Deciding amongst different customer relationship management (CRM) tools can get complicated quickly. Quite simply, it is very difficult to manage customers, projects, or programs spanning multiple platforms, tools, and teams. But let’s simplify the situation by first addressing the best CRM implementation tips and strategy for a project manager to build a customer relationship management system that supports your business.
Strategies and tips to a successful Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools implementation
1. Gather historical information
Identify as much historical information as possible. What tools has your team previously implemented, used, or researched in the past? What were the outcomes? Conduct formal and informal interviews with leadership, colleagues, and other important stakeholders.
2. Access stakeholder knowledge
Get your stakeholders together to determine the needs of your team. Reveal everyone’s perspectives and incorporate them into a new or existing tool. Facilitating effective meetings can be difficult to master; however, when done correctly, it can be artful. During this meeting, your primary objective is to gather, observe, and collect knowledge.
“The way to get good ideas is to start with lots of ideas, and throw the bad ones away” (Baker, 2010)
Not only will you discover solutions, but stakeholders will build relationships while the group works towards a common goal.
Now you have done your research, collected your information, and assimilated all the knowledge, so selecting a Content Relationship Management (CRM) system should be straightforward. If you have the budget – build your own. It will be more expensive upfront; however, poor implementation of CRMs could cause project cancellation and restart. Expenses increase rapidly when you are forced to do it two or three times.
3. Connect with your executive sponsor
Do you think you’ve got a good idea? Try pitching it to your executive.
Research and know the desires of your audience. Which executive is most likely to be passionate about CRM? Do they appreciate slide presentations, or would they rather have a conversation?
Either way, leader sponsorship, and buy-in is pivotal to getting the project off the ground successfully. Keep your pitch concise and focused to ensure that they get excited. Here are some tips to help you get them engaged:
- What will you accomplish? In other words, what are the project goals. Don’t forget to add numbers.
- How will the project goals be accomplished?
- What is needed to ensure success?
4. Establish responsibilities
Power users may be an easily forgotten role in CRM implementation. However, regardless of buying or building, you will need a power user.
If you are building, include the original group of stakeholders as your power users and consider adding engineers. When buying, hire a power user on contract as you build and customize the CRM. Consider keeping your power user on retainer while you work through bugs during the first 12-18 months.
5. Attain leadership commitment
Ensure that stakeholders’ needs are met. Check. Ensure your executive sponsor is excited and passionate. Check. Confirm that you have a reasonable budget and mitigated constraints. Check. Only after you have buy-in from leadership should you consider the next steps for implementation. Hold a meeting to get them excited about how and why this is going to make their lives easier is recommended. Get feedback and correct your course if needed.
Also Read: THE ART OF SEAMLESS IMPLEMENTATION: HOW TO TURN IDEAS INTO REALITY
6. Launch big
Conducting initial training for employees is a must. Determine the needs of your situation. Is it best to hold a company-wide training event or train individual teams? Make it fun and engaging, and get people motivated to make a change and work hard. Obviously, changing behavior is difficult. You will be the one that starts the day of the launch and continue to motivate the team from there.
7. Educate. Educate. Educate
Deliver simple guidelines on how and when to use the CRM. Build documentation and serve it up on easy-to-reference FAQs. Confer with the teams regularly, and then transition to less frequent meetings.
Everyone must understand and use the tool. Ensure leadership attends the training and actively participates. Any project can fail fast if excitement is not reflected in leadership, stakeholders, and executives.
8. Make a solid commitment
In the end, commitment ensures happiness. Why should people commit? Tell them. Show them. Remind them to use the tool, and then remind them again.
Undoubtedly, there will be problems, bugs, complaints, and hard times. Prior to the launch, establish a clear process to fix any bugs. You will need it. Ask employees for feedback and then… Iterate. Iterate. Iterate.
Carefully consider any decision to start over. There are many great CRM choices. Most of them have similar features. If you go with a top choice, you will be picking from a good, better, or best situation. Starting over with the newest tool is not necessarily going to fix the problem. Pick what fits your team and iterate. The key to success is using the best Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools, implementation tips, and strategies from the start.
References
Baker, E. (2010). Project management tools and techniques that work! A baker’s dozen. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2010—North America, Washington, DC. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
