Is Your CRM Implementation Letting You Down?

Is your CRM system working for you?

A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system can be a valuable tool for your business, helping to improve the customer experience and keeping your processes smooth. But hitches in your CRM implementation can have negative effects on your business.

What are some of the common CRM implementation pitfalls you need to avoid?

Badly Defined Requirements

It's important that you set your requirements at the very beginning.

By having a good understanding of what you need from your CRM system, you can make sure it's built and implemented in a way that will help you achieve just that.

If you don't get clear on your requirements you could end up changing them later on.

By then the changes will be harder to make, and you will have already invested significant time and money.

Lack of Responsibility

As the article "CRM Implementation Killers" points out, you need to identify the right person to take responsibility for your CRM system.

To know whether or not your CRM system is working for you, someone needs to be in charge of assessing it, reporting back, and sorting out any problems.

Lack of clear responsibility means a lack of clarity when looking at how your CRM is working, and lack of awareness of who to turn to if things aren't working the way they should.

Not Integrating with Other Systems

For your CRM to be truly effective, it needs to integrate well with your existing systems.

From online ordering to email to social media, the more fully you can integrate your CRM with your existing processes, the more smoothly it will fit into your daily business tasks.

A lack of integration can lead to your CRM adding more complexity to your business processes instead of making them smoother.

Lack of integration can lead to frustration and discourage your team from making the most of it.

Ignoring Your End Users

To successfully implement your CRM system, talk to the people who are going to be using it. Your employees who will be using the system on a daily basis are the best people to tell you what your CRM needs to succeed.

If you ignore the needs of your end users, you could end up with a CRM system that is unwieldy, unhelpful, and doesn't help you achieve the results you want.

Forgetting Your Business Processes

It's easy to assume your CRM system will "plug and play", taking your existing data and processes and making them smoother. In fact, it's more a case of you get out of your CRM system what you put into it.

To make your CRM system work for you, first straighten out your business processes and make sure they are streamlined and truly useful.

Now you can make sure your existing processes and your CRM system will play nicely together. 

Overlooking Mobile Friendliness

Ignore mobile friendliness at your peril.

Many CRM systems are designed for use by management, in offices at desks. That may not be the best solution for your business if you have staff and sales reps that are out and about.

Your staff will be accessing the CRM on their phones or tablets, so make sure it offers full mobile functionality and supports updates on the go.

If your CRM isn't mobile friendly, your sales people will skip out on entering data and updating the CRM, which will render it useless in terms of information and sharing knowledge with the whole team.

A CRM is a valuable business tool, but it's not a magic bullet.

To make your CRM work for you, plan thoroughly and be sure to avoid these common pitfalls so you can build a system that truly supports your business.