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CRM implementation through the eyes of the customer

The topic of implementing CRM systems has been repeatedly covered on Habré in many articles, which are mainly written by representatives of development companies or integrators of CRM solutions, the purpose of which is to sell your services to you. This article was written by a customer representative and may be of interest to medium or large businesses as a view from the other side. Below there will be no names of products or companies, but only a thesis summary of experience, acquaintance with which will probably be of benefit to you.

What do you want to get from CRM?


Before you begin implementing CRM, give yourself the answer to this question. The absolute fact that CRM is not a “silver bullet” and implementation for the sake of implementation, driven by the desire to get a system with many functions, is likely to lead to failure. Implementing CRM should be a goal to achieve measurable and understandable business goals on time. For example, “by the end of the first quarter after the introduction of CRM, the order processing speed should increase by 50%”, the goal is much better than “our competitors use CRM, we cannot afford to lag behind - we are introducing”. Only knowing exactly what you want, you can get what you need.

Preparing for system selection


Do you know exactly how your business works? It would seem a paradoxical question, because as a CEO, you may not know how his company works. To implement CRM, you need to understand not only the whole, but also the particular, in all details. The larger the company, the often more complex and confusing the business processes occurring in it. Knowing your business processes is the foundation of successful implementation. Before you start choosing to understand your business, build a detailed diagram of your business processes. The construction and analysis of this scheme will help to identify additional system limitations or bottlenecks, the elimination of which may be the goal of a whole range of measures to improve the efficiency of your business. Implementing CRM is just one of the possible activities that you need to be sure of.

System selection


Start with a market analysis, make a list of potentially interesting solutions for you, it can include several dozen positions, and then consider each of these solutions separately.

One of the criteria for choosing from a variety of ready-made CRM systems may be the answer to the question: “Solution“ N ”“ out of the box ”how much corresponds to our business processes and the goal of implementation?”. Proceed solely from your own needs, and not from the potential capabilities of the system and the likelihood of a successful choice will increase significantly. The solution in question can have many amazing functions that you will never get to use or maybe they simply are not applicable in your business, but if this solution requires a long and substantial development for your current processes, then this is an occasion to think about something else supplier. If the system can be configured and / or dispensed with with minor modifications for your current business processes, then add the supplier to the “short list”.

Do not succumb to the tricks of marketers and do not chase well-known brands, for a company with hundreds of thousands of customers, you are only a fraction of a percent of the income and it is naive to expect that it will quickly fix not massive but critical bugs for you or introduce the function you need to the core. Yes, and you will work with a well-known brand through an integrator who can justify his incompetence with the “features” of the system core. Choosing a less promoted brand is more likely that they will want to hear you and that your problem will be solved in principle.

If all the systems in question make you feel somewhat dissatisfied, maybe you should compromise? Or start to create your own system? To build your system, your company must have its own IT competencies and a willingness to start recruiting new specialists at a market price, and many articles have been written about the complexity of selecting qualified personnel in the IT field.

CRM implementation is expensive


And this is not only a license and payment for the services of a provider. If you find a supplier, you will at least have to allocate a Product Manager who can devote all his working time to CRM. This person should understand the business and have sufficient authority to make decisions, which will avoid hours of meetings devoted to choosing the color of buttons and the layout of interface elements.

If the implementation of CRM requires significant improvements, then add the cost of testing specialists, but we will not put the solution in production without making sure of its quality. And if you do not have formalized business processes, then add the cost of analysts, in any case you have to describe the BP. If you need complex integrations with existing systems, then this is also the cost of a system architect and developers, because you provide the API. If cloud solutions do not suit you, then get ready for spending on server infrastructure, in some cases we can talk about millions of rubles.

Conclusion


Remember that battles are won even before they begin, and the more carefully you analyze the existing solutions, the more detailed your BP description, the more detailed your technical specifications, the less risks there will be in increasing the terms and cost of the project. Separately, I want to note that you should not expect the highest professionalism from representatives of the supplier, they most likely have the same personnel as everywhere else, therefore we set tasks in detail and clearly, we fix all agreements in writing and carefully check the result.

If you have to integrate CRM with various non-standard systems, and the boxed solution requires significant improvements, then the idea of ​​creating your own highly specialized solution is not as bad as it seems initially, but only on condition that the company already has experience in developing IT solutions. As a result, you get a “bicycle”, but you can ride on it, not fall, gradually introducing the necessary functionality and flexibly adapt to changing business conditions.

If you can get by with a standard solution, with really small improvements, and not with an implementation cycle of several years, then a standard solution is the best option.

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