Posted by Jay Rivard on Thu, Feb 25, 2010
As you may know salesforce.com upgrades their application at least three times a year. While they are not always major upgrades, it is an impressive feat compared to the traditional on-premise applications which may get upgraded once every 2 to 3 years.
Salesforce.com goes to great lengths to minimize the impact of these upgrades and does a tremendous job in notifying their install base of things that may need some client preparation. For example, in the Spring 2010 edition they are discontinuing support for Microsoft Internet Explorer V6. Salesforce.com has made many attempts to get everybody prepared for this eventuality.
Salesforce system administrators should take a little time to address these issues well in advance of the scheduled upgrade. We also recommend that you test out the upgrade in the salesforce.com sandbox. This is especially true if you are planning to enable new features that may impact some existing functionality.
If you do not have this level of technical expertise within your organization you may want to consider contacting us.
Posted by Sid Lejfer on Wed, Jan 13, 2010
I participated in a very interesting sales call earlier in the week. The management of a 100 person organization needs to address a variety of business issues related to their sales, marketing, and customer service departments. They have decided to implement a CRM system.
The chair of the selection committee asked a very good and simple question: "Why do we need to use a CRM consulting firm? We have very smart internal resources."
A good and experienced CRM consulting firm can add significant value to an implementation as follows:
1. The first step is to perform a needs analysis and develop a statement of work. You need specific experience on how to facilitate this process, asking the right questions, and knowing how your CRM system should be designed to addressed the requirements. You need experience to help determine pain points and priorities. Also, an outside party can help avoid internal politics, personality conflicts within an organization, and provide an unbiased viewpoint.
2. I am sure an organization can assign a resource to learn how to configure a CRM system. But to get the a proficient stage, you need to take training and gain some experience before you can configure a system to address the requirements gathered during the needs assessment. This takes time and money. A good CRM consulting firm should have trained and certified resources on their staff and will be significantly more efficient than an internal resource.
3. In most CRM implementations, there is a data migration and integration component to the engagement. This requires another set of skills. You need to have resources with database and integration experience. This can be fairly complicated and tedious.
4. A CRM initiative requires strong project management. All aspect of the engagement including needs assessment, configuration, data migration, integration, prototype review, pilot program, roll-out, training and support all need to be planned and managed. Again, this requires a different skillset than someone who facilitates a needs assessment, configures the software, migrates the data, or integrates into other backoffice systems.
5. One of the most important steps in a CRM project is providing training to the end-users. A trainer needs to understand the CRM software, how an organization is going to be using the software, and the skills to provide training either in-person or over the web.
6. Even if an organization has the right resources, do they have the time to devote to a CRM implementation project? If a firm has made an investment in CRM software or subscription service, you are losing money for every day that you fall behind in rolling out a system. With so many organizations stretched for resources, adding the significant responsibility of implementing a CRM system does not make sense.
As you can see, even a fairly simple CRM implementation requires a diverse skillset. A good, reputable, and exprienced CRM consulting firm can provide significant value to a firm implementing a CRM system.
Posted by Sid Lejfer on Wed, Jan 06, 2010
Over the past 20 years, my consulting staff has implemented over a thousand CRM systems. One of the questions that I often get from prospects is what is the most important element in having a successful CRM implementation that results in a reasonable return on investment for our clients?
There have been an abundance of articles and books written on ow to successfully implement a CRM system that include key factors like executive management buy-in and end-user acceptance. Based on our experience, a successful CRM system starts right at the beginning of the process - planning.
Unless you have a thorough understanding of what you organization needs from a CRM system, how it will be deployed, and a way to measure the results, you will fall short of maximizing the benefits of having a CRM system in place.
We are deploying widely used systems like Salesforce CRM. The software works and it works well. Technical issues are resolved quickly and enhancements are added often. Configuring and customizing CRM systems can be done by properly trained and experienced resources.
The question is how should a CRM system be configured to address your business requirements. This is done through a thorough planning process. Our methodology includes a series of interviews run by our senior consultants and the completion of business process review documents by our clients to give us additional information.
The area that a consulting firm like ours adds real and tangible value is in the area of planning. We have the experience to know what questions to ask and based on the response from our clients, configure a system that will address the pain points and business requirements in a timely and cost effective manner.
Our consultants also know how to work with a client in prioritizing a wish list and coming up with a phased approach to address critical issues first and spread the financial and human resource investment over a reasonable period of time. Trying to do everything at once is not the right approach.
And the planning process is never really over. Once you deploy your CRM system, your business continues to change and your system needs to change with it. This ongoing cycle is healthy and important to the success of your business.