Since customer relationship management (CRM) connects to all aspects
of an organization, purchasers must know the intricacies of their own
businesses as well as the products and vendors available to them. That’s
why we divided this guide in two parts: Know Yourself and Know Your
Requirements.
I. Know Yourself
Buying CRM starts with the question, “Why do I need a CRM solution?”
Many CRM projects fail because that question is never asked. With that
in mind, here are four steps that will help you provide an answer and
prepare your organization to evaluate CRM solutions.
Step 1. Look At Your Business
Develop a thorough understanding of how your business really works.
Not how it should work or how you assume it works. Take this opportunity
to map your business processes, their dependencies, and how changes to
those processes can affect others. Begin with processes that aren’t
working well. These will correlate with areas of your business that can
be improved and help you identify
those that can be addressed with CRM. Process mapping will also reveal
processes that work well. These processes may not need to be changed,
but changes to other processes could affect them.
The evaluation that accompanies process mapping requires total
honesty, which can bruise feelings. The objectivity of a third-party
consultant can help minimize the dissension this might cause. A
consultant can also reduce the internal resources needed to conduct
process mapping.
At the end of the process mapping exercise, you should have a list of
processes and activities that can be improved with CRM. The mapping
exercise could show that your business isn’t ready for CRM or that the
problems it faces can’t be solved by CRM. This is valuable information
to have. Making the jump to CRM too early or for the wrong reasons will
result in frustration and dissatisfaction.
Step 2. Pick The Right People For The Team
In addition to executive leadership and IT, enlist a group of
front-line users to participate in the selection process — and listen to
them. Not only will this ensure that you understand what users want and
think is important, it will help accelerate adoption among their peers
once a solution is chosen. Too often decisions are made about CRM
applications without input from the people who will use them.
Step 3. Know The Regulatory Environment
It’s also important to take into account how information systems
impact your ability to satisfy compliance requirements in your industry.
Regulatory bodies vary in the restrictions and procedures they mandate
for how data must be stored and managed. Solution delivery methods such
as software as a service (SaaS) may not be appropriate in certain
industries because they rely on a shared services model.
Step 4. Understand How The CRM Delivery Model Will Impact Your Budget
On-premise CRM software requires companies to own or lease the
technology infrastructure — servers, storage, backup and recovery, and
networking capabilities — and to provide the personnel who maintain it.
There are also software license costs, maintenance fees, and integration
expenses. Cloud-based SaaS software uses infrastructure provided by the
CRM vendor, and while there may be integration costs, the software
licensing expense is paid as a monthly subscription per user.
Certainly, smaller, cash-strapped companies often use the cloud.
Likewise, larger companies with IT resources frequently use on-premise.
But there are many exceptions to that general rule. More and more large
companies employ cloud-based applications because they shift hardware
requirements and the installation of patches and updates to the vendor.
Conversely, smaller companies in fields where regulation makes the cloud
problematic elect on-premise solutions.
Now You Have A Framework
The first four steps give you a framework to make a CRM selection
that addresses your problems while creating a minimum of new ones. The
framework includes:
* A list of processes and activities you need to improve
* A CRM decision-making team that includes users
* A knowledge of the regulatory constraints that may influence your decision
* An understanding of how the CRM delivery model will affect budgeting
II. Know Your Requirements
What is a good CRM solution? A solution that fits your business.
Features are part of the equation, but more important are business
considerations such as stakeholder interests, budget, support,
integration, and industry demands. You also want a vendor that will work
well with your organization over the long haul.
Step 5. Integration Requirements
Whether you plan to use CRM as a departmental solution or across your
entire organization, integration can add significant cost and delay to a
CRM implementation. So it’s wise to make ease of integration one of
your preliminary criteria. Even if you have no immediate plans to
integrate, a solution that’s too rudimentary or too complex to integrate
with existing systems will almost certainly cause problems eventually —
problems that will be expensive to fix.
Step 6. Support Requirements
No matter how adept your staff, they’ll need some degree of help with
the CRM product you choose. Knowing their level of sophistication will
help you determine how much, which is important since levels and costs
of support vary from vendor to vendor.
Use your social network to find peers who have employed support from
CRM vendors. They can be a source of unvarnished opinions about this
important area. When you’re comparing vendors with similar capabilities,
how they stack up in terms of support — cost and responsiveness — can
be a deciding factor.
Step 7: Vertical Market Requirements
Are you in an industry that collects unique forms of customer data or
in which customers negotiate a specific, non-standard path to buying?
If so, there may be CRM solutions tailored to your industry.
Purpose-built CRM applications have been created for insurance, real
estate, agribusiness, non-profits, and others.
Companies such as resellers or distributors may need to manage tiers
of customer relationships with direct customers, partners, and customers
who buy from partners. These companies often buy CRM and find it
ineffective. A related technology, partner relationship management
(PRM), could be a better option for these businesses.
If your market does have unique demands, don’t forego a look at
horizontally targeted CRM systems. They’re often more flexible than
purpose-built solutions and, with the right customizations, may work
better for your organization.
Step 8: Feature Requirements
Good CRM solutions have the same basic features. And features that are rarely used shouldn’t drive purchase decisions.
Feature selection is where the process mapping exercise proves
especially valuable. In that exercise, you identified business problems
you needed to solve or activities you wanted to improve. Look for
features that map to those areas. For example, if you want to
incorporate social media into your CRM strategy, look for a solution
that can link with social networks to offer an expanded view of the
customer relationship.
Listen to your front-line users on the selection team. Allow them to
identify things that will make their jobs easier and use those ideas to
guide decision-making about features.
Step 9: Financial Requirements
By now, you probably have several solutions in mind. It’s time to
decide which of these is most affordable. As stated earlier, costs will
vary depending on the delivery model. For example, on-premise software
may carry an annual maintenance fee of 22 percent or more. Assess the
full initial cost of your CRM candidates and their projected annual
costs. Solutions that don’t fit your budget can be scratched from your
shortlist.
Step 10: Vendor Requirements
When you think you’ve found the right CRM solution, examine that
vendor’s track record — and do it independently. Vendors cherry pick
their references so they may not reflect the majority of buyers’
experiences. Again, social media can be useful here. Ask whether a CRM
implementation was genuinely transformative and, if so, what role the
vendor played in that. You should also learn
something about a vendor’s financial stability. Once you’ve made your
selection, you want to be sure the vendor will remain in business to
support you in the future.
Getting It Right
The road to buying a CRM solution contains multiple decision points
where your business requirements intersect with what the market offers.
Take the time to make informed decisions. Even if your company decides
against implementing a CRM solution, the evaluation process can improve
efficiency and be the catalyst for a more customer-centric approach to
business.
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