People do not plan to fail – They fail to plan

CRM applications have been around for more than two decades and have grown from Salesforce, which was the first to market; with plenty of customers who are enjoying the process while thousands are seeking more intuitive products, to dozens that serve industry niches with exceptional accuracy.

Although there are well-documented success stories, there are equally many stories of CRM failures. Gartner and other analysts often float 50% or more when discussing the rate of CRM failures. Why does the span of success stories vs. failures occur? What should you expect from implementing a CRM application? What should you be watching for, avoiding and requiring from your CRM selection?

The simple answer is CRM’s fail to deliver on time, functionality as promised, costs with exorbitant programming, consultant fees to achieve processes, lack of anticipated reporting, and lack of user adoption. The path to success is fairly simple and should not be a major undertaking to provide exceptional outcomes that will grow your business with predictability and improve time management. Employees will find the quality of life freeing from arduous record keeping and reporting with the right CRM.

Why do failures occur with CRM implementation? Failures are typically a result of confusion when organizations fail to understand the proper methodology necessary to select the right CRM, allow accountability to go unchecked or fail to implement a top-down requirement to follow best practices and use of the CRM.

I am presenting the steps and processes organizations should follow that will result in successful implementation and user adoption.

Please download word document that will aid in proper planning.

Be sure you completely explore the following.

1. Requirements - Key personnel needs to establish a list of requirements, needs, wants, and organize with a clear focus on improving processes, data, reporting, and other outcomes identified.
2. Budget – Examine all costs to include onboarding, training, data consolidating, subscription fees, and potential additional fees. Determine your budget and contingencies and be sure to avoid sunk costs
3. Scheduling – Determine who your power user will be who will manage the CRM internally and be the primary contact with your vendor, schedule training of the organizations' team and help create processes alongside the CRM implementation.
4. Demo’s – It is important that all previous steps be your guide. Require all needs and processes are demonstrated in a demo to ensure custom programming will not be required to deploy your CRM. Be sure the provider will allow your cost of ownership from growing with changes, programming, and time delays.
5. Subscription – Select your CRM that will allow your organization to complete access for access to your data at all times. Avoid pre-paying annual fees in advance when monthly is an option and require all potential fees to be outlined in advance.
6. Training – Phone – digital and user guides should all be available to address all needs both during implementation and ongoing.

   Cool Life CRM will guarantee delivery, improve data stewardship,  give you a “360° view”,
   train all users until your entire team fully embraces the CRM, and control costs keeping you in the budget.