Make Your CRM System Work
Another great and informative post by Mel Lester on his site, E-Quip Blog on how a firm could and should be using their CRM system. he is right on target with the comment that most systems fail due to lack of staff participation.
However, as somebody who has designed a CRM System, I believe a lot of problems also lay in the lack of ability(on the designers part) to customize a pre-made and delivered product. Purchases of software are based on the amount of functions the company can use; but with the ease of changing many functions, I always wonder why we cannot make simple changes. Call most developers, and it seems like a chore to change some wording, text, etc.
Aside from some systems inability to see the larger picture and be open to customizing a software for a client (my opinion), Lester talks about how a firm can break their system of failed programs and offers the following tips:
- Choose a system based on what you want to do with it, not what you could do with it
- Master CRM with some key accounts before rolling it out firm wide
- Sell people on the personal advantages of using CRM, not just the corporate benefits
- Develop some respected internal champions to promote greater use of CRM
- Make it as easy as possible to use
- Delegate responsibility for keeping CRM up to date where necessary
- Tie performance metrics to CRM.
Make sure to check out the entire article, where Lester goes more in depth on how to use these strategies to successfully use your new CRM system.
Click here to view the full article.
