CORE IMPLEMENTATION POLICY LEADS TO SUCCESS

Over the past few years Datawrite has led its clients to several strategic decisions regarding CRM purchases. These decisions are based real life implementations and are backed up by articles published by Gartner research and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young.

Experience and research both show that once the decision is made to proceed with automated business processes, companies often over purchase on CRM products. These over purchases lead to a steep loss of IT funds over the short term and an immediate pressure to gain return on the purchase. Over purchasing leads to a shelf full of software for functionality that cannot possibly be implemented in the first phase. Companies can usually implement only 25 percent of the total functionality planned during this phase. Meanwhile the other functionality sits on the shelf growing old. Even with careful road mapping the same gaps occur over and over:

A project schedule is built that cannot be achieved. More consultants are brought in than budgeted,

As the schedule slips the team struggles to install and configure modules that are all ready out of date, and

Low customer satisfaction ensues as typical implementation problems have a greater impact.

A sensible way to begin automating business processes is to identify the core functionalities for the new project. A core of functionality is measured against the business analysis of current client processes both manual and automated. After a preliminary design for an automated solution is derived from this analysis a gap analysis is performed to ascertain what discrete functionalities desired by the client are not a part of the out-of-the-box functionality of a single CRM product, such as a call center product.

To begin a help desk capability which will be linked to a service organization, marketing and sale, the first step would most likely be to install call center software using as much out-of-the-box functionality as possible. This would be the core product for the implementation. To fill out the gaps it may be determined that an email package and Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) could be fitted to the help desk and the new organization to support it. A small number of seats could be put on line for the core functionality phase enabling an initial roll out that could be marketed to the rest of the organization to ensure user buy-in.

During subsequent phases a service module could be added to the core functionality and then a sales module and so on. Since later module purchase would fall out at future scheduled phases, product updates would be available for them lessening the threat of total upgrade once the full initial system is in-place.

This simple step-by-step core functionality approach to CRM implementation ensures high client satisfaction and strong future upgrade sales.