What CRM is right for me?
A friend asked me a very good question this past week about what CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution is right for a small business. However, before recommending tools, I'd like to introduce a thought process that each organization should go through prior to even calling a software vendor or hitting the shelves at Best Buy depending on your size.
Step 1: Begin by defining the problem statement. You should be able to clearly articulate why you need to change the way you are doing things, what is the return you expect from your investment either hard or soft cost or both, and what would be the impact of not changing. Once you've sure that the problem is big enough to warrant your time to investigate a solution and worth the investment begin to write down what the critical success factors are for the purchase.
Step 2: Define the critical success factors: A critical success factor should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Measurable, and Time Bound). An example of a critical success factor could be as simple as 'We'd like to increase the lead to opportunity conversion ratio by 5% in the next 6 months' or 'We'd like to increase the number of service tickets handled by customer support by 25% without adding headcount in the next 12 months'. Once you understand the problem you are trying to fix and the metrics by which you'll know whether your initiative was successful it's time to move on to the next step.
Step 3: Ensure adoption with WIIFMs: What's in it for Me. There are three important constituents you need to take into consideration when it comes to any CRM solution - customers, employees, and management. For the customer you should clearly understand how this investment will make their experience with your organization more special. One example is tracking lots of personal data like Harvey Mackay and the Mackay 66 questions he answered about every customer. Another example could be exceeding service level agreement when it comes to resolving customer issues by having a superior process to within your support group. Next is your employees - nothing will make a CRM fail faster than lack of user adoption. I'll cover this topic in much more detail in an upcoming article but for purposes of this discussion, users must feel bought into the system. In some way, shape, or form it should make their lives a little easier. Last is the needs of management. Typically these revolve around reporting and metrics and most tools have good engines for extracting this data. The hard part is making sure the data gets in the system which is why it's so important to get your end users bought in and making sure your customers are impacted in a positive way.
Step 4: Now once you truly understand what you are trying to accomplish, go out and begin speaking with CRM consultants and software vendors to decide which one is right for you. For a small business, I would recommend looking at ACT, Salesforce.com, Sage CRM, and Microsoft CRM. Goldmine and OnContact are also decent packages but have a lot less marketshare and their future is a little unclear. Depending on your needs you can spend as little as $200 per user to $1500 per user for licensing in the first year. On average, consulting or the time it takes you to set up your CRM if you are a do-it-yourself type of person will be one to two times the cost of the first year software investment.
Step 1: Begin by defining the problem statement. You should be able to clearly articulate why you need to change the way you are doing things, what is the return you expect from your investment either hard or soft cost or both, and what would be the impact of not changing. Once you've sure that the problem is big enough to warrant your time to investigate a solution and worth the investment begin to write down what the critical success factors are for the purchase.
Step 2: Define the critical success factors: A critical success factor should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Measurable, and Time Bound). An example of a critical success factor could be as simple as 'We'd like to increase the lead to opportunity conversion ratio by 5% in the next 6 months' or 'We'd like to increase the number of service tickets handled by customer support by 25% without adding headcount in the next 12 months'. Once you understand the problem you are trying to fix and the metrics by which you'll know whether your initiative was successful it's time to move on to the next step.
Step 3: Ensure adoption with WIIFMs: What's in it for Me. There are three important constituents you need to take into consideration when it comes to any CRM solution - customers, employees, and management. For the customer you should clearly understand how this investment will make their experience with your organization more special. One example is tracking lots of personal data like Harvey Mackay and the Mackay 66 questions he answered about every customer. Another example could be exceeding service level agreement when it comes to resolving customer issues by having a superior process to within your support group. Next is your employees - nothing will make a CRM fail faster than lack of user adoption. I'll cover this topic in much more detail in an upcoming article but for purposes of this discussion, users must feel bought into the system. In some way, shape, or form it should make their lives a little easier. Last is the needs of management. Typically these revolve around reporting and metrics and most tools have good engines for extracting this data. The hard part is making sure the data gets in the system which is why it's so important to get your end users bought in and making sure your customers are impacted in a positive way.
Step 4: Now once you truly understand what you are trying to accomplish, go out and begin speaking with CRM consultants and software vendors to decide which one is right for you. For a small business, I would recommend looking at ACT, Salesforce.com, Sage CRM, and Microsoft CRM. Goldmine and OnContact are also decent packages but have a lot less marketshare and their future is a little unclear. Depending on your needs you can spend as little as $200 per user to $1500 per user for licensing in the first year. On average, consulting or the time it takes you to set up your CRM if you are a do-it-yourself type of person will be one to two times the cost of the first year software investment.
posted by Matt Rosen at
6:06 AM
2 Comments:
“…nothing will make a CRM fail faster than lack of user adoption.” I totally agree with this because this is one of the most important parts to make CRM work for your business. Employees must understand the importance of properly using CRM and its processes to make the whole business operation more productive. Also, the management must encourage employees to perform better in their designated positions because a team that works together has a better chance of succeeding in its chosen field.
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Jamie Shellman
Ask for professional advice. This is the safest and surest way for you to land the right CRM for your business. It’ll save you a lot of time and effort, while learning at the same time. Ask for a training manual or have them demonstrate the software to you and your employees so that you can maximize the software’s features.
-Tianna Flemings
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