Common Causes for Poor CRM Value
If you’re not getting the most out of your CRM solution, you may need to more clearly define your objectives and improve communication among your team. Under-resourced operations, legacy processes, shortsighted data cleansing and a lack of full leadership buy-in on the use and adoption of a consistent enterprise solution across all business units, can all result in a CRM that is underutilized and just doesn’t work well for your business.
Underutilization and poor adoption rates can often be attributed back to the initial deployment period. Project implementation training and software roll-outs are often one-time learning events with limited, if any, post adoption support or education. Lack of one-on-one coaching is another big miss when it comes to ensuring CRM value, along with setting clear goals and enterprise-wide metrics to measure success.
Finally, while you may have implemented all the necessary cloud solutions at launch to optimize the technology and business value, the platforms are increasingly complex and very often present multi-organizational twists requiring periodic realignments and reboots.
So, What’s the Key to Success?
The key to success is a high level of commitment, dedication and a willingness to reset, realign and reboot the process and the technology.
First, you need to recognize that there’s a problem with your CRM solution and gain a consensus to get things back on track. At Enable Consulting, we have worked with healthcare and energy companies, non-profit organizations, manufacturing, media and communication organizations of all sizes – and helped them get back on track, sometimes within just a few months.
It’s important to start with an honest, objective, and independent review of the current technology solution, with the goal of implementing a highly optimized architectural structure that delivers increased business value.
The first steps in the reboot involve identifying the key business value decisions, assessing the technology gaps, establishing opportunities for better support and alignment, prioritizing opportunities to drive increased business value, road mapping activities to capture opportunities and developing several core measures of success.
Next, consider the time and cost saving benefit of collaborating with outside expertise to get the most value out of your CRM. If your in-house team is struggling, it could be that they are new to the specific technology solution you’re using – or are working within a specific silo or legacy process that’s hard to break away from. Many times, your in-house team may have inadvertently contributed to the current situation and they may find it hard to work on a new, cohesive, integrated CRM solution without the benefit of outside help. There are CRM application experts who have the knowledge and background to drive results – getting the most out of any organization’s cloud applications and CRM solutions.
Finally, it’s important to prioritize! You may be facing more than one challenge, and fixing them all may seem daunting. By focusing on small incremental steps, improvement will come faster and the change will be not only powerful, but also more durable.
Lessons Learned
Despite all the challenges, it is possible to implement or retool an effective CRM system, but only under the following conditions:
- Implement an independent, well structured, rapid and focused diagnostic process to evaluate the current CRM solution, it’s effectiveness, gaps that need to be addressed, and how you can unlock greater business value.
- Clearly identify the benefits expected from the current CRM system – and the issues associated with its use. These can be company-wide or individual work group benefits or issues.
- Address all the technology’s critical areas of complexity and identify areas of optimization.
- Define your business processes, align them with your CRM and enforce consistent use. This will help ensure that everyone in your organization is using the CRM in a consistent and effective manner.
- Dedicate sufficient attention to data quality control. This is one of the most critical and most easily overlooked keys to success.
- Simplify the technology structure and customize it to take advantage of your capabilities and meet your specific business needs.
- Establish conditions, parameters, core measure dashboards and timelines for success.
No two companies or business priorities are exactly the same, and so there is no one-size-fits-all CRM software solution that’s going to work for every enterprise. However, with thoughtful analysis and planning, clearly defined goals and timelines, good communication and tech support, and highly focused CRM customization and optimization support to meet your specific business goals now and in the future, you will be able to breathe new life into your CRM software.
You can reset, realign and reboot your existing technology for better outcomes – implementing a successful CRM solution that brings a stellar ROI, exceptional value and success to your enterprise for years to come.
Find out how a successful CRM reboot can help your organization achieve better business outcomes, optimize your technology architecture, drive value and ensure success.
