FREE E-BOOK HOW TO ENSURE A SUCCESSFUL CRM IMPLEMENTATION

Transcription

1 FREE E-BOOK HOW TO ENSURE A SUCCESSFUL CRM IMPLEMENTATION Toll- Free: 1(800) Website:

2 How To Ensure A Successful CRM Implementation ABOUT THIS E-BOOK If you have downloaded this E-Book, there is a good chance your business has grown to the point that managing customer relationships has become challenging and complex. If this describes your predicament, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software may be your answer. But a successful CRM implementation requires careful planning and implementation. This E-Book provides a roadmap to planning and successfully implementing your CRM software with practical strategies. Copyright Pipeline Management Consulting 2

3 According to independent research firm Gartner, fifty percent of CRM Software implementations fail You want to give your customers the personal, handson attention they deserve. However, you may be stretched thin with other priorities, or struggling to keep customer information organized and maintained across numerous spreadsheets and by several staff members. If this describes your predicament, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software may be your answer. CRM software stores, organizes, and analyzes a vast array of diverse customer and prospect data. CRM also tracks interactions and automate a variety of sales, marketing and customer-service activities. The key to realizing the tremendous benefits of a CRM system - and increasing your return on investment (ROI) - is to take a strategic, process-centric approach toward implementation and adoption. This approach puts the improvement of specific business processes, such as customer service, sales management and marketing, at the center of your CRM efforts. Copyright Pipeline Management Consulting 3

4 1 The Value and Capabilities of CRM Software The power of CRM software lies in its ability to store, organize and provide a robust repository of customer and prospect data that your sales team can access, anytime and anywhere. These capabilities can help you improve your decision-making, productivity, and customer service. CRM software alone does not add value to your organization. The value it brings depends entirely on how you implement and use it. Here are several ways it can streamline and enhance your sales, customer service and marketing activities. Sales Process Automation Increase sales team productivity and shorten the sales cycle by automating daily tasks to help your reps better manage communications, contacts, leads, opportunities and sales forecast. Customer Service Improve customer satisfaction by arming your sales team with critical customer data. Log customer issues and facilitate problem resolution with easy access to information regarding products, orders, and past communications. Marketing CRM software can provide robust reporting and analytics on market segments that enable you to target customers and prospects based on specific criteria. It also provides a centralized platform to track and store campaign results, lead data, and marketing collateral. Copyright Pipeline Management Consulting 4

5 2 Critical Things to Do Before Making a Selection Without thorough knowledge of your organization s needs and business processes, you could purchase the wrong CRM software or not make optimal use of it. To prevent common pitfalls, follow these strategies: Establish specific objectives: Such as improving customer service, lowering costs, increasing sales efficiency, or boosting profits. Determine how CRM will help you achieve them. Develop an implementation plan: Implementing CRM software is a big undertaking. Choose a team with excellent project management skills and an understanding of each department that will be impacted. Before you commit the resources, evaluate the costs-benefits of hiring an outside consultant to assist with the implementation. Assess your customers: Survey your customers to identify areas of improvement, their preferences, and capabilities they would like you to implement. Understand your business processes: Document key business processes that you want to automate or enhance. Diagrams and workflows of each critical stage in a process help ensure no key steps are missed. Get buy-in from your staff: Your teams are more likely to embrace a CRM system that they helped create. It is a good practice to develop a value proposition and business plan that everyone can review and approve. Identify dependencies with your information systems: Determine what specific information systems you need to integrate with the CRM and involve your IT team in the early planning stages. Consider phasing CRM deployment based on priorities: A good approach is to prioritize tasks that will enhance your internal efficiency and productivity. Then plan to phase your deployment to minimize mistakes and complexity. Copyright Pipeline Management Consulting 5

6 3 How to Evaluate and Choose the Right CRM Software When planned thoroughly, selecting the right CRM software will be an easy task. By this time, you will have a good handle on your requirements and it will simply be a matter of finding compatible software to support your needs. The following tips will help to ensure your selection process goes smoothly: Explain your requirements to CRM software vendors: Have a checklist handy that lists the problems you want to solve, your broad goals, the specific business processes you want to automate, and your systems integration requirements. Weigh the pros and cons of different types of platforms: The type of CRM software you choose will depend entirely on your unique goals. But the platform of your system often boils down to your budget and preferences. The most popular CRMs are cloud-base because they require virtually no maintenance and are easy accessibility via the web. Be sure to make the value proposition for your CRM investment clear and to communicate it with your team to improve adoption. Focus on functionality: Instead of aiming for the latest and greatest CRM software, choose a system that can serve your most important needs on a day-to-day basis and can offer the flexibility you need to easily make changes as your business grows. Consider your future needs: Simply put, think scalability. You don t want to be forced to make a new purchase down the road to accommodate your future requirements. Try software demos and involve your teams: Most reputable vendors offer 30-day free trials. So once you ve narrowed down the options, try demos of your top three CRM vendors. And be sure to get each department that will use or be impacted by the CRM implementation involved. Copyright Pipeline Management Consulting 6

7 4 Considerations Before Implementing your CRM Once you ve selected the CRM software, your focus should be to get it up and running according to a defined timeline. Here is a plan to follow: Manage customization efforts: If you re working with a developer to customize the CRM software, you need to explain in a detailed and highly specific manner what you need them to do, and most importantly, why. The why gives them the big picture they need to make sense of the details, and to design an effective solution. Provide user training: Before and after the CRM Software becomes operational provide extensive training to your sales team. Continue training them periodically until they become highly proficient and productive in the use of the CRM Software. Migrate your data carefully: Before you migrate existing data to the CRM, gather and consolidate the data and be sure to update any incorrect, inconsistent, or obsolete information. One of the biggest hurdles you will face will be generating and sustaining buy-in from your internal teams. If you ve only been working with spreadsheets and databases, a CRM system will be a big change. Evaluate your success: Evaluate the success of your CRM system on a regular basis. Gather data and qualitative feedback from your team to measure its effectiveness and make changes where necessary. Copyright Pipeline Management Consulting 7

8 ABOUT PIPELINE MANAGEMENT CONSULTING Pipeline Management is a certified Salesforce.com Cloud Alliance Partner. Our official certification gives our customers the assurance that we have the expertise to deliver robust CRM Software and sales automation solutions built on salesforce.com, one of the best CRM Software platforms in the industry. Learn more about our services by visiting our website at COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER: Copyright Pipeline Management Consulting. All rights reserved. This E-Book is for customer use only and no usage rights are conveyed. Nothing herein may be reproduced, sold publicly distributed, or published in any form, without written permission of Pipeline Management Consulting Copyright Pipeline Management Consulting 8