Customer relationship management is a total business strategy; therefore, proper planning is crucial. After you have communicated and established support for your initiative, outlined the steps your company needs to take for implementation, and marked your parameters for success and failure, you can then create your implementation strategy.
This is Part two of a four-part note.
Part One discussed new approaches to CRM implementation, Part Two will discuss implementation strategies, and Part Three will describe achieving and maintaining the competitive edge.
Part Four will conclude with specific CRM strategies and a hypothetical case study.
Implementation Issues and Strategies
What Robert Burns said about the best-laid plans are true: they do often go awry. However, preparation is everything because it will help you to accommodate change. The road map to a successful CRM implementation is filled with pot holes, but if you know the road signs, you will be able to plan ahead. Large and small organizations alike have stumbled through the same dangers and get caught in the same traps. Recognizing these issues in advance will help guide you through or around these problems.
Overcoming Lack of Requirements
Ask any number of IT professionals what the number one reason software development projects fail and many will say "lack of requirements", more specifically, lack of good requirements. Not understanding user needs can result in inadequate functionality. This is usually a result of insufficient user participation and involvement. Though the system is being developed to serve the user, most business people are too busy with their job demands to spend the time needed to clearly vocalize and document what they want the system to do.
Gathering the Right People
Also falling in this category is inconsistent requirements, which can result when many users are involved in the development of a CRM system. One division's needs may be in direct conflict with the requirements of another division, and diverse needs may compete for priority. One way to solve this problem is to develop some common goals and to focus on the customer. After all, you are implementing a customer management system to take care of the needs of customers. Ironically, often the customer is silent in CRM. A 2003 study by Bob Thompson, published for CRMGru.com, stated that CRM strategies focusing on the customer are more likely to succeed than those that don't.
Getting the right people to participate can be a challenge. The mix should include representatives from the software vendor, key users, and customers.
Software vendor associates: Must be knowledgeable not just in the technical aspect of the product but with best practices and industry standards. Avoid using sales people to help you develop requirements. Instead, ask for someone with functional knowledge to help guide you through the implementation process.
Key business users: Should participate in brainstorming meetings and joint application development sessions (JADS) to create effective use cases, and to write scenario-based test scripts. This type of test script is based on a user's daily workload and not a some vague functional description. Involve your users early on. Start with current business process flows such as an outbound sales call, or a prospect qualification process. Knowledge gaps can be filled with team members who have different knowledge and background.
Users: Look for someone who can see the big picture and has intimate knowledge with the day-to-day workings of the company. Users are required to contribute time and effort to the project beyond attending a few meetings. They must be able to speak for others in the company and understand the needs of the organization. Most important of all, they must share a customer centric vision.
Customer participants: Involve a customer with whom you have a very strong relationship with. This is not necessarily your biggest customer. As a matter of fact, make sure it is not your largest client so that any negative impact will not affect your bottom line materially. Customer participants must not let their special agendas override the overall goals of the organization. When involving your customers, be prudent and realistic. Avoid selecting customers who are negative about the company or have a bias against technology. Just as importantly, do not project pessimism. Be cautious not to present your company in a negative context.
Documenting the Review Processes
To harness the expertise of the team, take a "before" snapshot of your organization. Understand the needs of the organization by looking at the current business environment. How are customers being handling today? What policies are in place? How does information flow? Map out current process flows, documenting procedures, policies, key players, and organizational hierarchy. Gather documents on policies on controls and interview people involved in these processes. If policies are not documented, draw a process diagram or document what users do and have your users check for accuracy. Many users find it insightful to see on paper what they actually do—they might even realize that steps are missing or they are doing redundant work. In one organization, users discovered that they make twelve copies of a form and verify its information eight times—and they still had a 74 percent error rate!
Next, review these flows to see where CRM can help facilitate your processes. Highlight processes that can be replaced with a CRM and note where a CRM system can increase efficiency, improve quality, or automate manual processes. One company enlarged their process diagram, taped it to the wall and stuck sticky notes with the words CRM and a numbering convention. They then organized a use case referencing those CRM sticky notes.
Combating Scope Creep
A second reason for CRM implementation failure is scope creep. Changing business conditions can lead to changing requirements. However, undefined requirements and lack of prioritization can cause expanded scope and increased effort. Document your requirements in detail. Write a good-use case to illustrate what the system is expected to accomplish and what the primary actors (direct users) are expected to do.
Be sure to get sign offs on everything! Start with agreements between developers and users, and also involve your sponsors who are the real stakeholders. Business sponsors are typically in management. They are the people who have the vision to support your efforts, acquire funding for your project, and secure resources when you need them.
Break down your deliverables into manageable chunks and prioritize your deliverables. Believe it or not, this does more to prevent scope creep than other techniques. If you deliver the quick wins first, it helps your users to reap some early benefits and consequently you will gain more buy-in.
Perform "sound checks" from time to time to ensure continued agreement and focus. Reinforce the scope of your project and clarify requirements as needed. If the business environment changes, you might have to be flexible and provide solutions to incorporate these changes or alter the requirements to meet these new challenges. When changes occur, document and get sign off on your scope changes.
Compensating for Lack of Skilled Resources
Mid-market companies may not always have the luxury of a full-fledged IT department and are often so overburdened with the cost of new technology and software licenses that they hesitate to invest in technical labor. They might hire a few people to work on the implementation and retain them for support after go-live or consultants are brought in to supplement the team.
However, mid-market companies must take the bold move to increase their technical staff to avoid being at the mercy of their software vendors and third-party consultants. An experienced program manager and senior developer are two key personnel you need to hire.
Your program manager should have strong experience in software development, with least three to five implementations, and ideally has some experience with your industry. To implement a CRM system, a good project manager, should be able to handle all the traditional tasks of project management such as budget control and project plan updates, keep good meeting minutes, and document issues. Risk assessment, project planning, resources management, problem solving and negotiation skills should all be part of the package. Your program manager should also be able to effectively communicate to upper management, users, and of course, to the team,.
Project managers in mid-sized companies cannot afford not to leave technical management to others or trust individuals to manage themselves. Your project manager must have enough technical experience to do their job, but not necessarily write hundreds of lines of code. If your project manager does not have the technical skills to solve technical issues, you should make sure other people in your team can. A strong technical developer would complement a less technical project manager.
Next, acquire a senior developer with over five years experience in development and knowledge of query tools such as Access, SQL or PLSQL, programming best practices, database experience, and be willing to learn new technology from different people. A good candidate should have development skills in the programming language, which your software is built on such as Java, JavaScript, C++, Visual Basic, or PERL. Additionally, experience with application methodology is more important than most people realize. Your developer must understand the software development cycle and practice good, controlled, organized methodology.
In addition to a program manager and a senior developer, a qualified business analyst, database administrator, and technical account manager should also compromise your team. A good business analyst can translate the business needs to software developers. A good applications database administrator (DBA) is a must because CRM applications rely heavily on the underlying database, no matter what database platform you use, Oracle, MS SQL Server, or IBM DB2. A seasoned applications DBA will be able to anticipate problems, resolve difficult issues and optimize performance.
Also invest in a technical expert from your vendor if one is not provided for you. One leading vendor instituted a very effective professional services program where a technical account manager (TAM) is assigned to every implementation. Minimum consulting hours are often negotiated at time of licensing and additional hours can be purchased as needed. These consultants are not sales oriented and are not involved in any licensing negotiations. Instead, they are usually from technical backgrounds, and have a broad knowledge of all CRM modules. For what they don't know, they can usually find someone who does. They also serve as the liaison between the customer and technical support, helping to escalate technical issues and bug reporting.
Because of the limited resources of mid-market companies, one way to avoid increasing head count and overhead is to supplement the technical team with independent contractors. Though consultants are often pricey, their cost can be capitalized and depreciated along with the project costs. Good consultants can offer diverse experience and are usually very well trained. They can bring proven methodology, rigorous training programs, certified technical skills, and multiple implementation experience. An additional advantage is that as a third-party unconnected to the software vendor, they can provide impartial feedback and input. Ensuring that your consultants are not also resellers of any software can help and. importantly, make sure you look for one with experience in your industry and has ample references when seeking consulting services.
SOURCE:-
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/customer-relationship-management-strategies-part-two-creating-your-strategy-17783/
This is Part two of a four-part note.
Part One discussed new approaches to CRM implementation, Part Two will discuss implementation strategies, and Part Three will describe achieving and maintaining the competitive edge.
Part Four will conclude with specific CRM strategies and a hypothetical case study.
Implementation Issues and Strategies
What Robert Burns said about the best-laid plans are true: they do often go awry. However, preparation is everything because it will help you to accommodate change. The road map to a successful CRM implementation is filled with pot holes, but if you know the road signs, you will be able to plan ahead. Large and small organizations alike have stumbled through the same dangers and get caught in the same traps. Recognizing these issues in advance will help guide you through or around these problems.
Overcoming Lack of Requirements
Ask any number of IT professionals what the number one reason software development projects fail and many will say "lack of requirements", more specifically, lack of good requirements. Not understanding user needs can result in inadequate functionality. This is usually a result of insufficient user participation and involvement. Though the system is being developed to serve the user, most business people are too busy with their job demands to spend the time needed to clearly vocalize and document what they want the system to do.
Gathering the Right People
Also falling in this category is inconsistent requirements, which can result when many users are involved in the development of a CRM system. One division's needs may be in direct conflict with the requirements of another division, and diverse needs may compete for priority. One way to solve this problem is to develop some common goals and to focus on the customer. After all, you are implementing a customer management system to take care of the needs of customers. Ironically, often the customer is silent in CRM. A 2003 study by Bob Thompson, published for CRMGru.com, stated that CRM strategies focusing on the customer are more likely to succeed than those that don't.
Getting the right people to participate can be a challenge. The mix should include representatives from the software vendor, key users, and customers.
Software vendor associates: Must be knowledgeable not just in the technical aspect of the product but with best practices and industry standards. Avoid using sales people to help you develop requirements. Instead, ask for someone with functional knowledge to help guide you through the implementation process.
Key business users: Should participate in brainstorming meetings and joint application development sessions (JADS) to create effective use cases, and to write scenario-based test scripts. This type of test script is based on a user's daily workload and not a some vague functional description. Involve your users early on. Start with current business process flows such as an outbound sales call, or a prospect qualification process. Knowledge gaps can be filled with team members who have different knowledge and background.
Users: Look for someone who can see the big picture and has intimate knowledge with the day-to-day workings of the company. Users are required to contribute time and effort to the project beyond attending a few meetings. They must be able to speak for others in the company and understand the needs of the organization. Most important of all, they must share a customer centric vision.
Customer participants: Involve a customer with whom you have a very strong relationship with. This is not necessarily your biggest customer. As a matter of fact, make sure it is not your largest client so that any negative impact will not affect your bottom line materially. Customer participants must not let their special agendas override the overall goals of the organization. When involving your customers, be prudent and realistic. Avoid selecting customers who are negative about the company or have a bias against technology. Just as importantly, do not project pessimism. Be cautious not to present your company in a negative context.
Documenting the Review Processes
To harness the expertise of the team, take a "before" snapshot of your organization. Understand the needs of the organization by looking at the current business environment. How are customers being handling today? What policies are in place? How does information flow? Map out current process flows, documenting procedures, policies, key players, and organizational hierarchy. Gather documents on policies on controls and interview people involved in these processes. If policies are not documented, draw a process diagram or document what users do and have your users check for accuracy. Many users find it insightful to see on paper what they actually do—they might even realize that steps are missing or they are doing redundant work. In one organization, users discovered that they make twelve copies of a form and verify its information eight times—and they still had a 74 percent error rate!
Next, review these flows to see where CRM can help facilitate your processes. Highlight processes that can be replaced with a CRM and note where a CRM system can increase efficiency, improve quality, or automate manual processes. One company enlarged their process diagram, taped it to the wall and stuck sticky notes with the words CRM and a numbering convention. They then organized a use case referencing those CRM sticky notes.
Combating Scope Creep
A second reason for CRM implementation failure is scope creep. Changing business conditions can lead to changing requirements. However, undefined requirements and lack of prioritization can cause expanded scope and increased effort. Document your requirements in detail. Write a good-use case to illustrate what the system is expected to accomplish and what the primary actors (direct users) are expected to do.
Be sure to get sign offs on everything! Start with agreements between developers and users, and also involve your sponsors who are the real stakeholders. Business sponsors are typically in management. They are the people who have the vision to support your efforts, acquire funding for your project, and secure resources when you need them.
Break down your deliverables into manageable chunks and prioritize your deliverables. Believe it or not, this does more to prevent scope creep than other techniques. If you deliver the quick wins first, it helps your users to reap some early benefits and consequently you will gain more buy-in.
Perform "sound checks" from time to time to ensure continued agreement and focus. Reinforce the scope of your project and clarify requirements as needed. If the business environment changes, you might have to be flexible and provide solutions to incorporate these changes or alter the requirements to meet these new challenges. When changes occur, document and get sign off on your scope changes.
Compensating for Lack of Skilled Resources
Mid-market companies may not always have the luxury of a full-fledged IT department and are often so overburdened with the cost of new technology and software licenses that they hesitate to invest in technical labor. They might hire a few people to work on the implementation and retain them for support after go-live or consultants are brought in to supplement the team.
However, mid-market companies must take the bold move to increase their technical staff to avoid being at the mercy of their software vendors and third-party consultants. An experienced program manager and senior developer are two key personnel you need to hire.
Your program manager should have strong experience in software development, with least three to five implementations, and ideally has some experience with your industry. To implement a CRM system, a good project manager, should be able to handle all the traditional tasks of project management such as budget control and project plan updates, keep good meeting minutes, and document issues. Risk assessment, project planning, resources management, problem solving and negotiation skills should all be part of the package. Your program manager should also be able to effectively communicate to upper management, users, and of course, to the team,.
Project managers in mid-sized companies cannot afford not to leave technical management to others or trust individuals to manage themselves. Your project manager must have enough technical experience to do their job, but not necessarily write hundreds of lines of code. If your project manager does not have the technical skills to solve technical issues, you should make sure other people in your team can. A strong technical developer would complement a less technical project manager.
Next, acquire a senior developer with over five years experience in development and knowledge of query tools such as Access, SQL or PLSQL, programming best practices, database experience, and be willing to learn new technology from different people. A good candidate should have development skills in the programming language, which your software is built on such as Java, JavaScript, C++, Visual Basic, or PERL. Additionally, experience with application methodology is more important than most people realize. Your developer must understand the software development cycle and practice good, controlled, organized methodology.
In addition to a program manager and a senior developer, a qualified business analyst, database administrator, and technical account manager should also compromise your team. A good business analyst can translate the business needs to software developers. A good applications database administrator (DBA) is a must because CRM applications rely heavily on the underlying database, no matter what database platform you use, Oracle, MS SQL Server, or IBM DB2. A seasoned applications DBA will be able to anticipate problems, resolve difficult issues and optimize performance.
Also invest in a technical expert from your vendor if one is not provided for you. One leading vendor instituted a very effective professional services program where a technical account manager (TAM) is assigned to every implementation. Minimum consulting hours are often negotiated at time of licensing and additional hours can be purchased as needed. These consultants are not sales oriented and are not involved in any licensing negotiations. Instead, they are usually from technical backgrounds, and have a broad knowledge of all CRM modules. For what they don't know, they can usually find someone who does. They also serve as the liaison between the customer and technical support, helping to escalate technical issues and bug reporting.
Because of the limited resources of mid-market companies, one way to avoid increasing head count and overhead is to supplement the technical team with independent contractors. Though consultants are often pricey, their cost can be capitalized and depreciated along with the project costs. Good consultants can offer diverse experience and are usually very well trained. They can bring proven methodology, rigorous training programs, certified technical skills, and multiple implementation experience. An additional advantage is that as a third-party unconnected to the software vendor, they can provide impartial feedback and input. Ensuring that your consultants are not also resellers of any software can help and. importantly, make sure you look for one with experience in your industry and has ample references when seeking consulting services.
SOURCE:-
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/customer-relationship-management-strategies-part-two-creating-your-strategy-17783/
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