Continuing Saberpoint’s ongoing series about successful CRM implementation best practices, in this article we explore our fourth topic in the series, one bite at a time.
- Data migration
- Planning for people and teams
- Your process defining the application, not the application defining your process
- One bite at a time
- Reporting
CRM can do a lot. Salesforce for instance, which started off as a sales management application, now has add-on functionality including a robust marketing solution, a service and field service module that can run your online commerce store, and is a gateway to your customers and partners. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Knowing that CRM can do all this gets organizations excited. Companies and organizations see a centralized system that will manage, optimize, and expand their footprint and with knowledge, they want to do one thing…implement everything now!
We get it. CRM is a game changer when done right. However, when you are just starting out with CRM or moving from a legacy platform to a new CRM platform the rule of thumb is to take what you eat and only eat one bite at a time. You do not go to Wendy’s and order a T-Rex Burger for yourself, look it up, it’s awesome, you order a meal, then if you want something else later, like a dessert, you can. You also don’t eat the burger and the fries at the same time, you take a bite out of one, then the other, until the meal is complete.
OK, so what does “one bite at a time” mean in CRM terms?
- Workshops: Yup we are back to workshops again. You need to define your needs. You need to look at your business needs, understand your current IT infrastructure and resources, and define the tools to meet the future needs of your organization. Do not forget to define your personas and those who will be supporting the solution as well. This is done through workshops as the collective is defining the need.
- Prioritize: Once you have your needs prioritize the needs from both a business needs and from your ability and capability to execute the need. Ask yourself, “Can my company really eat the T-Rex Burger or should we just go for a Baconator first?”
- Schedule: Define the schedule of when you need each one of the functions (e.g. Sales by April 2021, Service by August 2021, Customer Portal by December 2021) or one bite at a time.
- Infrastructure: Look to see what you currently have to support the new infrastructure, human capital, cloud storage like Dropbox or AWS, and middleware like Jitterbit or MuleSoft. This will help to better digest the implementation without having to take on other resources.
One bite at a time is easy, sometimes it is forgotten and because of this, a CRM implementation project can become overwhelming. In some instances, we have planned but we’re still overwhelmed. That’s alright take a step back, you can do that in these CRM projects, take the bite you can. Just like the T-Rex Burger, do not eat it all in one sitting and if you took too much in your first attempt, you do not have to eat it just because it is there. Plan, take one bite at a time, and portion control and your implementation will go much smoother.
If you are considering or undertaking a CRM implementation for your company, we would love to hear from you to discuss how Salesforce could be a great fit for your needs. Please contact the Saberpoint team for a complimentary consultation to discuss your plan, review the options available to you, and show what it takes to make a successful CRM implementation a reality.
