Getting the most from your CRM system Part 1: Securing success

Step 1: Gain commitment

Successful CRM is 80% good management and 20% good technology with the latter being the enabler that makes possible new ways of working. So, to make your CRM project a success, you’ll need to gain commitment from both the top and bottom of the organisation – from the top, because senior management support is vital to securing the CRM-driven changes to your organisation’s ways of working; from the bottom, because you’ll need staff buy-in to those changes to ensure the success of your project.

Step 2: Keep everyone informed

The introduction of CRM may represent a step-change in how your business does things so it must be managed with proper understanding of the impacts it will have on your staff. Brief them on your project (even if it’s just occasionally) and allocate the responsibility for day-to-day system administration and management. On smaller systems this may just be one key person; in larger deployments you may have to bring together staff from different departments. If you’re unsure about how different people react to change and how to carry them with you, take a look at James A. Belasco’s Teaching the Elephant to Dance and the (rather heavy) Managing Strategic Change by Noel M Tichy

Step 3: Manage through your CRM

Managing your business through the information recorded in your CRM is a valuable contributor to ensuring good adoption. And yet so many companies ignore their CRM system in favour of other (often new) external systems for key management information. Why would you ask your reps to report the number of calls they’ve made each month on an Excel worksheet? Recording visit reports in the system, and reporting on them directly, reduces the effort of data collection and improves the records you keep for each client.

Coming up in part 2 of Getting the most from your CRM system: Insisting on adoption

Continue with part 2 here