 No Longer Just a Sales System CRM software (Customer Relationship Management) has evolved to support organizational business goals across the enterprise; sales, marketing, customer service, relationship building, field service and project management. For non-profits the utilization reaches beyond these areas to include membership management, fundraising, variance in quality, case worker scheduling and volunteer management. A well-implemented Dynamics CRM will focus users on achieving the business goals, both with processes and behaviors monitoring. While a poorly implemented deployment will waste time and money and cause needless frustration for your employees, partners and customers. Why the focus on implementation and not the software? While the CRM software you select IS important, most failures come from lack of follow through on the software implementation. Organizations try to save money by doing the implementation without guidance, going live with an out-of-the-box deployment or are expecting to learn and correct the application design and set-up later. Later never comes and an organization starts cutting corners on user training and on-going support.
InfoGrow does a lot of Dynamics CRM rescue projects. and we see three common issues in these failures. Red Flag 1: Treating Dynamic CRM as technology project. Unlike installing Office 365 or an accounting system, CRM is not a system that performs well by installing it and forgetting. First, a CRM project only is 20% about getting the technology right. Because of this fundamental truth about CRM, we often see that a self-implemented CRM system by an IT Department is not being used nine months down the road. A CRM implementation is a line-of-business project. The 80% part of the deployment is about defining what business process need to be reinforced and what user behaviors should be monitored in order to know that the best-practices are being followed. The technology is aligned to support the processes. However, often we find that the business processes are not well defined. User agreement on those is the first step. To expect a software application designed to accommodate hundreds of industries, to impose processes is like expecting to wear the same shirt and pants every day regardless of the seasons or activities planned for the day. There is a good chance that you will be uncomfortable on a number of days with this approach. Even if you have an amazing IT Team, you can’t compete with an experienced Dynamics CRM implementation partner who:
The money you save with an IT-only implementation often becomes a slow revenue leak that shows up as reduced efficiency or takes a much longer time to fully realize the associated benefits. When projects take too long for full deployment, users forget what the expected benefits are and keep running their old way to doing their work. Red Flag #2: Missing or Unclear Expected Business Value There is no reason that a CRM system should not be held to the same expected value standard as any other purchase.
If you buy a piece of manufacturing equipment, you know how much it costs to purchase and operate, and you have set production expectations for every shift. Treat your CRM system the same way. Let’s say you decide you want to grow revenue by 10%. You then defined what actions will help you achieve that revenue growth.
Each of these objectives should have definable actions that can be measured. Too often we take on a new client, that doesn’t know what the business levers should be. For example, the sales process may be a mysterious or convoluted series of steps that varies from sales rep to sales rep or territory to territory. As such, there is no way to build a pipeline to forecast sales because there is not a common language that classifies the sales stages. When a Dynamics CRM project doesn’t have written expected outcomes and when those outcomes are expected, how can success be measured? As time passes and people change, these outcomes are forgotten to the point where users are not sure why they have tool at all. Set expectations in the beginning, measure success, make changes, and reset new expectations. Building an 18-month Dynamics Strategic Roadmap that is reviewed each quarter and updated is essential to your success. Red Flag #3: No On-going Training Not only do users change but so do processes. A 30-minute introduction of CRM to a new user is inadequate. Even existing users need a refresh and to learn new skills. Remember it is not the technical side of the software that is important. Knowing which button to push is only part of the answer -- knowing why is the full answer. And users questioning if there is a better way leads to more productivity and value from the system. Put a structured training program in place for new users. Also put in place a monthly ongoing training program for users. We have had good success with monthly “lunch & Learn” sessions. A session that spends 15-20 minutes to introduce or re-introduce a new feature with 10-mintues for open Q&A is good way to grow users and strengthen user acceptance for the system. It is important to remember that CRM is not a system that performs well by installing it and forgetting. Think of Dynamics CRM as helping you mature your processes and improve them. As your process evolves, so to must the application that is driving the desired behaviors, monitoring and measuring how well the process are working. Please call on us if there anything we can do to help your success - 330-929-1353.
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Bob, We deployed Dynamics CRM about four years ago, and frankly I don’t think we have moved the needle in the last few years to get enough value out of the tool. What should we be doing different? - Jake Dear Jake,
Deploying and using CRM is a moving through a maturity process. The first step is understanding that you need a phased plan – a roadmap. Your plan must have measurable milestones. With everyone in the organization having the ability to visualize the key KPIs en route, and make adjustments in the roadmap as needed. 
Dear Bob, My account reps just don't prospect or even follow up on leads we provide! What can I do? - Barb Dear Barb -
One of the challenges that we often see from a CEO is really trying to drive account managers to do prospecting and to reach out and follow up on leads. A CRM system provides vision into what is happening, or not happening with leads provided to the account manager as well as vision of the sales VP and CEO. 
Dear Bob, My account managers have limited time and with so much distraction they often appear to not know what to focus on. How do I help them? -- James, Sales Manager Dear James, Sellers do have limited time, and in deciding how to focus many rely on guesswork or intuition. That leads to sub-par decisions and incomplete actions when interacting with customers or following a sales process. Here are 4 steps you can start taking today to help them improve their outcomes. 1. Cut anything that is not sales related. When organizations assign or let account managers perform customer service tasks or get involved with marketing, they are providing a manager with the number one excuse for not selling.  
Bob,
I have a client who is a CFO and she is concerned that her sales team is rapidly becoming Zoom-Zombies on time-consuming internal web meetings. Isn’t there a way could help them see that they could be using our Dynamics 365CRM to help their team work better from home? Jack Dear Jack, Meetings aren’t all bad – and can be a great way to stay socially connected. However, we know that in general internal meetings are:
As reported in DestinationCRM.com, the most recent “CMO” Spend study by Gartner showed marketing budgets falling from a high of 12.1% of company revenue in 2016 to 11.3% in 2017. While cuts have varied across industries, retail and manufacturing were the hardest hit. While retail is going through some major changes, the study suggests that “manufacturing is adapting to emerging yet complex B2B2C opportunities”.
 Accurate sales forecasting is essential to growing revenue and managing your business effectively. When you know the timing and amount of incoming revenue, you can plan and focus on the right business initiatives; budget and allocate resources appropriately; set organizational goals; and provide teams with priorities and guidelines for how they spend their time.
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