A CRM-buying decision or a decision to choose a new solution to handle various customer-facing processes within your organization is a though call that requires thorough thinking and research. However, there are some simple tips that you can consider while searching for the most perfect solution for your business.
Do your homework:
Let’s face it – the mid to enterprise level businesses most likely already have a system in place. If they are looking for a CRM solution, it means they are not happy with what they’ve got. However, before jumping into a cold water, it’s good to remember that just switching to a new system without any focused plan to drive and sustain new initiative might yield the same level of satisfaction. Do your homework evaluating previous experience deciding on what worked and what did not and what strategy has to be adopted.
Don’t just look at implementation costs or total cost of ownership. Make sure the expected return and lifetime value is both positive and significant enough to warrant the time and effort required to implement and maintain the system. Perform a case scenario analysis to weight the expected ROI to adjust for different levels of user adoption.
Balance out people, process and technology:
The success of any CRM initiative relies on the seamless integration of the three imperative components: people, process and technology used on every touch point of customer interaction. Each of the component presents its own challenges and depending on how well the organization is coping with them while aligning the effort with the strategy, the CRM implementation either fails or succeeds.
Of the three, the people component might be the most complicated given how sensitive end users are to change. Thus gaining users support and input early on is a crucial part of the ultimate success of your CRM initiative.
Put your customer-facing processes in order:
Don’t underestimate the importance of the well-established customer-facing business process and how easily (or not) you can tweak in the processes pre-built within the CRM system. Our recommendation is to consider the solution backed by the business process management engine that offers both: out-of-the-box processes as well as tools for easy process customization. A good example here is bpm online CRM.
On practice, companies are achieving success with choosing the right CRM for their organization by first putting customer-facing processes in order, then enticing the end users to adopt to the enhanced processes or tweak them in to meet specific needs, while collecting valuable feedback, and only then proceed with selecting CRM technology that supports the processes and the requirements discovered during the preps.