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|  |  Article: CRM Implementation 1 April 4, 2008 CRM Implementation 1 The creation and implementation of a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) program is tantamount to the creation and implementation of a strategic marketing plan. As with any strategic marketing plan, a CRM program needs to include not only the rationale for implementation, but also a clear set of objectives along with the sales and marketing and software considerations needed for success. The reasons for a CRM program in the office products industry or any industry have become obvious and don’t require much space here. In a nutshell, CRM is a strategy to learn more about customer needs and behaviors to be able to develop stronger relationships in order to enhance both new customer development and current customer penetration and retention. Creation and implementation needs to begin with a realistic timeframe. Though some programs can be implemented in as short a time as three months, one year or more is a realistic timeframe. A logical starting point for a company should be centered on what it wants to achieve – a clear set of objectives. Once objectives are set, a company must examine its customer centric processes currently in place and decide what’s working and what isn’t and what needs to be changed. A company also needs to look at what customer information needs to be stored and processed, what levels of customer contact are needed, and how is the contact to be monitored. At this point, the CRM software to be used should be a low priority. Software cannot be viewed as the out-of-the-box panacea for success. It should be the piece of the program that comes after the customer-centric processes and marketing considerations listed above, and ultimately automated, are finalized. Without this, unsound sales and marketing strategies would be automated and the result would be an unsuccessful program and a lot of money wasted. An alarming statistic from the CRM industry relates that 50-75% of CRM implementations fail when software technology considerations are given priority over business process. The planning portion of a successful program needs to involve the company personnel that will be directly involved in the program. This usually includes sales, customer service and sales and marketing management. However, all other customer-facing personnel need to be considered, such as those in accounting and in the warehouse. Sales and customer service, especially, are the personnel “in the trenches” with customers on a day-to-day basis and have a real sensitivity to customer needs as well as what’s working and not working in customer interactions. And above all, they know what most likely needs to be changed in order to enhance customer relationships, customer contact and overall customer problem solving. Historically companies that involve their personnel in the planning process have a much higher rate of program success. Involvement results in far less “fighting” of the changes that programs such as CRM bring to a company. Sales people, especially, resist change most, but are always key players in a CRM program. Once objectives and processes are in place, software, technology infrastructure and training considerations need to be thoroughly evaluated and decided on. Let’s look at each piece: Software: The key considerations for a company in choosing a CRM software package are: · Does the software have the features and functionality to implement and drive the processes and overall program objectives? · Is the software easy to learn or will the learning curve be long and perhaps lead to discouragement with less computer literate personnel? · Does the software vendor have adequate support after installation and training? Let’s look at each software consideration: Software features and functionality should include the capability to automate sales and marketing processes. This aspect is referred to as Sales Force Automation (SFA).
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