Slow xRM

vendredi 15 juin 2012

CRM Analysis

If you want to invest a couple thousand dollars into a CRM solution, it really pays off to perform initial requirement analysis. This analysis provides help when you are selecting the right CRM vendor and later also during system deployment and testing. If the analysis is done carefully, it helps to distinguish between really important features and nice to have’s, as well as to decide, in which order should be these features implemented.

According to our experience, the best approach is at first to divide CRM analysis into several parts (e.g. contacts, calendar and tasks, document management,..), then assign a percentage weight to each part and begin to ask specific questions. Answers can be then rated on scale from one to ten and the system with the highest weighted total sum is then the best CRM for your company.

Before signing the contract, put together an implementation plan that includes both features specification (from analysis) and their deployment date. If it is possible, attach this document to the official contract, because such step can help you to avoid potential unpleasant discussions about implementation scope and time.

Licences or hosting?

There doesn’t exist any universal answer for the question if it is better to purchase licenses, or rather decide for a hosted SaaS solution. This decision always depends on company size, its attitude to IT, trained staff availability and other internal and external factors. The hosted solution with fixed monthly price has an advantage that your company doesn’t need any initial bigger investment to purchase licenses or hardware and this fact has a positive impact on your cashflow.

Tailor made industry solutions

We also recommend to make a brief survey among your competitors and business partners to find out which systems do they use and how are they satisfied with their performance. Performing such survey helps you to quickly eliminate inadequate solutions and focus only on those CRMs that can bring your company real benefits.

Before choosing CRM system and its supplier also try to find out if some vendor doesn’t already have experiences in your industry and if there isn’t any tailor made industry solution. The main advantage of these preset systems is not only faster deployment and configuration, but also better IT support for your processes.

lundi 11 juin 2012

Dynamics CRM 2011 - The Agile Approach

Dynamics CRM 2011 - The Agile Approach by Jaime Smith at Magnestism (10/06/12)

There is plenty of information all over the net about AGILE, its origins, methodology, tool etc, so as I have said previously I am looking at it from within CRM and SureStep practice. Within SureStep it is somewhat of a hybrid and definitely veers away from a strict Agile approach.

What it maintains from Agile

1. Solution Backlog

A list of the requirements that have been defined during the analysis phase. The compilation of this backlog signifies the end of the Agile Preparation Phase.

2. Sprint formation

Within the Agile Execution Phase, sprints will be defined with durations of between 5 days and 30 days. A sprint cycle should never longer than a month.

3. Sprint Backlog

This defines the development activities for each sprint cycle (pulled from the Solution Backlog) – these are reviewed on a daily basis (We hold SCRUM every morning) and tasks are shared out amongst the project team.

It is essential to note that included within each sprint and on the sprint backlog are all project tasks/phases including, analysis, planning, design, development and testing. This differs from the waterfall approaches where each phase is completed before the commencement of the next one.

After the sprint is finished there is collaboration between the customer and the supplier – the development is reviewed and anything that is rejected or requires additional work is added to the Solution Backlog to be scheduled as part of a later sprint.

Where it deviates from Agile

Agile SureStep approach adopts the two final phases from its waterfall siblings – Deployment and Operation. It is here that User Acceptance testing occurs.

Best fit for this project type

- Anyone who wants to use CRM as a platform and requires integration to other third party solutions

- If you are not entirely sure of your needs this provides greater flexibility throughout the project lifecycle. Warning: This approach can be more costly as it is hard to define at the outset what the project costs are going to be, however it can result in much greater accuracy within your end product.

- Requires relative fit to the OOTB CRM (50 %– 75%)

- Those who have data to migrate from existing systems

- Single site implementation

- Can incorporate organisation change management activities if required

This approach can be highly disciplined and assist in keeping your project within scope and creates a great sense of manageability but it does come with the recommendation that those in significant project roles have significant experience with IT implementations (both the customer and the supplier) and that super users form part of the project team.

samedi 2 juin 2012

Why it’s important to define the scope of your CRM project

Why it’s important to define the scope of your CRM project - right at the start by Daniel Langton

(29/09/11)

CRM project scoping is where your business requirements, processes, timescales, costs, and what you’re looking to achieve from your CRM software project are agreed upon and clearly set out. It is vital to the success of any CRM project.

Why? Because it sets expectations for you, the client, and the business partner you’re working with. It defines what’s going to happen, what’s not going to happen, and helps avoid project drift (project drift or creep will cause problems in most projects, and CRM is no different). It also defines the measurements of success.

Focus on business processes

Failing to understand, articulate, and include all relevant business processes within a new CRM project can result in a system that doesn’t meet the full needs of its users. This can result in lack of user buy-in and even project failure.

Scoping is the first main stage of the CRM implementation process. It’s important because it focuses the attention of staff within a business on their current business processes. It helps them fully understand the breadth of each process, how it interrelates with other departments within a business, and why something is done the way it is.

Defining your CRM project

There is of course more than one way to define a CRM project. Usually a CRM project team, consisting of key project staff from you and your business partner, will work together to define the purpose and scope of your project. From this, your business partner will produce a business requirements specification and a system design document. As well as showing how the CRM system will achieve the requirements and objectives, it may also include project plans, detailed costs and risk analysis.

So, scoping gives organisations a way of fully understanding, and articulating, their existing processes. When this is done, they can look at improving them, and implement a CRM system that will achieve this.

Understanding CRM software

As well as understanding your businesses processes, it’s also important to understand CRM software. When you’re starting out on a CRM project with a product such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM, it can take a while to comprehend the depth of the product and what you can achieve with it.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a highly flexible product. As well as being able to get up and running with it ‘out of the box’, it’s also possible, for a qualified business partner, to configure or customise the product almost beyond recognition. Although you don’t need to understand the technicalities of the software, you need to understand how it will best meet the requirements of your organisation. The project scoping exercise will identify and explain this.

Solid foundation to take your project forward

Another benefit of project scoping is that it is non-committal. Scoping can be carried out by your CRM business partner, a CRM consultancy, or for larger projects you may even employ the expertise as an in-house resource. Once completed, it will provide you with some extremely useful information and a solid foundation on which to take your CRM project forward. But this doesn’t mean you have to commit to anything. You can use the information and documentation to discuss your requirements with other CRM business partners, or use it as the basis of an RFI or tender.

Benefits business partners as well as clients

Clearly defining the CRM project is not only beneficial to the client business; it’s also good practice for business partners. From a business partner’s point of view, if we have a good grasp of your business requirements, we’re in a strong position to deliver a solution fit for purpose, that meets the business objectives of our customers, and ideally exceeds their expectations. From a client’s point of view, it helps you keep control of your costs, ensures you get what you pay for, and know precisely what you’re getting.

For all parties, it enables development of KPI’s and measurement of success. So, for everyone involved, it’s important to define the scope of your CRM project – right at the start.

mercredi 2 mai 2012

Resisting the Urge to Automate Everything

The 80/20 Rule of Software Implementation - Resisting the Urge to Automate Everything by

Andrew Schultz (15/10/11)

The rule: customize for the most common 80% of scenarios, leave flexibility for users to manually address the other 20%.

I’m certainly not claiming to be the origin of this little piece of wisdom, but I haven’t seen it written or documented anywhere. Maybe I just haven’t looked hard enough, as I learned it myself through experience rather than research. The rule’s validity has been demonstrated again and again for me, both as I’ve worked with customers to clean up implementations that were over-customized, or seen implementations I’ve been involved with getting too customization-heavy.

This rule often goes against the grain of a customer’s expectations. Customer implementation teams with inexperienced members often erroneously expect that a CRM system should and/or must account for every process and every scenario that occurs in their front office.

The most difficult part of following this rule is trying to communicate to such an internal implementation team the negative results that come from over-customization. This conversation inevitably comes at the point when you wisely push back on a request for custom functionality. When they don’t understand, they may think your implementation team is lazy or (worse) chicken, lacking confidence or unable to deliver on a particular request. It’s hard to effectively communicate that by simply giving them everything they ask for, you’d probably be doing them a disservice.

Why Not? You Write Code, Don’t You?

First of all, I’ve worked with customer implementation teams (those made up of the customer’s employees, just to be clear) with varying levels of technical experience. It’s not uncommon to have people on these teams that think the capability to write code means that anything and everything is possible. These people may be the business leaders who are accountable for the project, or they may be end-users who, from your consultative perspective, have no place being in these meetings, and who are going to fight tooth and nail for a feature that doesn’t make sense but would address a personal pet peeve of their own.

The first step in these scenarios is to explain that there are indeed limitations to what we can do with CRM, and that those limitations exist with any software product, not just the one you purchased for this project. These limitations aren’t simply technical; they’re operational and strategic as well, meaning that even without a software application supporting this process, there are certain uncommon scenarios in a business that just shouldn’t be locked into a standardized process, because they are so many and so various that the process would have to expand to an unsopportable size and complexity to incorporate each of them.

Paul Greenberg, a recognized authority in CRM strategy, wrote about staying flexible here. He notes that “Companies that have the flexibility to ‘break’ the process when they need to and the empowered employees to do the breaking will be more successful than those that rigidly adhere to the processes despite the problems it causes their own customers.” I believe this is true. That means that the job of the implementation team (consultants and internal employees) is to define the procedures that are both :

- simple enough to be understood, followed, and supported by the CRM application, and

- robust enough to address 80% of the scenarios that occur in the business

Some partners don’t do that well - or perhaps they don’t try at all. (Well, actually, I believe that many partners don’t try at all, because they don’t understand this principle, and then some of them are unwise enough to take the opposite course, actively pushing projects for more and more customization, probably to drive the project revenue up). I can name at least two Microsoft partners in my city that seem to never say no to customization requests. I’ve been involved in re-implementation or remediation projects for former customers of these partners, and I’ve been horrified at the mess of customizations that were implemented without, it would seem, any central, guiding intelligence – a massive volume of utterly a-la-carte customizations, some of them very complex and expensive, but implemented seemingly without any effort to make them a cognizant, integral piece of the solution comprised of the other customizations in the system, which were probably implemented at different times.

Why This Happens?

There are, presumably, a multitude of causes of this unfortunate result. I’ll point out two here from my experience. I’m going to use the headings ”The Company is Too Big” and “The Company is Too Small” because they effectively summarize the factors I’ll discuss in each section,but these headings would be far too simplistic on their own. These headings are not meant to imply that large or small companies are doomed to make the same mistakes, either; in each case, I’ll describe decisions which led to the result of over-customization, and which were typical of a small or a large company, but which could easily have been made differently to better effect. My purpose here is to use these situations for educational purposes; I understand and sympathize with each company’s situation and don’t mean to set them up as scarecrows for stone-throwing here.

The company is too big

During a project for a large, global company’s CRM implementation, I saw the requirements list grow and grow. The time allotted for requirements definition in the project plan was at least doubled in reality. Each time a certain piece of functionality was discussed, it would become more and more complex, often for the purpose of accomplishing objectives which were questionable in my mind, because they were very minor considerations. But this was also true of major objectives – out-of-the-box functionality that would have accomplished the purpose alone or with minor customization was passed over for complex, code-intensive options that expanded the complexity of the final solution and, therefore, the complexity of its administration and of future customization projects.

In this case, a major influence in driving this complexity was a certain part of the company that operated in a different country. This part of the business had been acquired, and was used to operating in a certain way. Their influence in the decisions made by the implementation team was almost always to add complexity. Due to situations like this one, this company’s internal systems were already very complex as a rule. This CRM project was not big enough or important enough to be a rallying point for greater simplicity, especially since the CRM system was to integrate with these very complex pre-existing business systems.

The company is too small

Another experience involved a smaller company with a need for a very robust CRM system. My involvement with this company was during a re-implementation project. My first task was to review the existing customizations in place. I couldn’t even do it in the time allotted, because of the volume and complexity of those existing customizations. Integration software, CRM plugins, workflows, scripts, and custom web pages were implemented indescriminately - and without clear documentation. For no apparent reason, functions very similar to each other were sometimes housed in different types of customizations, rather than keeping like functionality grouped together. There was even an integration running that took data out of CRM and put it back into CRM without touching any other system—not to stage and transform data, but simply to check a value and update another value.

There are various reasons that this occurred at this particular company. While not every company with fewer than 500 employees would necessarily have the same problems, smaller companies are less likely to have IT staff that have been involved in multiple, serious software implementations where proper project management guidelines were followed. They often have a hard time differentiating between ”must haves” and ”nice to haves.” The mentality is sometimes one of moving out of the basement into a world where everything is automated. With this mentality, it’s difficult for them to understand the need to pick and choose the customizations are most relevant to the core businesses.

mardi 1 mai 2012

9 Tips for Small Businesses Implementing CRM

9 Tips for Small Businesses Implementing CRM by Paul Pitman at Collier Pickard (17/08/11)

If you're planning to implement a CRM system for your small business then the following “gotcha’s” could just save your bacon. Certainly no one plans to fail, but failing to plan is common mistake in CRM implementation projects, as is failing to create the right plan.

1. It's a Small Business – we only need a small plan

Well not unless your ambitions are small. If you want to grow your business then your CRM implementation plan needs to include a lot of big company “stuff”. Sometime this is the first time you have had to decide who does what, so take a moment and think about roles.

2. It's a small business – but we've got big plans...

For many small businesses with big plans it can be all too easy to slip into a supersized CRM implementation. Sure modern CRM software is good – but it can't do everything! Focus on building a plan that addresses your current needs , but considers your future direction.

3. Plan for the future – Encourage user buy-in

Once you have a clear plan and framework for implementing a CRM system, make sure you let everyone else know what’s in the plan! All too often we see CRM implementation and operating plans from a project manager - before the users and stakeholders do. If no one knows about your plan – then they can’t get behind it and help you to succeed.

4. Assess scope and involvement

Set the scope for the project – so everyone can see why you are doing it. Don’t just list the areas and functions that the project will directly affect – be sure to detail the improvements you expect to deliver. If these improvements can demonstrate a return on investment then all the better.

Who will be involved in the project – if not just sales and marketing, who else? Make sure you think about other people in your business that should be interacting with customers and get them involved. You probably don’t want a CRM system wholely designed by the accountant – but you do want them to support your plan.

5. Check your available resources

Once you know where the CRM project is going, and have the buy in from the team, what could go wrong? Unfortunately, a lot of those resources have day jobs, and your CRM project is not at the top of their “to do list”. So plan the resources – and make sure your team have time to complete their part of the plan. Never underestimate the time it takes to clean and prepare data, ready for import into a new CRM system.

If you are working with a third party, make sure that they understand your plan. A good CRM consultancy will have handled many crm implementation projects in their time and will be able to offer advice on realistic timescales.

6. Assess the initial data load

Decide what you are bringing over / into the CRM system. Not too much, not too little? Work out the average cost per data item that you are going to clean and migrate to the new system, and then work out the return on investment for each item. Is the sales figures by product from 1989 really worth bringing in? How will you use the data, and what benefit will it deliver?

7. What happens if it works?

If all your planning works and you have a successful CRM implementation for your small business will you be able to cope? If you realise the 10% increase in sales that the reports estimate could be attributed to successful CRM implementation, can manufacturing and support tool up in time? The problem with a successful plan for CRM is that you have to be prepared for changes throughout your business. Change can be challenging for your staff, so plan how you will help them to adapt.

8. Measure to manage

For every step on your plan have a measurement point. This way you can tell instantly if the plan is not accurate or if you need to change it. If timescales are slipping – it’s better to know early, rather than at the last minute.

9. Write a plan not a novel.

Try to keep your plan brief and concise – people don’t have time to read 5000 task project plans, or epic novels that describe how you are going to implement CRM.

Collier Pickard have developed a CRM Project Update document with less than 25 key master tasks and areas to consider. We use it for all of our implementations, with great success time after time. The points above are just some of the considerations for a small business planning to implement CRM. For more in-depth advice, take us up on our offer for a free consultancy session.

vendredi 27 avril 2012

How to Avoid Paying Too Much for CRM

How to Avoid Paying Too Much for CRM by BizCloud (30/11/11)

Customer relationship management (CRM) software has become increasingly important in today’s hyper networked age. According to Destination CRM, the CRM market grew at a 6.2 percent rate in 2010 (to hit a total of $16.5 billion) and expects a 7.6 percent rise through 2011. While much of that growth has been in the Software as a Service (SaaS) sector, companies also continue to invest in on-premises CRM solutions. Most SaaS CRM solutions are fairly inexpensive, at least for the base software, but add-on features, deployment, training, and support costs can quietly increase the total cost of a CRM solution. Of course, on-premises solutions aren’t without their own significant costs.

Companies looking to reduce their CRM costs -- or considering the purchase and deployment of a new CRM solution – can start by asking themselves these five questions:

1. Is an on-premises solution necessary? Even though an on-premises CRM software package may have a cheaper sticker price, it’s likely more expensive in the short run... as well as in the intermediate and long run. On-premises CRM software typically does not incur any sort of monthly fee like SaaS products do, but it does incur significant infrastructure and operating costs. The server and network equipment, power, and maintenance costs will usually exceed the subscription and support costs of most SaaS packages. There are certainly reasons why a company may choose an on-premises solution -- for example, specific security concerns, networking issues, or integration with an existing IT framework – but companies should not automatically assume one is better than the other.

2. Are all those add-ons and features necessary? SaaS sales representatives often try to wow customers with marketing presentations on all the bells and whistles available for their software. Some of these are integrated with the core package, but others cost extra. Sometimes these features have a direct cost; sometimes they’re limited to more expensive professional or enterprise editions.

3. Will expanding upon and developing the CRM solution be necessary? Many SMBs could likely use major CRM vendors’ products out of the box with minimal configuration or add-ons. On the other hand, enterprise-level corporations may find themselves sinking huge amounts of money into development to create custom solutions that work with a given CRM product’s API. If an SMB overreaches and purchases a complex solution, that can obviously result in significant overspending. On the other hand, larger businesses may find themselves spending more on trying to customize a particular product to fit their needs than if they had started with a simpler platform based on a more developer-friendly platform.

4. Does the business already function in a particular vendor’s ecosystem? This question is straightforward. A Microsoft business should probably give Dynamics a hard look. An Oracle one should consider Oracle CRM On Demand. If a business is built on Linux and has no shortage of developers, then the open source Sugar CRM may be a good fit. Having all of a business’s major software solutions operating within the same ecosystem can significantly reduce support, training, maintenance, and integration costs.

5. Has the company shopped around? CRM shoppers may wrongly assume that enterprise-ready CRM solutions developed by established companies all cost around the same amount for any given feature set. In reality, that couldn’t be further from the truth. As an example, the top versions of Salesforce and Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM offer a similar feature set at a substantially different base price: $195/month for Salesforce versus $59/month for Dynamics CRM.

Once a company has settled on its CRM solution, its IT department can take a number of steps to reduce its long-term CRM-related costs.

1. Excellent training from the start is non-negitable. Training takes time and money, but it almost always pays for itself again and again. There’s little worse than investing thousands of dollars on a CRM solution only to watch it sit unused by employees unfamiliar with it -- or even worse, used improperly by untrained employees such that it actually decrease business process efficiency.

2. CRM solutions should integrate with back office systems. Many CRM products offer little in the way of functionality once a sale is made. But CRM can be much more than this, especially with the advent of social CRM features that assist with continued contact and social networking between businesses and customers.

3. CRM solutions must be administered. While the maintenance and support costs of an SaaS CRM product are dramatically less than those of an on-premises solution, companies should still assign someone (or even a small team, depending on the size of the company) to administer its CRM system. This may not be a full-time job, but it’s still an important one, and will result in overall cost savings in the long run.

dimanche 15 avril 2012

CRM Selection and Implementation Best Practices

CRM Selection and Implementation Best Practices by John Kolakowski at Green Beacon Solutions (29/09/11)

Below we’ve highlighted key strategies when considering a new CRM implementation or system enhancement:

Upper Management Sponsorship - If management doesn’t believe in the project, why should the employees? You can’t do that by yourself! Many times the difference between a successful CRM strategy and a huge waste of money is backing from the executive suite.

Stakeholder Participation - Once you’ve received executive sponsorship, and prior to developing your CRM strategy or selecting your CRM software, form a CRM team with key representatives from each department to make sure colleagues’ needs and concerns are addressed. Too often companies neglect to include the correct stakeholders, and the initiative fails to meet the needs of those tied to its results. Pick your CRM team wisely - everyone will need to own the customer experience. Remember when forming the team; consider people, process, and technology as all will be affected.

Determine Success Metrics - Define “critical success factors” (CSF) prior to the project’s kick off. Without these metrics, how will you know if your CRM program has been a success?

Define Business Objectives - Your CRM strategy must be designed with agreed-upon and prioritized business objectives and customer requirements in mind.

Customer Identification - Next, agree upon a definition of “customer” - the marketing department of an automobile company might consider a “customer” to be a dealer, but the call center might consider it to be a driver. Solicit consensus from stakeholders and confirm with upper management on this and other key definitions. Can you identify your customers across multiple touch points (retail, call center, mail, catalog, web and e-mail)

Customer Differentiation - Further identify your customers by defining segments - your high-value and high potential customers. Know who you want to serve. Understand what that customer wants? Prioritize. What is the customer worth and what is their potential worth to the company?

Customer Understanding - Now that you’ve identified and segmented your customers, understand what they want, and how they want it from you.

Customer Experience Goal Definition - Sense a theme here? You and your company are the users, but the solution is about your customer. Articulate the customer experience. How should their experience feel? Identify important business interactions e.g. high volume or high cost. Identify interactions that are important to the customer - high involvement and high perceived importance. Evaluate performance: How are these interactions currently handled by your company? Are there opportunities for improvement? Focus on hot spots: Identify the areas that require your greatest focus and will provide the greatest potential return.

Customer Strategy Integration - Today interactive marketing is a fragmented discipline in which marketers work with many different vendors to develop and execute marketing programs. Recognize that disparate databases of customer information prevent companies from gaining a holistic view of the customer throughout the organization. Break down those silos. Line-of-business (LoB) managers are often employing tactics that address products and not customers. That is because they are still looking at accounts on file, rather than at customer relationships e.g. banks that send two offers within a short time span – one that recommends consolidating their debt into a home equity loan and the other that offers a balance transfer for their credit card.

Define and Map Data Requirements and Standardize Data - You’ll need to know what customer data is necessary and from what system it will originate. See your customer through the same lens. A firm understanding of the level of customer data - account or household level - is critical. Do you plan to append external data? If so, what types: household size, income, psychographics, ZIP, real estate information etc.

Since various departments may see your customers quite differently from one another, use one integrated set of analytical data throughout the company to help make key decisions about how much to invest in a particular customer.

Create Customer Engagement Programs (i.e. by cycle: acquisition, growth, and retention) - Customer engagement is a process, not an event. Too often retention is treated as a project, rather than a guiding principle. Move your customers through the lifecycle… to maximize their value.

Collect Data - Collect and use information from each customer interaction to make your chosen customers more valuable to your enterprise. Can you identify behaviors, attitudes, needs, propensities, or intentions? Plan to clean your data regularly.

Monitor & Adjust the Customer Experience - Keep your eye on the prize. Measure the results against the metrics that you determined earlier and address the inevitable issues. Walk a mile in your customers’ shoes. Don’t rely on complaints from customers about how horrific it is to do business with you. Put yourself in their shoes by going through the typical customer experience.

Evaluation & Purchase - Don’t buy what you don’t need in a CRM solution. The fewer bells and whistles, the less time and money you’ll need to devote to train internal and external users on the solution. People don’t like change as it is; keeping things simple only makes the switchover that much easier. And train early and train often.

Communicate - Evangelize your successes to the rest of the organization. Identify quick wins. Tackle the smallest, easiest task straight away and save the hard stuff for later. Success early on gets the ball rolling and motivates employees. Success can be contagious.

dimanche 25 mars 2012

CRM Failure: 7 Warning Signs to Watch For

CRM Failure: 7 Warning Signs to Watch For by Paul Pitman at Collier Pickard

On a site dedicated to CRM best practice, and which celebrates simply successful CRM, should I be blogging about failure? If you're looking for tips and tricks to ensure the success of your CRM initiative then knowing what failure looks like is essential. If you know the warning signs to watch for then you should be able to get your CRM project back on track before too much damage is done.

Why is my CRM system failing?

There are many signs that the processes and tools you use to manage your customer relationships are failing. The following are some of the most common indicators that failure is fast approaching.

1. The original CRM project sponsor moves on and no-one fills the gap...

Having delivered the benefits of a properly implemented CRM project – the sponsor accepts a new job with more money, status or prestige. Great CRM projects have at their core a visionary individual. Their passion and commitment will help to drive usage, and encourage the change that is at the core great companies. If you lose your sponsor be prepared to step into the role yourself. With risk comes reward – so get ready for promotion.

2. The initial project is a success so everyone relaxes

Everyone slaps each other on the back, and goes back to doing things the way they always used too. Change is challenging. Increasingly psychologists recognise that people only change away from their current behaviours when the pain associated with not changing becomes too much. So make sure that doing things the old way is not acceptable, and that there is pain associated with old behaviours. Also, do try to ensure that the CRM system offers an attractive alternative to your users.

3. A new board appointment arrives

Freshly promoted after implementing CRM software in their last job, and keen to do it all again with their “tame” supplier. CRM is not a piece of software. So expecting a change in software to change your CRM project into a rip roaring success is naive. Make sure that they are not confusing product features with Strategy Tactics or Execution.

4. Your organisation assumes technology trends don’t apply to you

Your business does not need social CRM, or Inbound Marketing, or any of this new fangled Web2.0 stuff. It’s just like that internet thing a few years ago – passing phase, soon be back to normal. If your organisations view of “new” technology is instinctively cautious, then beware. Whilst software vendors do want to sell you more, they will only succeed if they deliver real value. To that end, they research the market and emerging trends in great depth. The old days are never coming back – so now is a great time to see just how you can make new technology work for you.

That said however...

5. An exciting new BI / SharePoint / technology project kicks off

Designed to finally bring together all of your customer interactions in one place. Technology is great, but it is only a tool to be used in meeting business needs. SharePoint, BI tools and all the other technology has a place in ensuring CRM success – but they should not remove the focus from your core CRM platform. If this is a management decision to invest in more software, instead of learning to make the CRM system perform – be very worried.

6. The killer Excel workbook takes root

Compiled by an Excel guru, it becomes the tool of choice for the board, but requires everyone to submit data in an agreed format. A combination of warning signs two and five. Managers who cannot be bothered to change, and the lure of a technology solution combine to kill your CRM solution. Far better to work within the CRM software and utilise its reporting tools and dashboards.

7. Excellence becomes boring!

Glib I know, but why else would you desert a successful system. Of course the flip side is, if the CRM system is not perceived as successful then failure is not far away. Time to revitalise the project by getting back to basics. Data quality anyone?

Don't be alarmed if you recognise some of these warning signs in your own business. As long as you understand how they can undermine CRM success you can prepare your response, and hopefully you'll never need to ask "why is my CRM system failing?" again!

mercredi 14 mars 2012

Setting the foundations for a successful CRM project

Setting the foundations for a successful CRM project by Professional Advantage (13/03/2012)

Implementing a customer relationship management system (CRM) is usually a pretty major undertaking for an organisation. A new CRM system is a way of re-stating the way a company works; of re-enforcing how an organisation oversees it’s customer interactions.

As such, there are a few things you should try to keep in mind while planning for, and undertaking, your CRM system implementation to increase your likelihood of success. Those of us who implement these systems on a regular basis can vouch for each of these, and most of us can cite examples where ignoring these tips has made life difficult for both the client organisation and the implementation team!

1. Approach the project as a business process improvement, not an IT project
CRM system projects (like their cousin, ERP projects) that are initiated and driven by an IT team are often, but not always, being done for the wrong reasons. Spending the time, effort and capital on a software project that doesn’t aim to resolve a known issue with your business can be an early sign of problems for the project.

Due to the fact that you’re implementing a large software application, IT obviously need to be involved - your IT team may even have people on it who have assisted in CRM system implementations in the past that you can leverage.

2. Know your goals

To believe that your company doesn’t have process issues is to be naive. Ask any worker and she will share with you ways in which their job could be made more efficient.

During the early stages of your project, it’s critical to understand which of these areas you are trying to address and in what way you wish for them to be changed by your new systems.

A few common examples which can be readily addressed with well-implemented CRM software include:

Management suffer from lack of visibility of salesperson activities

Account managers don’t understand how the sales or service teams interact with their clients

Customer service enquiries are “falling through the cracks”

Marketing don’t know when they last contacted a customer (or whether that customer has responded in the past)

The sales pipeline is difficult to visualise and understand

3. Make sure somebody wins when the project succeedsIf you have even one person who will really “win” when your project succeeds, they will work hard to get that win. Your potential winners will advocate for the success of the project to their peers.

Winning is easy to identify:

Time saved on mundane or repetitive tasks

Continual problems with data accuracy

Large volumes of work to keep up with other people

On the flip side of the carrot/stick driver, and to a lesser extent, having somebody who will ‘hurt’ if the project fails can cause that person to work hard to avoid the pain. Look out, though: not everybody responds well to such negative drivers.

4. Senior sponsorship and team buy-in
Understanding your goals is important, however if your senior employees and management aren’t interested then nobody will use your new system. Your goals will stay unachieved.

Be wary, this can be referred to as a success! The software was configured exactly to specification, it was on-time and on-budget. A month later, though, you have a server consuming electricity and a bill from your implementation company but nobody is using your system. Ouch.

When your project is sponsored by management, it can give weight and credence to the new system. This can help to build engagement with your team early on. By getting key employees involved in the initial stages of your CRM system project, they can have a say in the direction of the system and feel an element of ownership.

Introducing ownership throughout your organisation helps to prevent staff feeling like a system is being forced onto them with little regard for what they do on a daily basis.

5. Understand your business processes
This might sound obvious, but for many organisations it isn’t until they begin formally reviewing processes that their inefficiencies become visible.

A successful CRM system will assist your staff with their roles, not enforce new rules on them without purpose. By understanding how your company interacts with customers, you can ensure that the system is configured in a way that supports these activities.

That said, there is often no better time to implement change in your processes than when you are already identifying your processes and translating them into your new systems.

Resist the temptation to build a system that perfectly enforces all of your existing business rules without due review – take those staff suggestions on board!

6. Partnership with your implementer
Your system implementation partner should help guide you through the process as a trusted advisor, not simply as an external contractor. You are relying on their services due to their extensive experience: hopefully your partner has done many more CRM system builds than you have!

Every time you go through the process of implementing a large business application you learn something new. Sometimes it’s simple, other times it’s more complex. The sum of these learnings should not be under-valued!

So, whilst you rely on the experience of your implementers, giving them the job and walking away until completion is not likely to end well. At all stages through the process, there should be comfortable dialogue between both parties and a good understanding of roles and responsibilities.

The days of big system builds in back rooms are over. Although many organisations aren’t able to work in a truly Agile way, iteration and open communication are a must. If you and your implementer are not prepared to be true partners, sharing and collaborating throughout a project, you may not get the results you were hoping for.

Be Clever
If you’ve already chosen to build a CRM system for your organisation, you’re already well on the way to improving the management and visibility of the relationships with your customers and suppliers.

By staying wise, selecting a reputable and experienced partner, and being inclusive when it comes to internal team selection, congratulations! The chances are even better that your project will be a success.

mardi 13 mars 2012

CRM Implementation - Fast and Cheap

CRM Implementation - Fast and Cheap by Luneos (10/11/10)

Are you worried that deployment of CRM system in your company would be expensive, time consuming and the outcome won’t meet your expectations? If you want to avoid such scenario, just continue reading this article in order to simplify your CRM implementation.

If you haven’t performed a detailed CRM analysis yet, or if you still don’t exactly know your requirements on new CRM system, then the best way is to start small. Instead of paying and setting up a complex information environment for the whole company, it’s much more valuable to select just a few departments and implement only a handful of core functions.

Such approach has several advantages: not only the whole project is simpler, faster and cheaper, but you can also easily test your vendor and his services. Moreover after launching the limited set of functions and features you can much better realize, in which areas of your business the usage of CRM can create a significant competitive advantage and where its use would be contra productive.

After evaluating the success of pilot CRM deployment (usually after 2-4 weeks), you can extend the system into other departments and add new functions or modules. Because you already have a detailed overview of available features, their benefits and implementation requirements, your chances on successful CRM implementation are much higher.

Also if you want to avoid the most common mistakes in customer relationship management deployment, we recommend you to read our CRM guide.

lundi 20 février 2012

CRM Implementation: Use In-house Resources or an External Consultant?

CRM Implementation: Use In-house Resources or an External Consultant? by Chris Hooven, Vice President, Business Development, OSF Global Services

Selecting and implementing the right CRM application is a strategic process. It requires thorough upfront analysis of your needs and clear metrics for measuring the expected business functionalities and benefits. In Part 1 of this article series, CRM Purchasing Considerations for the SMB, I outlined several important questions to guide you in selecting the appropriate CRM software. In Part 2, I will detail factors to consider when determining your optimum implementation strategy.Implementing a CRM into your environment can be a budget buster if not done correctly, so let’s look at the pros and cons of two approaches: in-house resources or external consultants.

Most SMBs have an urgent need to generate sales. As a result, organizations may set unrealistic goals in terms of the amount of time and number of in-house resources required to install and deploy their new CRM software. At the same time, these organizations are often confronted with a lack of specialists or development teams who can work together towards achieving (1) a cohesive CRM implementation process, (2) efficient integration with existing systems, and (3) advanced customization for different functionalities. Next to user adaptation, these are the underlying issues behind many failed in-house CRM implementations.

To determine if an in-house approach is appropriate, think through the following questions:

Do you have the right mix of technical, business analysis and project management skills in the company that can do the CRM implementation?
How much time can they allocate to achieve a cohesive CRM implementation? How does the time they allocate to the CRM impact other day-to-day needs across the company?
Do you have skilled developers for more complex customizations?
Can you ensure user adoption and continuous support for your staff with in-house resources?

The Pros and Cons of In-House CRM Implementation

If you have answered positively to all of the questions above, then you likely have the in-house potential to achieve a successful CRM implementation. The main advantages for implementing a CRM application in-house would be:

You are optimizing your development resources

You are engaging staff who are inherently qualified in understanding your business processes and requirements because they live them every day

You will gain a set of CRM expertise that remains inside the company

On the flip side, expect in-house staff to require a learning curve for the CRM. Also a more complex CRM implementation will likely consume significantly more than your estimated time and resources. For instance, are you implementing the CRM as a point product or a strategic application at the heart of a company-wide, integrated solution? Integrating a CRM with back-end applications or customizing it extensively is not for the faint of heart. And any implementation that is more time consuming than estimated or lacks proper planning will lead to higher costs and delayed adoption.

The Pros and Cons of Outsourcing CRM Implementation

Time or resource-strapped organizations tend to rely on the expertise of outsourcing providers or CRM partners to do the implementation. It’s a good option because translating your requirements and configuring them correctly into the CRM takes experience. You will also benefit from the business process expertise an external provider has acquired through their previous client engagements. Other benefits to outsourcing your CRM implementation include access to:

Experienced facilitator to guide requirements gathering and buffer internal disputes
Experienced project management team to interface with the CRM application provider regarding your business needs and business processes
Customization and configuration expertise for your specific CRM application
Best practices across the CRM lifecycle, from initial needs assessment through implementation, training and support

Now for the downside to outsourcing your CRM implementation:

First, service providers who do not engage in a consultative approach are less inclined to understand your in-house business process and organizational alignment. This will torpedo your implementation efforts from the start.
Second, if the service provider does not offer proven implementation success for your selected CRM tool, then you are risking lower than expected efficiency and poor implementation. All CRM applications are not created equal.

Which Choice Is Best For Your Business?

Successful CRM implementations require an appropriate mix of technology, methodology and knowledge. However staff availability and customization considerations are decisive factors for every business that is planning a CRM implementation.

Should you choose to outsource your CRM implementation to an external consultant, require client references as well as details about the team assigned to your project. It is imperative they fit culturally in your organization and work seamlessly with your employees. As with the application itself, all CRM implementation partners are not created equal.

Ultimately, the success of your CRM implementation hinges on user acceptance.

samedi 4 février 2012

Can SCRUM be applied to CRM?

Can SCRUM be applied to CRM? by Tommy Ball (27/05/11)

I find it difficult to work in an Agile way with the typical teams involved in a CRM deployment. However… I have developed a highly effective way of making it work.

One challenge is wasting time treating each little sequential task (e.g. in Salesforce setting up validation rules, roles, field level security) as a separate story, requiring more time documenting things in a tool like Pivotal Tracker, then actually performing the tasks themselves. Because there are many sequential tasks with CRM. So many that documenting as individual stories takes an excessive amount of time, thus hindering rather than helping progress. What happens is when you apply true Agile, I’m finding, is that organizations still get hung up in too much process and documentation especially with new Agile teams, which almost all Salesforce CRM teams are. And what does the Manifesto say about a little concept about less documenting, more deliverables, less process, more collaboration, don’t get hung up on tools? Right? It’s important to stick to the principles we all live by, but with CRM, allow for flexibility in order to keep things moving effectively.

I’ve been addressing this on-going issue of applying Agile to CRM for years now. Running a Salesforce project is drastically different from a Rails project. And both need its own approach. Alistair Cockburn and people in his realm have many Agile offshoot methodologies specific to software dev, but no one has tackled using Agile for CRM. Ironically, Salesforce themselves use Agile and have a very successful internal adoption model.

Basically, all the sequential tasks (aka theme or mega-story) that need to occur in order to establish a key piece of functionality, often a with group of sequential tasks that other parts are codependent on, it’s important that all the tasks for that major function (e.g. establishing field level security for all CRM users, which involves several tasks) be grouped together in order to complete the function or “theme” if you will.

So, in this case combining sequential tasks into mega-stories, or themes, and still assigning points and tracking velocity, but group tasks within a large process or function (theme), all together, with story points assigned to the entire theme, incorporated into a sprint (analyze, configure and setup, test, release, demo), still have daily standtoups like usually works.

The key for me is the ability to be flexible, sticking to a 1 week sprint, mainly because Salesforce can be setup that quickly if the team approaches from a theme level, often working in parallel with other teams (aka paired teams or XT-extreme teams). However the database migration team may take a different approach although working on the sale project together.

Often times 2 teams work in parallel, one focusing on process analysis, defining business rules, workflow, building use cases, setting up 3rd party integration, and often, even developing custom Salesforce aps. The other team focuses on the data – cleansing, scrubbing, duping, field source mapping, etc.). It’s good to align each group so team 1 working on business logic, can test each function (aka theme) against the data being brought over. I call this paired teams, or XT, similar to pair programming or XP, but on a larger scale. A situation involving data migration with bad data may lend itself a waterfall, depending on the integrity of the data you are migrating.

“CRMSCRUM”

As long as you group stories that must follow a sequence into themes, treat as mega-stories, and finish each after every step of the sequence has been completed, then test, and release, and demo every 2 weeks, this version of Agile I’ve developed, called CRMSCRUM, is highly effective, sometimes to the point where you sometimes can move with unlimited velocity. It just takes the right combination of team commitment, solid well-skilled Salesforce SME’s serving multiple roles, and a flexible mind set, but not to the point where you break key Agile principles, This technique I call CRMSCRUM used to deploy systems such as Salesforce with has proven to deliver with exceptional speed, efficiency, and perfect alignment with stakeholder vision.

jeudi 2 février 2012

Agile CRM Implementation

Agile CRM Implementation by Luneos (12/11/10)

Because our last article about cheap and rapid CRM implementation raised several questions from our readers (saving both time and money is grateful idea) we decided to come back to this topic again.

Instead of purchasing new information system for the whole company, paying license fees for all employees and spending months with demanding implementation it is often much more beneficial to start with agile CRM implementation in much smaller scale.

Agile CRM implementation principles

At first think about three most serious issues in your company that new CRM system can avoid (e.g. missing sales opportunity overview, not unified pricing conditions or lack of reporting).

Afterwards perform a brief CRM analysis focused only on departments, where these three issues happen and try to find out, how to remove them fast and efficient.

As soon as this analysis is finished, you can start with deployment of new CRM system. Don’t implement the whole set of features, but only those that will help your company in solving its three major issues.

Also avoid continuous changes in specification and adding new requirements, because they would only slow you down and you’ll have enough time and more experience to cope with them later.

Once the CRM is live for at least two weeks, you have tested and adjust its settings it’s time for its extension. Write down your next three business problems, make small analysis and start with the deployment again.

Benefits of Agile CRM deployment

Unlike the usual CRM implementation that lasts months or even years, you’ll get the first results just in few weeks after signing the contract. Breaking the project down into short and fast steps also simplifies end user training and reduces overall costs. Instead of paying for licenses for all users immediately after the contract is signed, you can gradually re-buy them in accordance with speed of your implementation.

Mistakes to avoid

The most common mistake during agile CRM implementation is lack of communication and cooperation with the vendor. That’s why you should develop an implementation framework right after signing the contract and make your provider familiar with your long-term CRM plans and strategy. Such approach allows him to better estimate the duration of whole project and help you prepare next steps.

Your company doesn’t need a complex information system with thousands of exceptions, difficult maintenance and limited upgrade options. By choosing an agile approach you simply avoid such scenario and can benefit from the CRM since the very beginning.

As one of our clients told us: Our company can’t wait two years for a luxurious Rolls Royce. We need a compact SUV right now. And what about you?

mercredi 25 janvier 2012

Using an Agile approach to CRM

Using an Agile approach to CRM by Customer Dynamics (10/01/12)

Our approach to managing and running CRM implementation for multiple clients at the same time involve some very basic “Agile” principles of doing first things first, keeping iterations small, and running sprints. An overview of CRM philosophy can be found on our CRM Success page.

Our approach with our support and maintenance customers uses a simple backlog type approach as shown below:

This diagram shows the overall flow of work items (user stories and tasks) from initial inception, onto the Backlog, then onto the appropriate Sprint.

The Backlog is a queue of business functionality waiting for refinement, budget, scheduling and approval. A Backlog Item is a piece of business functionality that is well defined and can be budgeted and scheduled into an upcoming Sprint. Each Sprint is a 4 week period of time where approved Backlog items worked on and completed. A simple Backlog item example would be - “Sales user needs the Opportunity screen to display a weighted revenue amount calculated from the estimated revenue * sales stage probability, and allow that user to query the results in an advanced find.”

The Executive Sponsor, System Architect, System Consultant, and Business Process Expert(s) submit items to the backlog for consideration. The System Architect periodically reviews the backlog and ensures that each Backlog item is well documented and conforms to the overall system design.

The Executive Sponsor and Project Manager (and other team members as needed) have a monthly Sprint Planning session to review Backlog items and schedule them into the upcoming Sprints. The Sprint Planning session should be completed 2 weeks prior to the end of the current Sprint.

This approach helps capture new potential CRM items (business logic, custom workflow, plugins, ect) and allows the CRM team to prioritize and manage these items in typical Agile sprints. This “Agile CRM” approach keeps your users engaged, provides on-going value and ROI from your system, and keeps the Executive Sponsors involved.