All industries are affected by the boom in CRM software, which is essential to the smooth running of sales and marketing operations. This need has become so widespread that companies can now acquire ultra-powerful solutions for just a few hundred euros per user per year.
But this ease of access hides many pitfalls... Among the reasons why CRM projects fail are, of course, the wrong choice of tools, but also underestimation of the workload or time required, unpreparedness of human organizations upstream, and last but not least, the crux of the matter: poorly written or no specifications at all!
So, to make your CRM implementation a complete success, let's review the crucial points you need to know and master!
Reminder: CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a customer relationship management system designed to improve customer interaction, satisfaction and loyalty by centralizing and analyzing customer data.
Implementing a new CRM system can have a considerable impact on the way your company operates. It's usually difficult to imagine how it will be received by users. And, even with a user-centric solution, implementing a CRM can pose challenges in terms of animation and time allocation.
The first question to ask is that of timing: if the company already has major software projects underway or other tools being implemented, a change of CRM can become a source of additional stress for employees. Choose a period of relative calm (in terms of technological change) for the deployment and training phases.
Many organizations choose to plan a phased launch. By proceeding in sequences, you also give yourself the means to test the system and identify any problems on a small group of users before a full roll-out. With a good layer of management, you may even be able to make other users jealous and stimulate their curiosity about the new CRM!
Finally, dividing your project into successive, orderly sequences means you can react quickly when a phase falls behind schedule. In this way, you're in a better position to reorganize and coordinate operations so as to keep CRM implementation delays to a minimum.
With the rise of software engineering, automation and artificial intelligence, many companies are forgetting that it's the human factor that federates and creates group synergies.
To encourage the adoption of your new CRM, communicate upstream about the implementation of a new tool that will make employees' daily lives easier and enable them to improve their performance.
In some cases, deploying a CRM will require energy and stamina, so it's a good idea to appoint a project manager who can demonstrate leadership in driving development and deployment. The chosen person will also need to be flexible throughout the project lifecycle, as obstacles are likely to arise (human, technical, budgetary etc.), and a problem-solving approach will generally be more effective than excessive control.
So, if you entrust project management to an employee, don't just consider his or her computer skills, but also his or her emotional intelligence and human qualities. Project managers are used to identifying key players who will willingly take on the role of ambassadors, or on the contrary, the "anti "s, with whom you will have to maneuver intelligently to limit blocking effects.
In addition, the project manager will need to work as part of a team with one or more departments to gather functional requirements. Indeed, a successful CRM implementation depends on the software's ability to meet users' business challenges. It is therefore absolutely essential that users contribute to the needs analysis.
That's why communication needs to be managed with finesse and common sense. It's essential to bring together all the stakeholders: sales, marketers, customer service, but also operational management. Don't underestimate the importance of change management. Setting up onboarding workshops can pay dividends in creating a real buzz around the project and adding a participative dimension.
Training cycles need to be customized so that everyone receives the knowledge and tools relevant to their job and objectives. Training sessions can be reinforced by sharing content, guides and other documents to help users get to grips with the system!
At a time when turnkey CRM solutions are a dime a dozen, many companies don't even bother with a needs analysis. As we said in our introduction, this heresy is at the root of most CRM implementation failures.
The aim of this article isn't to break down the entire content of the specifications document, but we're going to look at a few fundamental notions that will help you to measure its usefulness and impact on the successful implementation of your new CRM.
To begin with, when it comes to software, there are generally two sets of specifications. The first, known as the Functional Requirements Specification (FRS), describes the purpose of the tool, analyzing the functionalities required to meet the needs of the company and its users. The second, known as the technical specifications document (TCD), sets out the technological resources required to produce a solution adapted to the functional CFC.
As the project owner, you can draw up the functional specifications yourself, or have them drawn up by a consultant or agency. Depending on the complexity of your project, this may be a succinct document describing the fundamentals of the project, such as objectives, budget, main functionalities and integration requirements.
Alternatively, you can start from an in-depth document, developing all the main and secondary functionalities, using methods recognized by AFNOR in particular. This second method is a real intellectual service and can represent a long and complex mission.
This type of specification is particularly important if you conclude that no CRM on the market meets your needs. The CDCF enables you to detail your requirements to the service providers consulted, in the form of a call for tenders, and to include a provisional budget. This is also the basis on which service providers can bid, enabling you to compare the offers received on the basis of pre-determined criteria.
As we've just seen, some of you will choose to have your CRM software developed on a bespoke basis, while others will be happy with market leaders such as Salesforce or Hubspot, not least because they don't really feel the need to customize their CRM (so much the better, as this can be both time-consuming and expensive!).
However, if you choose a standard software package, you should be aware that these are in turn divided into three categories: sales, marketing and support. So, even if you opt for an existing SAAS solution with free online registration, this does not exempt you from analyzing your needs or evaluating the cost of your CRM project through your specifications. For example, all the big names in CRM include default integrations. These are features that enable you to associate your CRM with other popular applications in your industry. Another criterion for choosing the next solution to implement!
Finally, there's a third category of players: vertical CRMs. For example, if you sell your products to supermarkets and hypermarkets, you'll probably want to check out Sidely CRM. By default, Sidely integrates all the functionalities required by companies addressing their market indirectly, including forms adapted to on-site data collection, and point-of-sale order-taking functions.
Data migration is always a complex issue in a CRM project, and requires unavoidable preparatory work. This task is sometimes proposed by the CRM integrator (beware of the cost!). In any case, companies often have data in different tools, and changing CRM is often an opportunity to converge these different data sources.
Accuracy, completeness, consistency: various criteria will help consolidate the database of your future sales organization. Cleansing will eliminate duplicates and formatting errors to maximize the impact of the new system in terms of sales and marketing efficiency.
In fact, some companies take advantage of their CRM overhaul to review their marketing segmentation in the light of this data, whose relevance or richness has been revised upwards.
Finally, security and RGPD compliance are mandatory. Here again, technological transition will often bring to light non-compliant practices or breaches operated in the past, to which clear answers will have to be provided.
In short, the implementation of a new CRM is largely dependent on the quality of your database and data management processes. As always, users are at the heart of the system. It's a virtuous circle: the more they inform the CRM, the more data you have, and the more useful the data, the more they use the CRM.
CRM implementation is generally an ongoing process rather than a one-off operation. After the initial phases (needs analysis, planning, implementation, training, etc.), a continuous improvement cycle is often put in place. To this end, some companies recruit a CRM manager, whose mission is to constantly analyze customer acquisition and retention performance. The CRM manager will therefore take an interest in adapting the CRM to these imperatives of optimizing the sales process or the circulation of customer data.
If this position doesn't exist in your organization, keep in mind that your CRM needs to evolve to keep pace with changes in your business.
In addition, it goes without saying that software completion must be monitored and even evaluated. While some companies opt for constraint (by integrating CRM completion into job descriptions, for example), it is first and foremost advisable to make users aware of what is at stake in terms of data. For example, training sessions can be used to establish the link between data input and the way in which marketing will then be able to convert this data into actions, and then into sales. E-mail is an obvious example, since it is often the starting point for the entire automated marketing cycle.
It's all about motivating teams by explaining the purpose of everyday actions! With management, it's your vision and commitment that will ensure the successful implementation of your new CRM!
