How to Prepare Your organization for CRM Implementation?

You selected a CRM and are ready to implement. What do you need to do to prepare your organization? Actually, the plan is similar to preparing for any new habit, like a new year’s resolution. It is time to get your head in the right frame of mind for long term success. Here are some tips for how you can do it:

1) Create a strategy

Focus on a long-term strategy. There are numerous reasons to why companies implement large implementations all at once. It can be a truly transformational experience. However, we find that a long-term roadmap will improve adoption, build a more aligned solution, and will be more likely to meet implementation goals.

A strategy includes setting your vision, analyzing your organization through SWOT analysis, analyzing your environment, and defining opportunities that will incrementally contribute to obtaining your business goals and objectives. Convert those opportunities into tangible requirements and set a business value for each. This will lay the framework of building out your short and long-term strategy based on the requirements that provide the most benefit for the least effort.

2) Set your goals

The goals that you set should be directly aligned to the company’s visions and goals. Whether you are increasing revenue, reducing costs, providing higher quality of service, or bringing new services to market, aligning your goals to the business will show immediate results. It is much easier for stakeholders to back an engagement that will directly contribute to their business objectives. It is also much easier to make decisions and weed out unnecessary technical requirements that are in alignment.

Don’t forget goals should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time Bound). What KPIs are you looking to obtain?

3) Prepare a team

Communication is crucial to all projects. Prepare a team from all key areas that will be impacted. That will include Sales, Service, Support, Executive Management, Security, Legal, and Finance. No matter what cloud you are implementing, they all have a part to play. They all have their own pain points. They all have ideas that can help you achieve your goals faster and better.

Outside of the stakeholder appointees, you will need the following players:

• A strong project manager that knows the key players of the organization and can negotiate information and execution.
• An architect and/or technicians that can learn quickly and align technical requirements with business goals. It also can help if they understand the business and technical architecture of the environment.
• Appoint an administrator of Salesforce unless you are outsourcing the work. It is key that they are involved early and often throughout the entire project.

Last but not least, put together a solid sample of a user base of your top experts. Knowing they are busy, it is important you select the best. These are the people who know how the business runs and how it succeeds. More importantly, they are the influencers. The CRM will support the business and likely enforce the processes that your leaders are defining, make sure they are actively engaged.

4) Basic tenants of change

Don’t forget the foundation of all successful implementation:.

• Executive sponsorship. Executives need to champion or assign champions to ensure the CRM installation success.
• Communicate, communicate, communicate. Status reports, demos, stakeholder design reviews, and use of Chatter cannot be done enough.
• Training reinforcement. Training is the #1 way for a company to improve adoption. A 3-prong approach of videos, trailhead, and in-person training will help to cover the different learning styles of the users
• Data quality. The #1 reason for CRM implementations fail is due to data quality. Build a strong foundation by getting data clean and implementing rigor to keep it clean and valuable.

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