Top five Prerequisites For A Successful Enterprise CRM Solution
Author: Sara Stanford
Top Five Prerequisites For A Successful Enterprise CRM Solution What is Customer relationship management Customer relationship management (CRM) is a system for managing a company’s interactions with current and future customers. It often involves using technology to organize, automate and synchronize sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support. In real sense, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) can be termed as an IT evolution over the years, encompassing a chain of succeeding revolutions. In the early 2000s, there was a demand of CRM technology and organizations were ready to implement it because of its innovative and business oriented features. It was meant to satisfy the sales, marketing and customer support requirements of organizations. As and when time passed by, CRM went on to become more comprehensive and started fusing well with the latest IT technologies. That is where Enterprise CRM solutions and that too, mobility driven, came in and are ruling the world today. Few of the many benefits that are eye striking are quick business process execution, real time information, customer satisfaction and stupendous flow of information throughout the hierarchy, starting from the sales force teams to the central management.
There are certain factors, which are to be taken care of, while any CRM implementation, to ensure a successful, full proof execution. Let us glance through what all should be taken care of prior to implementing any CRM software and also during implementation. • Thorough understanding of the business One of the most important aspects for a successful implementation is the detailed understanding of the business itself and exactly in which manner does the business intend to interact and satisfy the customers. CRM does not limit itself to an IT solution or simply software, it encompasses an entire business strategy that uses IT and business practices as the drivers to drive the entire CRM front and thereby gain total customer satisfaction and healthy client relationships. • Creating and following a proper plan It is very much essential that for such a massive implementation, there should be proper planning and execution of activities very much based on the plan. A determined process indicating timelines for jobs like work scheduling, identifying critical success factors, risk mitigation and many more. Matters like scope escalation and deviation need to be catered to as and when they arise in such a way that they do not become the reason for the entire project to suffer. • Correct team structure If your requirements and further phases are well defined and accurate, implementation is bound to be easy and simplistic. It becomes very essential right in the start, to have a team of people who know what they want and what is good for the organization. Compromising on the team and letting in every Tom, Dick and Harry is not going to benefit the project later. In short, to achieve the CRM objective, the right people have to be a part right from start. • Implementation with minimal disturbance to current business flow In order to have a booming run through, the lesser disturbance in the current business flow, the greater are the chances of a smooth flow. If the implementation is planned in such a way that it is done in phases, gaining success in shorter spans and not touching their business flows on the whole, it surely will show good results. • Precise forecasting on Total cost of ownership When we talk of the total cost of ownership, it is imperative to have worked out a finance model which in realistic terms, has covered all aspects of implementation and their respective costs. Budgeting the same and putting the approximate costing in relevant phases is equally
important so as to avoid any type of financial deviation and thereby a disruption in implementation. The above tips are just a few fundamental guidelines, which need to be followed, while any CRM solution implementation. There are other factors that play a pivotal role too. Watch this space for more on implementing CRM. SPEC INDIA has been implementing its robust Enterprise CRM solution at diverse locations in India as well as worldwide and it has been accepted whole-heartedly by clients.