Planning Your CRM Implementation? Here’s What You Need to Know
Once you’ve purchased new CRM licences, we know you’ll want to get going as quickly as possible. The real value for you and your team, of course, lies in being able to get into and use your new system.
That way, you’ll start seeing value from your new software right away, rather than spending months fine-tuning every detail. Because no smart business is looking for all tweaks and no traction; that’s not the flying start you want for your new CRM investment. Instead, getting your CRM up and running quickly — and proving its worth — is the smart business move.
The key to that is planning what you need and want from your new CRM. No need to get right down into the details; you can hand that off to an implementation partner. But, whether you only need basic processes reflected in your system with a few changes, custom fields or workflows to match specific business needs, or full-blown consultancy and a customised solution, there are certain steps we recommend taking before you chat with a CRM roll-out partner.
Here, Paddy Purcell, Program Manager at Provident CRM, shares his key pointers for any business looking to roll out a CRM system. Paddy’s been with us for 12 years — he was employee number six in the company, in fact — so he’s seen the long and short of CRM implementation, across multiple sectors and products.
Take it away, Paddy!
Need-to-knows before implementing your CRM
What you want your CRM to do – and what you don’t want it to do Customers who know what they want to achieve from their CRM have the most successful outcomes. So, my advice to customers is: by all means, keep talking to our sales team, but before you engage with an implementation partner like Provident CRM at the consultant and professional services level, sit down yourselves as a group and really think about what you want the CRM to do for you. In an ideal situation, what would you see the CRM achieving for you as a company?
Review (and rethink) your processes Take your CRM implementation as an opportunity to review your processes around how you manage and deal with your customers. It’s a great opportunity to start with a near-clean slate: does every process you have actually serve what you want to learn from the customer, and help shape a stand-out customer experience?
And, if you could start afresh, how would you like your processes to work? Across sales, lead management, conversion, case management and so on, it’s time to review and evolve your current processes. Don’t just ask your CRM to replicate your current ways of working; this implementation is a handy watershed moment you should make the most of.
Whatever your chosen CRM, it’ll also have evolved over the years to support best practices in customer relationships, sales, etc., compiling learnings from across all the businesses and industries using the CRM system worldwide. So look to it for inspiration: could some of the CRM’s processes work better for your company than your status quo?
What you need to plan before implementing a new CRM
Who’s going to use your CRM and what should they get from it? Setting realistic expectations about what your new CRM can and should do for your stakeholders is key for smooth roll-out and successful uptake. Engage with representatives of your user base and find out what they would like from your CRM — and take care to avoid assumptions. I’d suggest nominating stakeholders who’ll make the ultimate decisions on what your CRM will do and support, plus its short and long-term strategy. This is vital to effectively manage the direction and evolution of your CRM for the whole company; too many inputs can result in a Frankenstein-style CRM…and nobody wants that.
Don’t be afraid to cull redundant information If you’re moving from an existing system (or spreadsheets), think through and plan what you’d like migrated into your CRM. A fresh CRM implementation is a fantastic opportunity to do a spring clean on your information. To make those business decisions on what you really want to record to help out your internal staff, your company and your customers, use these key questions:
Have I ever used this piece of information to make a customer’s experience better?
Have I ever reported on this information that I’ve gathered from them?
If the answer to both questions is no, there’s a very strong chance you don’t need the data. Don’t gather just for the sake of gathering.
Consider where you could do with an expert partner’s advice
When you’re implementing a new CRM, hurdles will likely crop up. Bear these common ones in mind, and you’ll be well set to flag them early and turn to your implementation partner for guidance:
Over-complicating solutions leads to more problems Keeping things simple results in the best outcomes — and a shiny new CRM can’t fix a process that was over-complex to begin with (whether that’s sales, pricing, quoting…). When you’re defining the processes you want your CRM to implement and automate, keep it simple. Simple solutions tend to be the best, and they tend to be the ones that last the longest precisely because of their simplicity.
Don’t make user adoption an afterthought If your user adoption strategy isn’t well planned, communicated and prepared for, users can turn against your CRM from day one. And you’ll have an uphill battle after that. User adoption is massive in CRM implementations, so I’d advise extensively consulting your CRM end users. Run workshops, respond to their doubts and needs, and involve them throughout the process so there are no surprises — and no complaints — when it comes to roll-out.
Strategic training, making the best use of everyone’s time Quality CRMs are designed to be intuitive, yes. But you still need thoughtful training to safeguard user adoption: any new system is daunting, and a helping hand to figure it out in the early stages is always a help. Leading CRMs have extensive libraries of training materials, but I wouldn’t recommend your CRM users just dive right in. It’d take days to sift through and find exactly what they need — and this is where an implementation partner can do the work for you. Through tailored training sessions, we’ll share the precise what, where, when and how of your CRM for all relevant teams and users.
Don’t fight the software A quality implementation partner won’t just implement your needs literally and rigidly; we’ll work to understand your goals and find ways to achieve them using your chosen CRM software’s inherent capabilities. My advice is to think of what’s important to you — independent of your CRM solution — and to describe this to us. Then it’s our job to bring that process and business need to life in the CRM, or even use the CRM to improve it beyond your initial take on it. By engaging and working with a partner like this, you’re getting the most out of your CRM software while getting your key functionality into it. And because you’re working with the software, you’re future-proofing your process within the system: when it does inevitably update, your process won’t be compromised.
Avoid micromanaging your CRM Take advantage of the extra knowledge that the CRM system itself has, from thousands of customers working with it across sectors and markets globally. Give your CRM the freedom to bring new ideas to the table; to do what it does best.
Clarify responsibility for defining optimised processes before implementing your new CRM A senior sales figure is often the best-placed person for this on the client side. They can gather and consolidate feedback from your CRM end users, carry forward value-adding ideas, and weed out asks that will only overcomplicate your implementation.
Don’t underestimate the complexity of data migration and system integrations I’ve found that a lot of mis-selling goes on in the industry about data migration, as there’s vested interest in making it seem as seamless and easy as possible. But in the background, data migration is quite complex. What you’re actually asking is for two different IT systems — that store data very differently — to agree on how they’re going to store that data and how they’re going to allow that data to be transferred.
The upshot? Thorough mapping and planning are needed to prepare for data migration and system integrations. Through doing this, you’ll declutter and define a clear scope: what data is vital to migrate to your new CRM? What can you cull? What’s serving your business and employees, and what’s just distracting them or bogging them down? From there, your implementation partner can guide you on the rest.
I’ll sidestep to talk more about how and why data migration is often underestimated here, and how you can prepare for it effectively. If you don’t need more detail on that just now, skip ahead to the end of the italics.
Why is CRM data migration often more complex than expected?
The industry as a whole tends to sell data migration as simple and straightforward. And it can be smooth, but only with good planning and realistic objectives. Up top of the priorities should be agreeing with your implementation partner on how best to present your data in your new CRM system.
Customers and partners alike can underestimate the challenges and complexity of data migration. Frankly, it’s labour and time-intensive (especially if it has to be done bespoke/from scratch).
No two IT systems store data the same way, which creates unavoidable complexity. The puzzle is getting one system’s data to make sense in another system, and that’s where an expert partner comes in handy.
The larger the data volumes, the more complex your migration gets. More linked data means more complications, too.
Even if it’s possible to use tools that automate parts — or all — of your data migration, some manual intervention and data mapping are usually required.
So, how to prepare properly?
Think about your data migration needs internally before engaging with a CRM vendor and implementation partner. The more you plan before engaging with a vendor, the more likely you’ll get the outcome you want.
Figure out the data sets that you need to migrate and the data sets you can leave behind for a fresh CRM start.
Familiarise yourself with your old system and new system so you can picture and define how the data will look on the new system. This greatly helps vendors when planning and providing advice on your migration (most of the vendor’s questions will be on mapping the data in your new system vs your old system).
Know whether you need your data migration done at once, or whether you can have it done in batches (over a number of days, for example).
Checklist: CRM best practices for rapid ROI and long-term success
✓ User adoption, integration, data migration: Plan, plan and plan
✓ Understand your processes: The better you do, the more effective your CRM customisation will be
✓ Define your business goals first. Then build your CRM to help you achieve them. (Underwhelming implementations come from expecting a CRM to guide your goals for you.)
✓ Start simple with your implementation, and grow and evolve the CRM over time. No Frankensteins here, and don’t try to have everything from day one. Scalability comes from a straightforward start.
✓ Support and training: Proactively engage your stakeholders, be realistic about what a CRM can do for them and make sure you factor in proper onboarding.
✓ Budget and ROI: Use as much of your CRM as you can out of the box. This will serve you better in the long term, with just a few targeted customisations to begin with.
Let’s fast-track your CRM roll-out
Remember, a good CRM implementation will evolve as your company grows and changes its processes. A quality, well-implemented CRM will be flexible enough to do that — so trying to get everything 100% perfect from day one is a bit like saying your company needs to be 100% perfect from day one. And we all know that’s not how it works!
Companies grow and review all the time. They ditch what doesn’t work, and they bring in new elements that will. They’re constantly changing and evolving. That’s how they stay relevant; that’s how they stay successful. By taking the same approach to your CRM, you’re giving yourself a far higher chance of your implementation being a successful, relevant game-changer for your company; one that delivers short and long-term ROI.
So, ready to get up and running fast?
Book your discovery call with our team via the link below.
