The hottest plan to achieve CRM maximizes your pot

Plan to achieve CRM to maximize your potential return on investment

before starting the selection process, consider the potential return on investment that customer relationship management (CRM) will bring to you. Before you start drafting the RFP or negotiating with the factory, you need to do some homework to ensure that you can maximize the return on investment

find out the crux – and solutions

before you find the right vendor, please clearly define the crux in your enterprise. Do you need to improve management visibility in the sales channel? Do you need to reduce customer support costs or improve customer support? Do you need to reduce customer related administrative expenses? Specifically defining your CRM problems will help you identify which technologies or components should be used to obtain return on investment, so as to formulate and carry out the implementation order of CRM plan. Most companies' CRM goals are nothing more than the following parts:

· improve sales performance

· improve management visibility

· improve customer support

· improve marketing

· reduce costs

if your CRM plan contains more than two of these goals, you need to set priorities and expand your plan layer by layer. You may want to consider two different projects at the same time, depending on the different impacts of the people involved

aside from these, what you need to start thinking now is who can help you make an overall plan if the company's policies or budget are in place. Feedback and support gained early in the planning phase can save you time and energy

at this stage, you need to understand the approximate budget, how flexible it is, and what your purchasing specialist or CFO wants to get from it. For example, if you know that your project needs to enter the payback period after 6 months, you can make corresponding arrangements

make a brief list

no matter what your relationship with existing manufacturers is, whether you have similar experience in the past, and what the technical environment is, before making a decision, you should make a brief list of alternative manufacturers and make an objective assessment of them. The following factors can be taken into consideration when you make a list:

· your CRM objectives. Whether the functionality of the manufacturer's products is suitable for your enterprise depends on whether you want to improve sales, improve reports and estimates, improve support, improve the market, or integrate different customer related technologies

· your existing environment and it philosophy. Do you have a database, order system, or contact list that needs to be integrated or migrated into your CRM solution? Do you want to carry out CRM implementation by yourself, or entrust it to a consultant or system integrator? Do you mind outsourcing all or part of your sales and market data? Answering the above questions can help you determine whether you need a huge CRM infrastructure, a managed solution, or a wide range of solutions to maximize the return on investment

· your user motivation. Do the people in your enterprise who will apply this solution already know and are willing to accept change, or are they still using pen and paper to track potential customers? The greater the change they have to accept, the greater the risk of impeding the return on investment. You need to study the availability of different solutions from three aspects: the level of user experience and technical adaptability, the potential customization cost of the project, and the ability to respond quickly when changes are needed

· your budget. CRM solutions such as Siebel and SAP not only cost millions of dollars to implement, but also need a team for continuous support and maintenance. The expenditure on Microsoft's CRM and FrontRange solutions (for example) will be relatively less. You can consider using managed solutions to reduce early investment, which can range from $500 to $1500 per user per year

clearly defining your needs and characteristics from these aspects can make you fully prepared for the next step - evaluate the return on investment that each solution can bring to you on the basis of cost and income

check the manufacturer's resume

once you select a candidate that can provide you with the best solution, you should refer to their resume - this is not just browsing their success stories on their pages. Check each individual case in detail and combine your own research to understand their decision-making process, the reasons for the success of the project and the problems, as well as whether the expenses and benefits spent on their solutions can meet the needs of customers. No manufacturer will provide you with contacts of past cases, so you can call to inquire; First, they may not have so many customers at all. Second, they may not be sure whether their customers are as satisfied as the salesperson said

looking for a partner

in the CRM world, few companies can develop solutions independently without the help of external consultants or system integrators. To succeed in a project, choosing and planning how to work with your consultants is as important as choosing technology. It's not enough to just adopt the partners or consultants recommended by the solution manufacturer - you need to evaluate those service providers as you evaluate CRM manufacturers. Through research and careful planning, you will interact with manufacturers and service providers, and reach a consensus on who will be responsible for the main issue to ensure the smooth implementation of the project

risk aversion: Research

a company using Siebel solutions said, "One of our main problems is the lack of experience of consultants. They are Siebel's partners and recommended to us by Siebel, but they do not have enough experience to show us how to maximize revenue and how to carry out the solution. "

verify your investment

once you have made clear your goals and listed the alternative list of manufacturers, you can adopt a structured evaluation method based on cost and income to identify the best solution and establish a business case through the return on investment. In terms of cost, you need to consider the initial and subsequent costs of the project in terms of software, hardware, consulting, internal personnel and training.

here are some things that can help you CR Suggestions for maintaining the return on investment of project m at a normal level:

· your spending on software and consultants should be less than 70% of the estimated annual income

· you should be able to expand and obtain a certain degree of return in less than six months (even if it is just a trial run)

· for managed solutions, you should get a return within 60 days

· the consulting cost should not exceed twice your initial software investment cost

· user training should not exceed 4 hours

in terms of income and return, you should consider both direct and indirect income. Rank your estimated income and return from the most direct and indirect aspects, and then carry out follow-up work according to your estimate. You can use internal research, case study data and reliable benchmark information as the basis for quantitative analysis of estimated income

key decision-making factors

there is no CRM solution that is useless. As long as the business needs are clear and the deployment process is reasonable, most solutions can provide value for you. Once you have identified your CRM needs and the list of alternative vendors, you can consider many factors to help you make the right decision

user transition

when evaluating the type of CRM solution that is most suitable for your enterprise from the standpoint of user transition, you need to consider the following two points:

· whether users are willing to transition to this application. Sometimes the policy and cultural issues arising from the transition are more than technical issues. If everyone agrees that this solution is what they need and can simplify their work, you will have fewer obstacles in promoting user transition. A successful transition depends on how many users need to abandon their old ways of working to adapt to this solution. If users lack enthusiasm and cannot process and share information as expected, then the CRM project is likely to die halfway

· technical capabilities of potential users. Many CRM solutions are complex and difficult to use. If your CRM object is a new customer support or sales person with a strong technical background, you can choose a more complex solution or quickly introduce more functionality to them. If your CRM object is a group of sales teams who are still tracking potential customers with paper and pen, it is a good way to start with some simple things

once you understand the actual positioning of your enterprise, you should consider the complexity of the solution and the difficulty of adding application functions after you generate new needs and your users are proficient in using the solution. The following are some common problems to pay attention to in the process of evaluating solutions from the standpoint of user transition:

· planning for custom expansion

· integrating multiple components to meet your needs

· lack of tracking records to support your sales representative

· for "the next version" Functional planning

· a wide range of training courses

· continuous consulting needs for any change and update

cost

in CRM, the sentence "you get as much as you pay" is not always applicable. In fact, many companies spent too much on CRM components and functions in the past without bringing corresponding value returns to their users. A measurement method that does not include expensive upfront license fees will greatly improve your success rate. The average price of managed solutions is generally about $1000 per user per year; For highly competitive solutions, this price still has room for discount. The initial license cost of the built-in solution is much higher, but the later maintenance cost will be relatively small

existing environment

what solutions and data sources are your sales or customer support representatives using now, what solutions are they best at using, and what needs to be integrated into the CRM solution you choose to provide value? You can't think about how to integrate existing resources and apply them to CRM projects later. When choosing a vendor, you should study whether it can be integrated into your existing environment. You'd better ask them to let you refer to the records of similar customers

best practice: match

one company chose Microsoft CRM because it can be easily integrated into the logistics off. With the development of electronic skills, ice applications. In view of the fact that the sales team has long been accustomed to Microsoft's interface and feel, and because the design of this application closely matches the business process in the company. Therefore, the company began to earn returns after five months

flexibility

beyond the opportunity of initial development, integration, deployment and selection of solutions,