Introduction
With current economic conditions, corporate management is trying to figure out ways to do more with less. One of the areas that is being visited is Customer Relationship Management, which provides a way to decrease the cost of doing business, increase revenues, and provide outstanding customer service. In many cases, the current economic environment and limited budgets rule out the implementation of an
industry-specific CRM software product that will automate the sales, marketing, policy management, claims management, and document management functions of your organization. There are more affordable alternatives that will give you a very good short-term solution at an affordable cost and high return on investment.

Affordable Alternatives
CRM software has evolved and matured over the past few years. Current development tools have allowed low to mid-range CRM software products to provide the features and flexibility that were only available to high-end products not that long ago. Today's affordable alternatives include connectivity to SQL Server databases, remote office and remote user synchronization, web access, wireless connectivity, and in some cases, a development environment to do detailed customizations. These solutions allow you to automate your sales, marketing, and customer service function.

Although these software products may not provide you with the enterprise-wide solution that would incorporate your policy, claims, and document management, it can automate some sales and marketing functions that would give you an outstanding return on investment with a reasonable implementation time.

Return to Basics
One of the lessons learned over the past few years in respect to CRM initiatives is that doing too much too quickly is a recipe for disaster. Although the idea of a completely integrated system may be warranted, the actual implementation is expensive and difficult to do.

There seems to be a trend towards the basics. Corporate management is trying to determine what really needs to be done and what will provide the greatest return on their investment in a relatively short period of time. It is still a good idea to do a thorough needs assessment and include all departments with representation from staff, middle management and the executive team. The requirements of each group should be determined, categorized, and prioritized. The most essential requirement should be implemented first with a project plan for future phases to incorporate the next level of requirements.

You may determine that 90% of your critical requirements can be addressed by an affordable CRM software product. The remaining 10% of your requirements may not warrant the additional expenditure of moving up to a higher-end solution.

Upgrade Path
Investing in a low to mid-range CRM solution does not preclude you from upgrading. Some mid-market products have enterprise upgrade options. If you need to move from one product to another, it can be done with the import and export tools that are either built into the product or a third party alternative.

There are some situations that you may want to do a simultaneous installation of a low-end and high-end product. We have seen this many times over the years. Let me tell you why.

Your organization really needs a high-end enterprise CRM Product. The corporate wide implementation is estimated to take over one year. The cost of this project may exceed $1,000,000 but the system will address the various needs of your organization. The problem is that your sales and marketing team need a product today. What do you do?

By implementing a low to mid-range product, you can address some of your major needs within 30 to 45 days for a cost of $75,000. This will give your staff immediate productivity and allow you to accumulate prospect and customer information in a system that can be exported in the future. It allows your staff to get acclimated to these types of systems and provides reporting tools to your management team for business analysis.

Word of Advise
Over the years we have learned that there are some basics steps that need to be followed in order to ensure success of any size CRM initiative. Even a rollout of a low-end CRM product will fail unless the following steps take place:

1. Thorough Needs Assessment with representation from all departments and staff
2. Product Selection Process to make sure that requirements determined in needs assessment can be addressed properly
3. Implementation Partner Selection Process to determine that the firm has the experience, reputation, and methodologies for successful implementation
4. System, human resource and financial review to make sure you have the infrastructure in place for CRM system
5. Controlled implementation and design to control "scope creep." Use a multi-phased approach for long-term success of system
6. Pilot Program and phased rollout to control potential issues with the system
7. Proper Training at all levels of employees to ensure that they will understand and use the system
8. Designated support and maintenance personnel to ensure that the system will continue to operate properly after initial rollout.
   

Conclusion
Today's low to mid-range CRM products are extremely powerful and customizable. They can give you an affordable system to address the major sales and marketing needs of your organization. With the financial constraints of running a business today, an affordable alternative may make sense in some situations. In all cases, you need to follow certain steps outlined above to ensure the success of any CRM system that you implement.