Formerly, it was wildly thought that CRM was the destiny of large corporations. It was an expensive technology that required major investment and professional support from an integrator. Generally speaking, it was good but expensive and cost-effective only in case you were a big company.
As the market developed, the technology became available to companies of any size, and nowadays even the very small or start-up businesses can use free versions of some well-known products. It seems, presently everyone understands the benefits of using CRM: from government agencies to family workshops. But it is not only the high cost that has disappeared. The implementation culture is gone as well.
What is the average scenario of CRM implementation? The company grows, it gets more customers, the employees get lost under the piles of papers and Excel spreadsheets, customer data is disorganized, sales fall, everybody is stressed out. The leaders see they need to change the culture right away to automate most of the routine workflows. They head to the virtual market, select a product rather by external qualities, buy a license, and name one or more responsible employees to learn how to use it so that they could teach others. In the best-case scenario, six months later, it turns out the papers and Excel spreadsheets are still there, while the money and time are wasted. Why?
Because CRM is not just another app that you can install on your device and start using it straight off. As well as CRM is neither a panacea for all woes nor a magic wand that can solve all the problems with the mere fact of its existence. CRM is a large, vital project designed to solve a specific issue of a particular company. And for the project to be successful, one should work hard to prepare for it.
The success of the whole project depends on how thoroughly you set up the preparatory phase. Will employees eventually use the new system? Will it help automate the workflows? Will your investment pay off? It all stands on what is done at the start.
We have been implementing Bitrix24 for over 10 years, and we know a lot about this business. Here's the main thing that we have learned so far: for CRM to work for your business, one needs to judge from the business, not vice versa.
Preparation
Specify the purpose of implementing CRM
Increase employees' productivity, enter a new market, and set up remote work — these are three different tasks that require different approaches. Primary functionality, the complexity and the need for customization, the format of employee training, and other project variables depend on the main goal of the project.
The more blurred the goal, the higher the probability that you will waste your money on unnecessary development, and that you will not be able to assess the outcome.
To determine the purpose of CRM implementation and find out what tasks CRM is to solve in your company, ask yourself the following questions:
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What do I want to improve in my business or in my company?
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What are the fallbacks in my company's work right now?
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What issues made me think about CRM implementation?
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What specific problems am I trying to solve with the implementation?
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Who will use CRM in my company?
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Who does not need or should not use it?
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Are the employees ready for CRM implementation?
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Why am I planning to implement CRM right now?
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What instruments would I like it to have in general?
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What results do I plan to see in a month, in six months and in a year after implementation?
Try to give as thorough answers as possible. Then, arrange the insights into functional blocks and form your request based on a structured list of targets.
Investigate your workflows
Apply the same basic principle as when building a house: measure thrice and cut once. The more you work during the preparation process, the more reliable is your construction. Therefore, we strongly recommend you to work out a detailed roadmap before the start of the project. It will be the basis for the structural diagram of your future CRM. It is best to join forces with an experienced integrator who knows the product and can offer optimal solutions for the business tasks you have listed.
Start with a thorough and detailed analysis of all aspects of the company's work span:
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Structure: What is the hierarchy in your company? How many departments are there and what functions do they perform? How many employees are there in your company? What tasks do they fulfill?
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Products and services: What products does your company provide? What distribution channels do you use?
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Customers: Who is your target audience? Where do new customers come from? How can you classify the current customer base?
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Sales: Describe the current scheme of how an initial claim becomes a deal, the deal becomes a sale, the sale becomes a resale? What tools do you use right now? What do you use them for?
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Marketing: What marketing tool does your company work with? How do you build customer relations? How do you work with customer loyalty? How do you distribute your products and services?
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Productivity: How do you measure your company's efficiency as a whole? What tools do you use to assess your employees' productivity?
Most likely, right in the course of analytical work, you will start to see your company's weak spots: at what stage you usually lose a deal, why you don't get enough sales, and what routine workflows take too much of your employees' time and attention. Thus, you will be able to determine what workflows you need to automate in the first place, and how to build a sales funnel so that it could benefit your business.
It is quite an exhausting stage that requires a lot of time, and often companies tend to delegate it to an integrator. This approach is not quite viable, as no one knows your company better than you. By giving it all to the contractor, you run the risk of getting a rather complicated CRM with many unnecessary elements and extra stages in the sales funnel. And it affects whether the employees will use a new tool or the project will be just a waste of time and money.
And vice versa, by trying to master everything yourself, you run the risk of missing the opportunity to improve workflows and increase business efficiency, which in itself is the ultimate goal of CRM implementation.
What if you skip these steps?
Let’s consider a real-life example. A client of ours decided to implement a project management system with no proper grounding. The leaders bought a software program, gave keys to the two most proactive managers, and invited them to study the product. Later on, the managers were supposed to make the rest of the employees use the new system. Each manager approached the task creatively and set up the project pipeline in their own way. Without a clear work plan, they inundated the leaders of the organization with unnecessary data, which is why the latter asked to exclude them from monitoring the workflow. After losing access to the system, the leaders kept using the old methods of communication: email and phone.
Other employees didn’t see a unified process as well, because both managers led projects following different schemes and algorithms. Soon, it became clear that apart from the pioneers, no one used the product. Although the managers themselves liked the system and they were glad to organize the data and put things in order, they quickly abandoned the new product — it made no sense to keep it only for themselves.
As a result, they came to us searching for an integrator rather than for a specific CRM. Previous experience taught them how important it was to think it through in advance and match expectations with reality.
Early research & analysis of the project
Surely, not all the companies have the necessary amount of time and human resources to conduct internal audit and develop a detailed mock-up of future CRM. But the truth is that this step defines the final figures. It is rather difficult to estimate the terms and final costs of the project without a clear strategy.
We stand for the benefit. We believe that CRM and its customization must bring value to the business. Therefore, as the first stage of the preparation process, we offer a service of early research and analysis of the project. Our specialists will immerse themselves in your business and conduct interviews with key influencers. As a result, they will document all received info in a special text that will outline the main risks, tasks, and special aspects of the upcoming project. You can find an example of such a document on our website.
It is important to note that the results of the project research can be used both as a road map for further development of the project and as tender documentation when choosing a contractor. It does not commit you to anything.
If you want to calculate risks in advance and ensure return on investment — text us.
