QGate CRM Success Program: 9 steps to a successful CRM project
Published: October 2018
Please raise your hand if you’re panicking due to being tasked with implementing and deploying a new CRM (Customer Relationship Management) System into your organisation?
When your boss opens up a discussion with “we’d like you to head up the new CRM implementation project” you’re probably sat there thinking “I know nothing about CRM” so your first port of call will no doubt be Google. At which point you will be faced with the sheer volume of CRM related articles, guides, best practices, top ten’s, etc, but don’t panic…
As with any new technology implementation, the risks can be high, a CRM is no different. As experienced CRM professionals, we’re here to help you avoid the pitfalls and transform your business, this is why we have compiled a roadmap to softly introduce your business to the world of CRM.
Read on and when you’re done you’ll know exactly what’s involved and the various phases to help you deliver a successful CRM System with our CRM Success Program.
QGate CRM Success Program Journey
Our CRM Success journey is built up of the following:
- Four Key Goals
- Two Measurable Objectives
- Nine Simple Steps
- ONE principle
Based on our 20+ years of experience, we believe these are the key foundations to ensuring your CRM implementation is successful, so let’s go a little deeper.
“The CRM Success Program has blown me away… A fantastic customer experience”
Emma Mills, Marketing Consultant, FG Marketing
Four Key Goals
- Engage your customers, this can be interpreted in many ways but ultimately, it’s about building an emotional connection between customers and a brand. Sales, Marketing and Service drive customer experience, customer service, product experience all are influenced and enhanced by a successful CRM.
- Empower your employees is next, give your teams the tools, resources, processes and enable them to be able to make decisions.
- Optimise operations quite simply do what you’re doing now better.
- Transform your products once you have the previous basics in place and doing what they should then you can do the sexy stuff, a CRM will become your innovation platform and help you innovate through digital interactions to take your products and services to the next level, build digital services, integrate with your products or personalise experiences.
Two Measurable Objectives
In any business there are two primary objectives:
- Increase Revenue
- Decrease Costs
If your business consistently achieves BOTH of these you will grow, simple. This does not mean you exclusively pursue these, there are many other metrics but they all likely contribute down to the same two things ‘revenue and cost’. A CRM will help make this a reality and as such we believe they should be the primary measurement of success.
Nine Simple Steps
The QGate CRM Success Program has been built based on over 20 years’ experience of implementing Customer Relationship Management for our clients and its designed specifically to introduce you and your business to the world of CRM. If you follow and realise the goals of each step you will have a successful CRM system and the beauty of this is that its vendor agnostic, you can take your work here and engage with any CRM partner anywhere in the world.
Step 1, CRM PREPARATION: Prepare your business for CRM Success. The output of this step is to gain an initial view of what you want to achieve from your CRM project, what’s needed from your business and the basis for potential vendor conversations.
Step 2, CRM STRATEGY: Building an effective CRM strategy with a clear view of your CRM Goals, Objectives & Features means you will have a CRM strategy that will engage your customers.
Step 3, CRM PROCESS: This step enables you to understand the ideal processes needed to optimise operations and empower your employees.
Step 4, CRM SCOPING: Translate your vision into a reality with a prioritised list of CRM requirements to build against.
Step 5, CRM DESIGN: Design a system to maximise your return, here we design a system which realises the prioritised requirements with a functional design specification.
Step 6, CRM DEVELOP INTEGRATE & TEST: Build and validate your system at this point you will have a working ‘beta’ system that satisfies your business and functional requirements that are validated through testing.
Step 7, CRM DEPLOY & TRAIN: Engage your user base through demonstrating value to them as individuals.
Step 8, CRM MAINTENANCE & SUPPORT: Keeping your system at optimum health will quite simply give you peace of mind.
Step 9, CRM EVALUATION & ITERATION: Realise your investment and importantly prove its business value then apply the Use/Learn/Iterate approach to increase your return on investment.
One Principle – The Freedom to Choose
The first 4 steps of the QGate CRM Success Program are technology agnostic, this means if you have either chosen a CRM technology already or you do not want to commit to technology so early (you are my favourite people you are doing things right!) you can still use this program.
You can choose to do the steps on your own, using the self-service guides and tools, or you can get support from a partner. Either way, whether you read our articles, use our tools, attend our workshops or use our expertise at no point are you tied to us, you have the freedom to make your own choices on how you proceed and with whom.
How to get started…
If you have been tasked with implementing a new CRM solution for your company, and do not know where to start, QGate’s CRM Readiness Assessment tool will help…
You can book your free consultation and report where we ask a series of multiple-choice questions which will provide a benchmark on where you are in terms of your readiness to commence a CRM implementation.
Book your free consultation and report now…
