The Practioneer’s 7 steps to CRM

If you are about to start your CRM activities it is quite possible that the task may seem quite challenging. The task involves both technology, internal politics, work-processes and the history holds numerous examples of CRM projects that grew way out of control.

The purpose of this reading piece is to describe a pragmatic approach to CRM that has proven successful in hundreds of organizations. The approach is structured in 7 steps and the basic idea is that you will be done in less than a week.

After this week you should experience that the CRM activities are now actively supporting, and improving your sales and marketing efforts and you should have confidence that CRM is a platform for continuous improvements of your processes.

Step 1: Determine Your Focus Area

CRM is a wide concept. One of the most common misunderstandings is to try and solve every issue under the “CRM-Umbrella” in one single effort. Solving everything would be great – but in the real world it is almost certain that you will stumble if you do not focus on the 2-3 most critical areas that are most important for your business.

List of typical Key-Focus Areas:

Step 2: Buy the CRM System

This step may seem evident and self explanatory, but actually this step often turns out to be a prolonged activity during which lots of time is wasted. With ChannelCRM you have the advantage of very low startup costs. You can actually test the system yourself absolutely free of costs or obligations with your CRM data safely in your own environment.

Step 3: Install the System

The basic elements of ChannelCRM are a server component which is the CRM Database and a client component. For the server component you need a PC that serves as a server. You may use a real server with MS Windows server software but you can actually use a normal workstation. As long as the server is reachable in your network. Installing the server takes approximately 10 minutes if the MS SQL Server is already on your machine. If not, you should calculate around 1 hour for installation.

The client components are installed on the individual user PC's. Installation of a client takes less than a minute. If you want ChannelCRM to assist you with services to perform the entire installation we are able to do this in 2 hours.

Step 4: Define Users and Configure System

ChannelCRM is configured so that it is ready to use immediately after installation. However, the configuration of your CRM system is easily adjusted, and very often it is a good idea to make the changes right from the start. This way you and your employees will recognize your own terminology, your own product areas, your business rules, how you segment your customers and prospects and your sales model.

Creating the users of the CRM system is a small activity that needs to be done before you can get started.

The ChannelCRM system lets you create the users through a wizard driven interface without the need for direct use of the MS SQL Server interface.

If you have determined the values that you are using for configuration, the process of creating users and setting up the system is usually 1-3 hours. If you haven’t decided on the values, the ChannelCRM system will guide you through the steps of configuring.

Step 5: Import Data

You might have valuable information about customers, prospects, contacts and activities already. If so, they can be easily imported. ChannelCRM has an import engine and wizard driven interface that will let you import the data from spreadsheets or MS Outlook.

Most conveniently the import is done from excel spreadsheets in which it is easy to assure that data looks correct and “healthy” before you start the import. In some situations it might be necessary to have users enter information manually. The user interface lets you create companies, contacts and activities easily.

In our experience from hundreds of data import activities with customers, the time needed for import of data can be anything from an hour to several days. It all depends on the complexity and quality of the import data. From a technical point of view the import is relatively fast, 100 companies a minute is a fair estimate.

ChannelCRM or our partners would be delighted to help out with your import, we can perform it in its entirety or we can assist by “looking through” you import files and assure a successful import.

Step 6: Train the Users

Now is the time to have your users get acquainted with the system. ChannelCRM is a full-fledged CRM application, with quite a lot of facilities and features. Remember to have the users focus on exactly the features that supports your focus areas from step 1.

Usually, a 3 hour introduction is the right amount of training to get started with the main functions of the system. During a 3 hour training the users will learn to navigate in the system, be comfortable with the handling of documents, email, todo list, calendar. And depending on you focus they will be able to use eg the Telecenter, the Forecast Module, The ERP integration, The reporting engine, etc.

SuperUsers should plan for additional training.

ChannelCRM delivers the training as webinars, as onsite specific training, or as open class courses. Please contact us for information about training.

Step 7: Execute Your First Campaign

By now you have a fully operational system. Since we did want to present you with a 7 step model, we have to come up with step number 7. What would be more natural than letting step number 7 be an actual CRM activity that will have immediate effect on sales or customer satisfaction?

Planning, building and executing your first marketing campaign will expose all of your users for the system and the benefits that it brings about.