CRM Implementation Made Easy: A Step-by-Step Guide for Success

According to CIO magazines, almost one-third of the CRM efforts fail. But why? 

Well, the wrong CRM implementation makes it difficult for businesses to manage customer relationships effectively, leading to many challenges that can hinder business growth and profitability.

Meanwhile, adopting a CRM platform into your IT infrastructure is a systematic process that requires a step-by-step approach toward building an effective relationship with customers and workspace productivity. 

Following this systematic process, allows you to customize the CRM features to fit your specific business needs and workflows, leading to a more efficient and effective system. This saves time and resources in the long run.

Let’s dive in and explore the step-by-step guide for the CRM implementation process.

Step-by-step CRM Implementation Guide

CRM implementation is a 7-step process leading to establishing clear goals for CRM and ensuring all stakeholders are aligned on how the system will be used. 

Here is the step-by-step guide for CRM implementation:

Set your CRM goals and Objectives

Ask yourself why you need a customer relationship management platform. What benefits can it provide you in the future?

The primary step of a business is to identify some defined goals for implementing CRM in your business. It can be automating services, ensuring a smooth customer experience, managing and processing customer data, or any other measure.

Let’s say you’re a banking firm that will use a CRM to better understand your customers and improve service levels. Your objective is to increase customer retention, sales, and the customer experience.

Don't forget to check out: Salesforce CRM Implementation: Challenges and Solutions

Establish an Implementation Team

It is important to determine the key members or stakeholders while implementing CRM. They ensure a smooth transition into CRM infrastructure from an existing or into a new infrastructure. Even existing employees can be appointed to take overall responsibility for the process. 

An implementation team is established considering various factors such as technical expertise, communication, adaptability, problem-solving skills, and more. Some of the key members of the process are:

• IT Head
• Sales manager
• Finance manager
• Software analyst

The collaborative effort of each team member can support the successful implementation of a CRM. 

Budget Allocation

According to reports from Capterra, the average monthly spending of a business across different industries is about $63 to $94. The finance team evaluates the ROI, pricing, and affordability to allocate a specific budget. Determining the budget is important for data-driven decision-making, resource allocation, and optimization.

In addition, different types of costs are incurred while implementing CRM, such as integration costs, renewal fees, additional licenses, or any other setup costs. Meanwhile, the budget for a CRM is determined by a business’s size, nature, and customer base. 

Choose the Right CRM Platform

Choosing a CRM vendor is a crucial step. According to Gartner reports, almost 70% of businesses fail due to the wrong implementation of a CRM platform.

For a successful CRM selection, primarily discuss what services your business wants. Is it a fit for your budget? Can the CRM solution best suit your employees and customers?

To answer all these questions, analyze all the available CRM platforms in the market. Consider factors such as mobility, pricing and budget, scalability, feature availability, integration, and more. Afterward, you need to evaluate and compare features and functionalities to choose the best CRM solution. 

Some of the top CRM platforms, such as Zoho, Hubspot, and Salesforce, are used to streamline your business processes. 

Prepare a Change Management Plan

Changes in business IT infrastructure need to be communicated between stakeholders, especially employees and customers, for effective communication. They need proper guidance and training to use the CRM platform. Such training can emphasize saving more resources, sharing knowledge, and minimizing repetitive tasks. 

You need ongoing feedback and opinions from team members and stakeholders to ensure their confidence in using the new infrastructure. 

Testing and Go-live

Moving forward, focus on any bottlenecks or challenges a business can face while implementing. A routine check to measure any deficiency compared to set standards or to detect any bug. 

Before going live with CRM, a business must ensure network speed and reliability, data backup processes, and metric identification through testing. Some of the tests before launch are functional testing, usability testing, performance testing, and others.

Go live by successfully transitioning into CRM infrastructure, keeping all the stakeholders updated about go-live processes, new workflows, and support resources.

Monitoring and Evaluation

It is important to measure the growth of your CRM process. It includes monitoring all the key performance indicators relevant to your business goals and utilizing all tools and reports for better insights. 

Evaluating the overall performance of the CRM after implementation to understand how it has impacted your business. Be it sales, marketing, or any other department, analyze the results configured from the process. 

Monitoring and evaluation are continuous processes that ensure the business is on the right track and can deliver a positive return on investment. Based on these insights, be prepared to adapt workflows, functionalities, or even user training to maximize its effectiveness. 

Check out another amazing blog by Cyntexa: Choosing the Right Cloud Consulting Company: A Decision-Making Guide

Final Take

In summary, CRM implementation is a vital step for any business be it IT, manufacturing, banking, consulting firm, or any other business. But make sure you’re following these crucial steps mentioned above in the blog. 

Meanwhile, Consulting an expert for the implementation process makes it easier for a business to adopt a CRM. Cyntexa, an IT consulting firm, assists its clients with Salesforce implementation consulting to improve and enhance business process workflow.