Term Paper on "New CRM System the Most Vital Relationships"

Term Paper 5 pages (1833 words) Sources: 3

[EXCERPT] . . . .

New CRM System

The most vital relationships a company has are with its customers, and in recessionary times, the most critical factor for long-term financial strength is customer loyalty. That is why it is critically important that the planning, implementation, training and support plans defined for the proposed Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is coordinated as a single, unified strategy. Using the Salesforce.com Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform and associated applications will ensure a faster implementation project plan than if on-premise software had been selected. As has been stated by Regan & O'Connor (2002), the Internet is about building relationships with customers, business partnerships, and other constituencies. Enterprises are employing a number of new strategies aimed at making this shift from transactions to relationships." This is precisely the objective of the CRM system planned, to transform our transaction mindset to being more focused on customer relationships. The intent of this document is to provide a series of recommendations in the four key areas of implementation which include the project plan, implementation plan, training plan and support strategies. As any new it system causes company cultures to change (Regan, & O'Connor, 2002) it is critical that executive management actively endorse and champion the change to this new system (King, Burgess, 2008). In fact studies of best practices in CRM system development and launch within organizations underscore just how critical it is for senior management as a team to endorse the system and in smaller organizations the CEO themselves to actively promote it (Foss, Stone, Ekinci, 2008). Resistance to change and the threat new systems present to people's status, their roles and their job security all combine to derail many CRM and for that matter, enterprise projects over time (Regan, & O'Connor, 2002). This is the greatest risk to the deployment of the planned CRM system and that concern is reflected throughout this series of recommendations.

Project Plan Considerations and Recommendations

Scope creep and over-committing to features are what also doom many CRM projects before they are ever launched. Project managers must guard against scope creep as this can seriously derail any project (Regan, & O'Connor, 2002). Scope creep occurs when a project tries to be all things to all people and as a result becomes too broad in scope to be usable, much less capable of being built in the timeframes needed. What best practices in CRM systems planning indicate is the best strategy in this area is to concentrate on a single strategic objective and tie metrics or measures of performance of the system back to that goal so that its performance is visible and accountable inside the company (Shanks, Jagielska, Jayaganesh, 2009). This is another factor that led to Salesforce.com's CRM system being chosen as its Internet-based platform makes it possible to track in real-time the effectiveness of marketing and selling strategies initiated and completed on the platform.

The project plan for the proposed CRM system needs to be the focal point for enabling ownership of the system and adoption by those departments and people whose jobs will be most impacted by it as well. It is recommended that a cross-functional team be created that provide each of these departments and individuals an opportunity to have the system align with how they do their jobs today, in effect supporting and making more efficient the processes they rely on daily. The example of how Astra Pharmaceuticals successfully used cross-functional teams to encourage a corporate culture of sharing knowledge is a case in point (Regan, & O'Connor, 2002). This is also critically important as a strategy to overcome resistance to change. As those departments and individuals using the system will most likely view it as a threat, giving them the opportunity to have their concerns heard and also provide input on the design of the screens and workflows is critically important (Shanks, Jagielska, Jayaganesh, 2009).

The project planning phase is as much about getting each action item done on the project plan as it is about gaining support for the system internally. Project managers who take the time to create this groundswell of support significantly increase the odds of success for the system implementation (Foss, Stone, Ekinci, 2008). Finally, project plans must also err on the side of under-committing and over-delivering if they are to succeed. Often CRM project plans get bogged down in changes to screens and nuances to specific areas of the application. What a project manager must do is prioritize these changes as "show stoppers" or those that must be fixed before the application goes live and those sequenced for future editions. In this way the project manager acts as a product manager would, organizing the specific requests for future updates and publishing a list of enhancements by priority. This goes a long way to showing departments and individuals who will be using the system that their concerns are heard, respected and will be acted on. Project manager of CRM systems who excel at this area provide status updates on this list even when not asked and this also helps overcome resistance to change. In conclusion, the project plan must be defined by the overarching business strategy of staying more connected with customers and building a relationship with them first (Regan, & O'Connor, 2002). Second, the many facets and considerations of overcoming resistance to change have got to be dealt with during this phase and cross-functional teams are an excellent way to do this (Regan, & O'Connor, 2002). Third and perhaps most difficult is the managing of expectations during a project's duration. Under-committing and over-delivering is key as is avoiding scope-creep (Regan, & O'Connor, 2002).

Implementation Plans

As the urgency of improving customer relationships is very high given the poor economic conditions and lack of sales in our organization, Salesforce.com was chosen given its rapid implementation schedule and easy of customizing its functionality to our needs. Based on the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform our marketing, sales and service teams will be able to be up and running within weeks of customizing our Salesforce.com applications and integrating them to our legacy customer database through the Force.com platform architecture.

The implementation plan is where the required resources, both people and systems, are defined, allocated to specific tasks and then scheduled so that the system can be successfully completed on schedule (Regan, & O'Connor, 2002). The system implementation plan also needs to take into account the many process workflows and internal procedures that the new system will interact with and provide information back and forth to. In addition training and support are also defined in the implementation plan as is beta testing (Regan, & O'Connor, 2002). When all of these factors are taken together it is clear that unless ownership of the new system is achieved during the project plan, the implementation plan will be very difficult to accomplish.

The implementation plan must also take into account iterative review cycles with the internal customers of the system as well (Shanks, Jagielska, Jayaganesh, 2009). This includes the marketing, sales and support teams and analysis of their existing processes to see how they can be improved. This area of Business Process Re-Engineering (BPR) (Regan, & O'Connor, 2002) is often responsible for the significant increases in financial performance companies attain when new systems are installed as they are being more focused and efficient at key tasks (Foss, Stone, Ekinci, 2008). The full details of the implementation plan do not need to be shared with the nontechnical staff and often only leads to confusion. It is best to have the project manager, in cross-functional meetings, provide status updates alone. It is a best practice of CRM system implementations to allocate time for beta testing to ensure the system aligns with users' requirements and needs. Investing this time also provides users with greater opportunity to gain mastery of the system and take ownership of it (Foss, Stone, Ekinci, 2008).

Training Plans

Another factor in the decision to standardize the CRM system on Salesforce.com was its highly intuitive and graphical user interface which significantly streamlines the training process. The training program for the new CRM system is developed often as part of the implementation plan (Regan, & O'Connor, 2002). The training plan for this specific CRM implementation will be global in scope and focused on key learning objectives by functional area the system is designed to support. For the Sales team the training will consist of contact management, quoting and pricing, customer service escalation, new customer contact, lead generation and lead escalation. The training for the sales team will be the most comprehensive and will also focus on sales analytics which will track the effectiveness of lead follow up and close rates. The training plan will place a heavy emphasis on dashboards and scorecards for sales management and marketing management as well. Best practices in CRM system training concentrates on tying marketing campaign management to sales results (Foss, Stone, Ekinci, 2008). This will be the primary focus of the training programs for the new system.

Support Strategies

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