6 Steps to Getting Started with CRM – From Design to Go Live

Congratulations, your organization has decided to join millions of users and take advantage of a Customer Relationship Management software (like Microsoft Dynamics CRM or Salesforce). Industries around the world have experienced great returns on this investment.

But is the question is…where do you start?

Here are six key steps that will take you all the way from preparing for CRM design to your Go-Live launch.

1. Identify a Design team

Make sure the key staff decision makers are on your design team. Often organizations appoint their IT staff to make many of the decisions, but ultimately you want the end users involved as they will be the people populating the data. You will want someone from your IT department involved, but for technical decisions not business process decisions.

2. Define Project Scope 

It is critical to identify the scope of the project. CRM projects often grow the more staff learns of the functions offered. Breaking the implementation out into phases will offer a means to control the budget. Users will also understand the timeline expectations for their personal wish list. This can be handled by selecting a specific business unit/department to start the project. You’ll want the first group to be very engaged, have time to dedicate and be a good role model for other phases.

Begin by identifying each phases goals such as:

• Account and contact management – gather all contact information for customers and vendors in one location
• Define a sales process where all sales representative express a common message to customers
• Track services or support cases so customers’ requests are addressed in a timely manner
• Utilize marketing or social functions
• Track internal projects and billing

When organizations find it challenging to decide what functionality they should focus on first, CRM vendors (like Ledgeview Partners) offer an analysis phase. This involves high level business process discussions to evaluate the organization requirements and assist in prioritizing the tasks.

3. Design Preparations

The success of a CRM implementation comes down to the details. High level discovery meetings are held to first identify the business process and goals. Design team users should gather samples of data spreadsheets, databases or other resources currently used to track and share information.

4. Design

Once the process is understood, there is a deep dive into the details. The specifics of the design differs for every organization and is focused around their requirements.

Here are a few common discussion points.

• What fields are needed to achieve the outcome?
• Are reminders needed to ensure follow-up on tasks?
  • Automated reminders
  • Manually generated reminders
• What layout is needed on custom reports?
• Define dashboards charts and list views
• Are there security concerns?
• What are timeline expectations?
• Data migration or integrations?
• Who will be trained and what are the expectations when CRM goes live?

The design team needs to be supported by executive management during every phase of the project. The design can be (and will be) very time intensive on staff but the results will be worth the investment.

Each detail should be documented and approved during the design to ensure it is included in the implementation modifications.

5. Implementation

Once the design is completed and approved, the building process begins. This is an exciting time as the vision is now becoming a reality!

The design team should be offered demonstrations when milestones are achieved. Testing of functionality is critical at this point. This is a time when the design team tests the software to ensure it meets the expectations documented. Many times users are provided case studies to follow during testing (if working with a CRM Consultant Company).

The scheduling of data migrations and training are important. Do not skimp on training (it is bold because it is super important).  If the users are not confident in what is expected of them, they will have a negative experience. User acceptance success rates often are a result of positive and detailed training sessions.

6. It’s Go Live Time!

Hold on…the project isn’t done yet!

Ongoing support and interaction with the users by executive management and the CRM consultants is fundamental. Also, CRM projects occur in phases, as users work with the design they will find continuous ways to improve the business process and data collection defined during the design.

A few short months after going live, it will be time to review the scope for the next phase.

CRM is an investment of continuous business improvements for an organization.

The post 6 Steps to Getting Started with CRM – From Design to Go Live appeared first on Ledgeview Partners.