I came across David Taber’s article in CIO titled “The CRM Talent Shortage: Here, Now” and agreed with some of his points, but there were some things he said that struck a chord with me. The article talks about how there is currently a shortage of CRM talent, and due to the fluctuating economy CRM professionals are hard to come by.
According to Taber, “there’s [an] increasing demand for external staff and consultants.” He also says that the vacant openings include “system administrators, operations types, data analysts, and power users.”
I have to say, I disagree.
Before you even look into outside support for you CRM solution, before you even consider implementing a CRM solution, you need to find a CRM that is easy to use. You can’t waste valuable time and money dealing with a complex application.
Ease of use allows for a smooth user adoption experience. CRM is all about having information available, easily, and right at your fingertips.
A point Taber mentioned that I do agree with is about growing your own talent.
“Grow your own talent, investing a junior technical person to give them CRM and business domain knowledge.”
I’m going to take this point one step further and say that not only should your CRM solution be easy to use, it needs to be easy to learn. Complex tasks should be limited. Yes, your organization should have a trained professional on staff or readily available for support needs. However, education should not stop with the initial introduction of the CRM solution. Your organization should provide ongoing CRM education to make sure the CRM application is being used to its fullest potential.
Make sure you review all of your options before selecting a CRM solution. Don’t just assume you need an entire team to maintain your organization’s CRM. Implementing an easy to use, easy to learn CRM will help you quickly and efficiently train your current team to help streamline your business processes, without wasting valuable time and resources.
10 Steps for a Successful CRM Implementation
With more than 21 years of experience as an IT support person and software developer, Nancy Keddy, Co-Founder and CEO of Touch Ahead Software, has "seen and heard about many CRM implementations that have gone poorly, but [has] also had the pleasure of being involved with many successful implementations."
In our white paper, "10 Steps for a Successful CRM Implementation," Nancy makes critical points on key elements that organizations must consider when considering a CRM implementation.
Without considering these key elements, a company's CRM initiative could fail. Read the white paper and see what valuable information you have yet to discover about correctly choosing and implementing a CRM solution!
Here is a preview of the contents of the white paper:
1. Business Process
When implementing a CRM solution, the organization as a whole needs to become accustomed to the application. Successful companies use CRM as a tool to give them the information they need so they can be more effective. When you implement a CRM system, you cannot hold the preconception that people do not like change or that everyone has their own way of handling information. Let us be clear here, it is not about each person individually, it is about the team as a whole. It’s about the organization’s goals and achieving them, which in the end benefits each person.
Hold your team accountable and get your statistics from your CRM. Do not allow users to provide other sources for their information. If they had ten meetings in a month, the CRM should have a record of those ten meetings.
Garbage in, garbage out! In order for the CRM to work optimally within your organization, you must ensure your users enter content completely and consistently. This way, the information you get out of the system will be helpful to you and everyone else.
2. Ease of Use
Ease of use allows for a smooth user adoption experience. Day-to-day activities need to be simple and quick. CRM is about having information at your finger tips. Managers need to access the pipeline and statistics quickly. The whole team needs to be efficient. Adding key information needs to be quick and simple, and it needs to follow the work flow. For example, if certain users are fast on a keyboard, the CRM should have keyboard equivalents to get through the process with less mouse clicking...
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10 Steps for a Successful CRM Implementation