Business Involvement During CRM Implementation

Kristel
Member

Posted 17-Jan-2006 04:14 AM
Dear Silvana Buljan,

I am currently doing research in Belgium. My interest goes to the implementation phase of CRM. More specifically the impact of the presence of the business next to IT during this phase.

It is common that the business is involved during the design phase and after the implementation for testing but are they always around during the actual implementation and is there a significant impact of this presence on the success of the implementation?

Thanks for your time!!!
Kristel

Gwynne Young
Managing Editor, CustomerThink
Member

Posted 18-Jan-2006 07:30 AM
[Posted for Silvana Buljan]

Dear Kristel,

Business needs to be present throughout the whole CRM implementation--usually the decisions and business rules defined in the design phase have to be re-worked during process testing and system testing. This is because business can never explain/state its requirements to the tiniest detail in system design.

Example: Marketing needs the information of household members in the CRM application. IT needs to know how to implement this in the data model. Does Marketing just need the number of household members? The age? The relationship between the main customer and the members of the household? Often, business requirements are not detailed enough for data and system developers for implementation.

It is absolutely necessary that a team of business experts is involved during all phases of the CRM implementation for solving upcoming business issues. If not, you have the risk of re-work, time delays and cost increases.

Regards,

Silvana

Rémon Elsten
Member

Posted 28-Jan-2006 06:31 AM
Dear Kristel,

I also agree with Silvana that business should be involved in the entire implementation phase. From experience I would recommend to:
- define a communication-process with business during the implementation phase
- setup a change request process during the implementation phase
- plan the changes after the implementation phase
- handover the responsibility of the implementation during the user acceptance testing phase and let business calculate the business case for all open changes

Regards,
Remon

Graham Hill
Guru
Member

Posted 29-Jan-2006 05:05 AM
Kristel

It should now be painfully obvious not only that the business should be fully involved during CRM implementation, but also that the implementation will deservedly fail if it isn't.

In reality, the business should be involved in the CRM project from the start through to the finish. CRM is fundementally about how you cary out the customer-facing parts of business after all, not just about IT/IS implementation!

There is an even more fundamental reason why business should be involved in CRM all the way through and it goes to how CRM projects are managed & measured.

In the past, most CRM projects were managed & measured as corporate capital expenditure projects. And most of the capital was spent on a combination of IT/IS and systems integration consulting. These projects were designed as stand-alone projects, managed likje corporate R&D and measured through the ROI they generated at some point in the future, typically three-years hence.

With the benefit of hindsight, I believe this to have been a FUNDAMENTAL FLAW in the management of CRM. And the flaw is still dooming many CRM projects to failure in your typical risk-averse corporation.

For some years, I have been setting-up CRM projects as corporate venture capital projects rather than corporate capital expenditure ones. The project are designed to deliver cashflow as quickly as possible. This is achieved using a "bootstrapping" approach to making investments in the project only as and when required, getting CRM in use by the business when it is "good enough" to be deployed rather than waiting until it is perfect, piloting each wave of CRM capability developments before industrialising those that really work well, involving the business CRM's continuouus development and above all, concentrating on generating incremental cashflow now rather than ROI later.

CRM projects structured as corporate capital investments have a poor record compared to those structured as venture capital investment projects.

There is plenty written on the process of bootstrapping, but Guy Kaeasaki is particularly good on this topic. See his 26th Jan posting on the Art of Bootsrapping on his blog "Let the Good Times Roll" at http://blog.guykawasaki.com/ for more details, or his book, "The Art of the Start".

Graham Hill
Independent CRM Consultant