How to implement CRM?

Success Rate of CRM Implementation is only 30%! How do you improve this. What should be your basic implementation methodology.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Selected the CRM vendor
• All processes to be automated are documented, verfied and consultant from vendor is there.

1. Kick-Off Meeting-Introduction meeting that identifies the team members involved. The consultant will provide instructions on how to access the out-of-the-box solution, hosted by the vendor.
2. Assessment-Consultant will guide you through the process(process document is already with him). He will meet all the business process owners. This will result in a requirements definition document.
3. Requirements Definition-Consultant will put all the requirements up to the field level. In this process s/he will work with the customer project team.
4. Statement of Work(SOW)-This will be the basis of the project requirements, timeframe, cost and agreement. Vendor will also follow up with a project plan, QA plan.
5. Finalized agreement-This is the basis on which implementation project begins.
6. Begin implementation- During this ask the vendor for setting up a demo server for project review.
7. Review- There can be weekly review on the demo server. Project team from vendor and customer will sit for review session. Vendor Consultant will demonstrate each feature implemented within the week. Customer project team must check this with the deliverables listed in the SOW and the timeline in the project plan.
8. End Implementation- Vendor notifies this to the cusomer.
9. Acceptance Testing-At this stage, it is the implementation team that is involved in the testing according to the QA plan.
10. Installation and setup-This is the installation and setup of the customized project at the customer premises from the test/demo server.
11. User acceptance testing(UAT)-At this stage, end users can take part in the testing. This will be done with the test cases developed by the project team.
12. Training-Includes administrator and end user training. Can be conducted at different times. You can opt for online or classroom training.
13. Deployment- Deployment of the project in the live environment after resolving all cases reported from UAT.
14. Follow-up- Vendor will closely monitor the system for a period. Customer can report bugs and technical queries via vendor customer portal, support mail, phone, fax.

Tips & Warnings

• Apart from a proper implementation project success depends on intital requirement definition, shortlisting vendor according to the requirements and budget, comprehensive RFI/RFP docs, assembling a good project team and most importantly the support & blessings of the management to this project.
• This definition of CRM implementation methodology may not be ideal for all organizations.
• I have tried to keep it simple and tried to describe it in laymans language (to the extent possible). There may be other steps invloved in between these basic ones.