implementation best practice tips
If users are not on board then they will not seek to use CRM or understand it. Instead they will see it as “big brother” and just another thing to do. By using the leaders to communicate will endorse the project and offer benefits for using the system.
Getting people to realise that a CRM system will help them will be a critical success factor.
Our biggest advice is to not jump into CRM without the users with you. Let them see the value. At the outset of a CRM project, the team will need to provide their help and insight to ensure that this will work for them. They will be involved in mapping the processes and giving requirements. They will be invaluable at user acceptance testing and training. Your users will influence what CRM can do for them, for you and ultimately for your organization.
The way we carry out CRM implementations is our very own developed process. We ensure that the users are involved from day one and we get them to help us love their CRM system during workshops every step of the way.
Get together a project team and let them drive the project.
- Check out our 10 steps to success.
The importance of data; Critical success factor for CRM Implementation
The biggest success factor and the part of the project that can often be most time consuming for us, is data. If the data is not sent correctly, or is ill prepared, it can be difficult to ensure that the data is correct. The data needs to be clean.
Ensure that you check out all your data sources. You may be surprised how many there are!
- Look at what is the core data.
- Which data will be used?
- What do you need?
We hope these tips for CRM implementation will put you on track to reaping the rewards of CRM.
If you have already undertaken a CRM implementation but need some help to get back on track, our CRM project rescue process can help you.
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