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...
We hope you enjoyed the preview!
To continue reading, please click the link below or the image above.
10 Steps for a Successful CRM Implementation
A Response to Inc. Magazine's June 1 guide, "How to Build Business Alliances"
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100601/how-to-build-business-alliances.html
The process involved in determining which CRM solution is right for your organization is one that should not be underestimated and takes careful consideration. If from the start your CRM solution does not work well with your organization's goals, then there could be trouble.
This is the way in which the adoption of a CRM application is comparable to forming a business alliance. Inc. Magazine, the publisher that advises business leaders on starting, operating and growing their businesses, created a guide to forming a strategic alliance. After reading this guide, it became apparent that I could draw a lot of parallels to the process of CRM execution.
Inc. divides its guide into three sections: "Selecting a Partner," "Cutting a Deal," and "Making it Work."
Although best practices for CRM implementation has to be broken down into more than just three major categories, this guide definitely hits the nail on the head when it comes to making an important decision or investment meant to improve a business operation of any sort.
As Inc. insinuates, the selection of a partner is a very important part of the formation of a successful business alliance. It states that, "it pays to be very selective about whom you team up with." This holds true for organizations that seek to invest in a CRM application to improve operations, as well. While it shouldn't scare you away from adopting a CRM solution, you want to be sure that the amount of time and money you use to research solutions, purchase one, and train employees (which rightfully comes along with the implementation process) will be worth it in the end. You don't need to be skeptical if you are certain from the beginning that the CRM you choose is a good fit for your organization.
Inc. also claims that "cutting a deal" involves planning that sets your organization up for success with its new alliance. The same goes for CRM adoption. We can safely say that how well-though-out your organization's plan is for using CRM will determine the success of your investment. Inc. suggests that in this stage you need to "draw the big picture" and "establish subjects and a timetable for the talks." The better your employees understand the benefits of CRM to the team as a whole, the more everyone will get out of it. Time should be set aside for employees to be trained and educated adequately so they will know how to use the system to the benefit of the organization.
When you choose to implement a CRM system, "making it work" is very important. Similar to the importance of planning who will make which decisions in a company once an alliance is formed, it is important that a plan is in place regarding how the CRM will be used routinely and how each person can make the most out of it. In the case of business alliances, Inc. suggests finding a person within the partnering company who is really passionate about having both firms work towards moving in the right direction. Similarly, you should identify a person who is very skilled and consistent with using the CRM application within your company. This person would be someone who can lead by example and who employees can look to for help if they have questions. This should help improve the CRM adoption rate amongst your employees.
Although building business alliances and CRM implementation are two separate subjects, the best practices for building business alliances can be applied to how your organization goes about adopting a CRM system.
Prestigious CEO Forum Now Using EquityTouch Deal Sourcing Software
All women business forum of The Commonwealth Institute implements CRM system from Touch Ahead Software
Boston, MA, March 19, 2010 - The Commonwealth Institute Evening CEO Forum has recently started to use EquityTouch for information management. The Commonwealth Institute (TCI) is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping women CEO's and entrepreneurs grow their businesses. TCI's Evening Forum members meet once a month to discuss complex business decisions and exchange ideas. Nancy Keddy, a member of The Commonwealth Institute and co-founder of Touch Ahead Software, noticed that TCI's Evening Forum would benefit from a system to track the communications of the monthly meetings.
During the forum, members exchange contacts and recommendations among one another. TCI Members also provide monthly "check-in" documents with updates and other news about their own businesses. TCI's Evening Forum was looking for a fast and efficient way to digitally archive the documents so that they could be easily accessed in the future. Keddy saw this as an opportunity and recommended EquityTouch. The program now provides a centralized database for all TCI Evening Forum members to upload and reference information at the click of a button.
The "Touch" concept of EquityTouch is helping to organize the information flow of the Evening Forum. According to Keddy, the Forum meets for three and a half hours, and a lot of information is exchanged. With EquityTouch, all communications including recommendations (reading materials, businesses, and individuals), key events, and research can all be catalogued as "Touches" and placed in the database for fast and efficient referencing. Keddy says "TCI's Evening Forum is using EquityTouch in many different ways to have information ready at our fingertips."
About The Commonwealth Institute
The Commonwealth Institute (TCI) is a non-profit organization that helps women entrepreneurs, CEOs and senior corporate executives grow their businesses through peer mentoring. For more information, visit www.commonwealthinstitute.org.
About Touch Ahead Software LLC
Touch Ahead Software is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions company, focused on providing unparalleled benefits of advanced technology to the alternative asset community. The benefits include dramatically reduced cost of ownership and time for implementation, as well as higher user satisfaction and organizational profitability through deal sourcing and powerful collaboration tools. Touch Ahead Software is the developer of EquityTouch, the premiere CRM service for the financial and other specialized industries. For more information, please visit
www.touchahead.com
Press Contact
For more information, please contact:
Cathie Briggette
Touch Ahead Software LLC
(p) +1 (866) 960 9301
(e) cmb@touchahead.com
What You Should Take into Consideration
When it comes time for you
to start using a CRM system for the first time or to take the plunge and adopt
a new one, there are some things you may want to consider to make sure you are
prepared to use a CRM system for all it is worth.
CRM software is meant to
help your business in many different ways, especially to increase efficiency.
In no way is it supposed to make things more complex and stressful for you. It
can do great things for you such as keep you organized and updated, help you
identify problem areas and trends, and, of course, help you maintain
relationships with clients. There are countless ways in which CRM systems can
help you.
You may find yourself a bit
overwhelmed if you don’t have an idea of what you would like the CRM system to
help you to achieve. Do you want to see where you are lacking productivity? Do
you simply want to record contact information and keep track of communication
with clients? What about having the ability to create and share groups of
contacts?
Although it’s perfectly acceptable for you to want to do only one of
these or all of them combined, you should at least know what you expect the
system to help you with. This should be considered before you purchase
software. It might help to think of
what your organization’s pain points are and what data you plan on entering
into the system. Keep in mind that since you have to actually enter data to
give yourself and the CRM system something to work with, you cannot expect to
realize results without the user(s) giving input.
In order to use the system to its full
potential, to get the most out of the system and to realize the benefits, you
must learn how to use the system, and to your benefit. This is where simplicity
comes in as a valuable characteristic. The more simplistic your CRM
software is (simplistic meaning uncomplicated for the user), the better able you will be to use it for all it is worth because
you will have a better chance of knowing all the features really well instead
of just knowing many features slightly or not knowing them at all. If you pay
for software that has a million different complicated features, and they aren’t
helpful to your business or you have no idea how to use them, you may be
setting yourself up for frustration.
Written by Melissa Cocks
Touch Ahead Software LLC