CRM projects are more often plagued with organizational challenges than they are with technical issues. Here are 5 steps to address the organizational issues that arise from implementing technologies that improve customer relationships. When you are sitting in the driver’s seat, it is helpful to remember these 5 things.

1. Establish a sensible vision of the future - The implementation of CRM in your organization needs to be viewed as a culture-change initiative. Resistance to the coming CRM culture change means catastrophe. Quantify the value that the CRM project is going to bring to the organization. Being able to say:
    
   “Reducing the time that it takes for us to respond to a customer request of information by 30% will reduce customer defection by $50,000 per quarter.”
   
   or
    
   “By standardizing our sales process we will increase the time sales reps can spend on prospecting by 1200 hours next year.”
   
   goes a very long way to increasing adoption, because everyone’s eyes are on the prize, and when the going gets tough you will have this vision to hold yourself accountable for the results. When someone questions, “why do I have to do this?” you can say, “Because we are going to save $200,000 next year; aren't you interested in helping us add $200,000 to our bottom line?”
   
2. Management Team Leads the way – An attitude needs to be developed in the management group that supports the initiative from the top. What needs to be reinforced is that system usage is not voluntary. When management presents a report to the team during a staff meeting that is clearly not based on the data the users have added to CRM, the users get discouraged. They perceive that if the system is of no use to their manager, then it is not critical to their own success. Activity, sales forecast, and account reports should be derived from the info that you are having your users enter into the system. The managers should be using reports from the system during internal meetings; they should be referring to data inside the system during their conversations with teammates. Basically they need to lead the way with CRM culture. Learn this phrase: “If it is not in CRM it does not exist.”
   
3. CRM Requires Customer Analysis – CRM is defined as focusing on “The Customer.” Many projects are focused on organizational improvements and not on actually improving the customer experience. Developing strategies that focus around the customer are more difficult than one would think. It is easy to look at the team of people you have and find operational efficiencies that you think would better serve your customers, but this is rarely the case. Customer analysis requires actually talking to the customer and consolidating their feedback and finding ways to internalize what they perceive as valuable into your operation. When the value perception is met or exceeded, your bottom line will see the results. A good example has been the recent trend toward 24-hour retail operations. Keeping the doors open another 12 hours a day does have some expense and may not seem like an action of an operationally-efficient organization. But once customers are able to take advantage of the expanded hours, watch the effect on overall sales and customer loyalty.
   
4. Get the Big Picture- Improving the customer’s perception of value is done by understanding the customer’s entire experience, and their perception of value at each touch point. Get a white board out and map out the customer lifecycle and where they experience your organization's touches. It is amazing what the customer actually has to go through to do business with you. Once you have this Touch Point Map built, share it with some of your trusted customers. They will help you with deciding which touch points are valuable and which ones are destructive. If the customer does not value a particular touch point, you better figure out why you are doing that or get rid of it altogether.
   
5. Get a Road Map – What is the plan? Sounds simple but most project teams fail to see the big picture. They are focusing on the next 90 days of work, pleasing you by getting it done on budget and on time. But realize that improving your customer relationships is not a destination — it is a journey. As customers' needs change, so should your CRM strategic map. A good way to keep the team engaged is by keeping the ideas flowing. Build a list of “what to do next” and keep revisiting it every meeting. Maintain the list so you can keep generating a plan for what you are going to do in 6 months, 1 year, etc. If you can’t get it done in the next 90 days then it needs to be planned for the next phase of the project.