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December 25, 2022
What is Dynamics 365 and How It Benefits your Business
CRM systems implementations are extremely complex. and there is nothing as frustrating as implementing a CRM project, investing all the necessary resources, staffing and time only for it to flop.
As a Dynamics 365 consulting company - we often engage in Rescue projects where customers started to implement a CRM, and during the implementation, they realize that the system is not turning as they were promised or envisioned.
The good news is, these problems are all too common and, if identified early, can be corrected in time before they derail a successful CRM project. Let us examine the four reasons that cause a CRM project to fail and how you can avoid them.
The most common mistake when implementing CRM. CRM project owners and stakeholders get into the implementation without setting specific objectives and targets for the project.
As a business software, CRM is designed with flexibility and adaptability features, which allows it to be used in various organizations, industries, and under different circumstances. Without a clear vision of what you expect to achieve with your CRM process and without specific objectives, you can quickly lose focus during the planning and implementation process.
This, in turn, leads to late or inconsistent delivery timelines, which is one reason for a failed CRM project. The more detailed and specific your goals are, the more likely you'll wound up with a successfully implemented project. These goals will pave the way to a clear strategy. At GOBI, we provide a Dynamics 365 envision workshop to help businesses assess their needs and develop implementation strategies and plans.
CRM is not just about customer management. It also provides operation management functions such as marketing, field service management, project management, and finance.
Prioritizing your implementation approach is key to successful implementation. By focusing on solving immediate business challenges on a smaller scale rather than attempting to overhaul the entire operation, you are increasing your success rate while reducing financial restraints.
A good CRM is a lean CRM. Cleaning up your data before migrating to your new CRM is a good practice. By auditing your data, you will discover redundant and duplicate records; furthermore, get rid of unnecessary records.
There is always that one person or team that will object to introducing a new CRM. As a project owner, you need to listen to their concerns and address them.
Engaging with impacted teams at early stages such as discovery and product demonstrations will allow your team members to sound their concerns, bring new ideas and ultimately look forward to a new system that will solve their challenges.
When building a strategy for a new CRM, you must incorporate a user adoption and training strategy. Nothing is worse than introducing a new system only for users not to use as intended.
User adoption is a key metric for your ROI. It needs careful and personalized planning based on users' roles and responsibilities.
New CRM systems often introduce new automation and business processes to streamline user workflow or to ensure business processes are followed and documented. This doesn't stop by going live as you will always find new ways to enhance your system.
In short - Don't expect users to know the system from day 1. Proper CRM training and continuous awareness are a must.
As a CRM implementation partner, it's our responsibility to demonstrate the out-of-box functions that match business needs to our customers. We don't want to reinvent the wheel. Most CRM systems such as Dynamics 365 provide huge out-of-box (OOB) functions and entities that can be reusable in your CRM implementation.
By simply understanding OOB and evaluating business needs, you can shorten the implementation lifecycle and take advantage of pre-existing key entities.
