CRM Implementation: My Top 5 Takeaways

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a critical function for achieving business goals. CRM software has been used for a long time to handle the customer management cycle. CRM is an integral part of any size organization. CRM’s importance cannot be overstated simply since a company is small or medium-sized. Having a stable and scalable CRM is critical for smaller businesses as well. In addition, having a small team to constantly fine-tune CRM should be considered. It should facilitate the entire marketing and sales processes by converting a prospect into a paying customer. 

Several attempts have been made over the years to implement a stable CRM for us in Emertxe. Internally, I’ve been in responsible for CRM initiatives, collaborating with the CRM provider, stakeholders, and our marketing and sales teams. Throughout the journey, I made numerous mistakes that taught me and my team valuable lessons. This post will focus on my top five lessons learned while implementing CRM.

Learning-1: Stick to Well-known Brands

The Software-as-a-Service(SaaS) model has revolutionized the way software gets built and distributed. There are numerous CRM providers in the market that operate on a pay-as-you-go model and offer varying feature tiers. When it comes to SMBs, there are a plethora of CRM providers who claim to offer cost-effective CRMs. There are also well-known brands such as Salesforce, Zoho, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and others. My first lesson is to go with the renowned and global players instead of smaller players. It may appear to be a bit pricey at first glance, but based on my experience, it is well worth it.

While I have nothing against smaller or mid-sized CRM providers, we have encountered numerous challenges while working with them. Issues arose in a variety of forms for us:

1. CRM platform instability
2. Lack of modularity and flexibility in configuring workflows
3. Lack of a competent customer success team taking their own sweet time to fix issues 
4. Failure to keep up with the times by not offering cross-platform integrations
5. Missing important aspects like intelligent analytics and insights

We were hopping from one smaller CRM player to another, wasting a lot of time and money in the process. Looking back, the opportunity cost was also very high, which could have been avoided if we had chosen a well-known and well-established CRM provider from the start. The most painful aspect for me was to see our marketing and sales teams not able to adapt CRM usage due to usability issues, incorrect bug fixes, delayed implementation, and so on. CRM was frequently perceived as a burden instead of a tool to make their jobs easier and efficient. They eventually replied that we would be better off using spreadsheets!

Learning-2: Define Workflows and Processes

Assuming you’ve decided on one of the popular CRM providers, the next step is to define and document the entire customer relationship workflows, which will fall under both marketing and sales processes. This blueprint is essential before progressing with configuration or implementation.

Some marketing workflows might include, for example:

1. Workflow for obtaining organic leads through search engines such as Google
2. Process of Google AdWords and social media campaigns to generate inorganic leads
3. Mapping leads to various products or services that are available

In a similar vein, sales has a set of processes that may include:

1. How will the incoming leads be distributed among the various sales engineers?
2. How to track various customer touch-points (ex: emails / phone calls / face-to-face sessions)?
3. How to track customer behaviour and prioritize leads based on their interest in our product and service?
4. What are the various nudging activities to move leads through the funnel?
5. What is the timeframe for the entire sales process?

Many times, we have attempted to view the marketing and sales functions in silos, which has resulted in the process becoming broken. The necessary data got distributed to multiple unwanted pockets. We had a hard time to get a holistic perspective. Hence, defining a process plays a key role here.

Learning 3: Team Adaptation Is Essential

Following the selection of a popular CRM provider and the creation of workflows, the next step is configure and go live with CRM. While CRM launch is indeed a major accomplishment, team adaptation is critical. Only by diligently following the workflows and recording all information in CRM can the real benefit of CRM be realized. CRM implementation is analogous to purchasing a treadmill. It will not guarantee better health or weight loss simply by purchasing it. Only with consistent practise will the desired results be obtained, which also applies to CRM.

The entire marketing and sales teams should adapt to effective CRM usage through multiple internal trainings. The entire team should be well-versed in the use of workflow. The team should have a centralized system (for example, Trello / Jira / GitHub) where they can report ongoing CRM issues or unmet needs that can be addressed in the future. It is also essential to have a centralized knowledge base where team members can share their learnings, best practises, and specific customer case studies. Even mistakes made by team members can be shared so that they can be corrected and used as a learning tool for others. A senior member of the team establishing a periodic CRM audit process can provide ongoing feedback on both tool and people usage aspects, thereby driving continuous improvements.

Learning 4: Measurable KPIs

As the team begins to use the CRM, a large amount of data will begin to enter the system. That is the appropriate time to begin implementing various Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), as well as the necessary dashboards and reports. Measuring meaningful KPIs is critical for ensuring customer and team success.

KPIs for the marketing team could be:

1. The number of leads generated on a given day, week, or month
2. Lead sources include organic / campaign / walk-in, among others
3. Products are services that generate leads
4. Customer demographics and location data
5. The lead quality score is used to determine the effectiveness of marketing channels

Similarly, KPIs for the sales team could be:

1. Conversion rate of leads to paying customers
2. Conversion rates for various product and service lines, and which one converts the best
3. Each sales engineer’s conversion rate
4. Which marketing channel generates the most or least conversions?
5. ROI on paid campaigns in terms of conversions 

These metrics should be made available at all levels to allow for open and transparent information sharing among team members. Dashboards that display KPI in the form of a pie or bar graph, show trends in the percentage form, tabular reports, and so on could provide an ongoing perspective of both the marketing and sales functions. Continuously monitoring KPIs over days, weeks, or months can assist management in gaining meaningful insights and taking corrective actions as needed. These KPIs can be integrated with Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) of the department or the organization. 

Learning-5: Using an Iterative Process

CRM is a never-ending journey. It is preferable to divide the launch into multiple phases and launch iteratively while also educating the team. It takes time for the CRM to evolve. Choosing a well-known CRM ensures that all necessary features are already pre-built for when the team is ready to adapt and take it to the next level. Implementing new workflows, achieving automation, performing cross-tool integration, and leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) for KPI management are some of the areas that must be constantly monitored as the team progresses from one phase to the next. In my experience, if the team adapts wall, they will become motivated and drive future requirements rather than being pushed down new features and forced to use them.

Conclusion

With digitization taking centre stage in a pandemic-driven world, having a strong and constantly evolving CRM is critical for business success. Even though I have summarized my learnings, I still learn on a daily basis when it comes to CRM. It helps to maintain a vibrant business environment by connecting customers, marketing team, sales team, and management.

Are you ready to take up the long and interesting journey of CRM?