By Chris Bucholtz

I think it’s safe to say that the period of time that makes or breaks CRM implementations in most cases is the time immediately after a company decides to bring in a system, during the requirement-gathering stage. This is when the company has to come to grips with some important things, like its own internal processes, the talent it has in house and the objectives it wants to achieve. (These topics and more are the subject of this Thursday’s webinar, by the way; go here to register for the live event.) Once the system’s in place, it becomes a matter of execution – getting people to use the system, for instance, and making sure that it’s well-integrated with other company systems. But if that first discussion goes awry, remedial means won’t be enough to save the initiative or the investment that was made it it.

Richard Boardman is a U.K.-based CRM consultant, and he’s now worked on over 300 CRM implementations; I suspect he can predict from the things his customers say in their initial meetings whether they’ll succeed or fail. I’ve recommended his blog in the past; this Monday’s post is his second on the critical nature of understanding your requirements and mapping them to a solution, then challenging the requirements you’ve settled on at every stage. This isn’t glamorous work, and at when the CRM system is unveiled no one will come up and compliment you for your great requirement gathering, but it is painfully apparent – from Richard’s experience, clearly, and from the things we hear from disappointed users – that this aspect of the CRM implementation process is all too often shortchanged.