Preparing for CRM: Priorities (Part 4 of 5)

This article is Part 4 of our Preparing for CRM Series. In this article we discuss CRM Priorities and what you need to consider when setting them.

Preparing for CRM – Priorities

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is one of the most customisable products of its kind on the market. This is both a gift and a curse.  As you run through your processes you’ll find brilliant new ways of working faster and smarter.  Fantastic – but this can start to increase the scope of your project.  This is great if you have a huge budget and/or unlimited time and resource.  But, the reality check is that it will take time and money to implement, and you will have a finite budget/resource/timeframe.

You need to Prioritise!

Preparing for CRM Priorities

Your agreed project Goals and Objectives, will go some way to helping you do this but having a longer-term view is always useful, so don’t throw that away.  Having something to aim for means that you are able to take more appropriate immediate term decisions that should form a strong foundation for a system.  But realistically you will not have the time or budget to do it all at once.  Planning each stage/phase of your implementation helps you manage expectations (and budget) while still getting valuable input from across the business.  The advantages of implementing a simpler initial system:

  • Offers users time to acclimatise to a new way of working, thus aiding user adoption
  • Allows you to focus on getting those basics right, including the right data
  • And allows you to better define subsequent phases based on the practical experience of the foundation you started with.
  • Provides a quicker ROI on a smaller investment – FDs like this!

Here are a few tips to consider when Preparing for initial phase:

  1. Identify the primary/critical processes you have to support
  2. What standard CRM functions can you benefit from immediately?
  3. What automation can you do without? – manual processing is good to prove a new process with minimal investment
  4. What integrations must you have? Outlook is pretty common and out-of-the-box in most cases

These tips will help you deliver a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) with the least investment you need to make to get a worthwhile return.

Phase two or three need not be that far behind phase one, but focusing on the MVP is a great way to ensure the core system is as simple and strong foundation as possible and will serve your business well going forward.

Getting Started

If you are responsible for implementing a new CRM solution for your business and don’t know where to start, the QGate CRM Readiness Assessment tool will help.

The CRM Readiness Assessment has been designed by QGate for the first stage in our CRM Roadmap – Preparation. It is a short assessment providing gap analysis of where you are today and where you need to be tomorrow in preparation for your CRM project.

During this free consultation, we will ask you a set of multiple-choice questions, which will provide a free report with an assessment and benchmark of how ready you are for your new CRM solution.

Book your CRM Readiness Assessment now.

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