Choosing the right Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool for your company

There are many good CRM systems in the market with constantly evolving features and capabilities. There is no secret formula or universal right answer, the best CRM for you company is the one that fits Business expectation and IT Governance.

What you want to avoid, and I’ve seen this in more than one organization is the following situations:

a)      The teams don’t use it

b) It takes too long to feed the system

c)      It doesn’t integrate with the ERP

d)     Metrics not adjusted to the company’s reality

e)     Internal division between which CRM should be adopted

What NOT to do

IT Project Managers and Business Analysts tend to look at a CRM Implementation as they would implement any project:

1.      Organize workshops to listen to the Stakeholders

2.      Create a business requirements document to detail needs of each business team

3.      Request proposals from vendors

4.      Choose the one closer to the needs, taking in consideration cost/benefit analysis

5.      Implement based on the document agreed, leaving some room for customization

Although this approach is completely valid in a project environment, the one thing that’s missing is that this method is effective when you’re developing a tool from scratch but not when you’re deciding which existing tool to implement and customize.

I was going this way in my first CRM implementation, but then I took a step back and decide to go a different way.

The Alternative way

Other than going full analysis on detail, just do a macro process sketch of what your organization is interested focusing the most important functionalities.

       I.           Macro-guidelines for CRM

Gather information from sites which functionalities are critical and schedule some short meetings to confirm with the business units what is and isn’t interesting for them and your company in general.

Prepare a document (BRD – Business Requirements Document) as send it to potential suppliers that have known CRM products.

     II.           Products presentations

Schedule sessions for each of the vendors, so they can present their products to your project stakeholders and IT team.

The presentation should be focused on the document sent, the macro-requirements serving as guidelines.

Every area that has contact with customers and/or interfaces with customer processes should be represented (Commercial areas, Digital area, Marketing area, Financial area, Support …).

   III.           Evaluation and shortlist

The Project Manager defines evaluation parameters with the Business teams and proposes the evaluation method.

I strongly advise to use close questionnaires, since it limits the possible answers and allows better analysis.

Prepare 2 short questionnaires about the product and the presentation:

1.      Business Questionnaire. This questionnaire should focus on:

a.      Product compliance with the guidelines

b.      Product functionalities regarding the objectives of the company

c.      Product functionalities regarding the objectives of the respective team

d.      Easy and understandable process and product interface

e.      Presentation and information exposition

2.      Technical Questionnaire. This questionnaire should focus on:

a.      Product compliance with the guidelines

b.      Customization possibility

c.      Technology employed

After the presentations, send the first questionnaire to the non-IT business areas (including Digital), and the second one to the IT and Digital team (optional).

Consolidate the evaluations having in consideration different “weight” of distinct areas in the final grade according to the part that are going to have in the product use.

Share the conclusions with all the stakeholders and agree on how many of the vendors continue to the next phase – Shortlist.

   IV.           Request for Proposals

Organize and lead sessions with the business units to work the Business Requirements Document.

1.      Vision:

Describe the context (current situation and purpose), the improvement opportunities (problems) and the objectives of this initiative / project.

2.      Scope:

Define the scope of the project, what is excluded and assumptions.

3.      Requirements:

a)      Macro processes/ areas.

Define macro processes / areas of functionalities and organize the needs into these (e.g. Lead management, Teams / Territory Management, dashboards and reports, …).

This allows you to obtain a more clear and consolidated picture of what functionalities are expected in each situation from business.

b)     Business requirements / functionality.

Detail every requirement or functionality, defining what is expected and the criticality (Must, Nice-to-have, …).

These can be business requirements, IT requirements, system requirements, integrations with other applications, functionalities and features wanted.

c)      Usability requirements

Add usability requirements like security and accessibility features, multilangue requirements, etc.

d)     Checklist

Create a document apart, a checklist with all the requirements above in which the vendors can describe how their product answer your demands.

I suggest being an Excel workbook with each worksheet being a section/macro process.

Each section that has a table with the following structure:

Filled information:

• Requirement description
• Criticality

Then add 4 extra columns for the vendor’s answers:

• Answer (text)
• Out of the box functionality (checkbox)
• Requires configuration (checkbox)
• Requires customization (checkbox)
• Requires 3rd party software (checkbox)

4.      Constraints and Deliverables

Describe time or budget constraints and expected deliverables during the project.

5.      Final Comments

Any other situation that you need to mention.

     V.           Proposal Analysis

This is not a rigid phase, meaning that when in this phase you could have a lot of interactions with the different vendors, but the main tasks are the ones that follow:

The Project Manager should make an analysis document of each of the vendors’.

1.      Functional proposal

Regarding the functionalities requested in the RFP and based on the answers to the checklist you should be able to obtain information to populate the analysis document.

These metrics make a lot of sense since not only lets you perceive the completeness of the platform but also gives you a feel of the effort and cost of the actual implementation:

• Number and % of critical functionalities present
• Number and % of Out-of-the-Box functionalities
• Number and % of functionalities in need of configuration
• Number and % of functionalities in need of customization
• Number and % of functionalities that need 3rd party software

Other important aspects that should be brought up in this analysis that are specific of CRMs:

1. Possibility of interfacing with other platforms (ERP, other systems)
2. Possibility of migrating historical data to the new platform
3. Having mature marketing tool / module embedded.
4. Task automation possibilities (Leads, Sales and Marketing)
5. Sharing and/or Extracting information within the company
6. Should have very good email integration
7. Mobile / Responsive layouts for commercial tasks.

2.      Business proposal

Complete the document with the financial proposal (that should have the same parameters for all the vendors – business model and years of subscription):

• CAPEX: Capital Expenditure.

o  Value paid for implementing platform

o  Initial licenses acquisition or other initial cost

• OPEX: Operational Expenditure

o  Cost of platform licenses

o  Cost of maintenance and support services

• Medium-Long Term investment (3-5 years) Analysis

• Estimated time effort to deploy

   VI.           Negotiation

Negotiate according to the needs of your customers, and adjust all the proposals to be equivalent.

If needed ask the vendors to facilitate a visit to a customer that had a similar implementation and add this information to the documents.

 VII.           Choosing

1.      Make a document of comparison of all the proposal, both functional and financial

2.      Make different scenarios regarding a full implementation or only the critical functionalities

3.      Focus associated investment for each scenario and estimated time effort to deploy.

4.      Present to the stakeholders all other relevant information, conclusions from the visitors, your advices as an IT professional.

5.      Wait for the decision, and that’s it.

This methodology brought me reliable results and if you should to use it I’m sure it will bring you added value.

Thanks.