The CRM Implementation Methodology |
CRM projects are challenging to execute successfully. This is because of the full range of factors influencing their success. Organizations tend to approach them as IT projects, neglecting the people and (business) process aspects. But without changing the way an organization works, in respect of its customer-facing activities, the chances of success are limited. To make matters worse, CRM projects have to be set against a moving background of changes in technology, the organization, and its marketplace. This means they face conflicting demands to deliver short and long term benefits to the organization. All of these factors say that it can take a long time to make CRM work appropriately for an organization.
The Catalyst CRM Methodology is designed to help organizations overcome these problems and balance the competing requirements. As the name implies, it acts as a catalyst for CRM projects enabling them to achieve their objectives more reliably and in less time. It allows organizations to benefit from the extensive experience of implementing CRM projects gained by Catalyst's developers: CustomISe, MACS, and SalesPathways.
Five main phases: making complexity manageable
customer relationship management process steps:
The Catalyst CRM Methodology breaks down what otherwise would be a dauntingly complex task into manageable phases, steps, and work components.
The five major phases are:
- Discovery - establishing the business goals for CRM
- Orientation -defining the necessary system and organizational changes
- Navigation - managing system and vendor selection
- Implementation - planning and managing the CRM project
- Post Implementation - monitoring performance and continuous improvement
The five main phases enable companies to address all the significant aspects of planning and implementation. Catalyst gives organizations control of the whole project life-cycle. It provides a framework for decision-making and helps managers work systematically through all the tasks involved in successful CRM projects. Finally, it helps the organization to continuously improve and adapt its CRM capabilities to meet the changing needs of the business and its marketplace.
These phases are broken down further into sub-phases and steps covering the development of a business scope process model, requirements contracting, project management, project team, champion group, process model, communications plan, scope & specification, configuration, import and integrate, testing, training, risk management, and systems evolution and management. These can be sub-divided into key work components and outputs.
A framework for project management
Even with the CRM Methodology, it is impossible to describe one sequential track, where you execute one task and then moves straight onto the next and so on to the end of the project without a backward or sideways glance. At a detailed level, the steps, tasks, and data involved interact with each other. To create order out of what would otherwise threaten to be chaos, the CRM Methodology uses a framework adapted from the Zachman Framework, a set of constructs for implementing IT related projects. This provides a way of describing all the levels of detail in a project and its activities and their relationships with each other. As the project progresses through to implementation, this capability becomes increasingly crucial since 'the devil is in the detail.
Facilitating the CRM team
Any CRM project is a team effort, and the Catalyst CRM Methodology allows all of the members of the team (senior managers, business representatives, project managers, IT specialists, vendors, contractors, consultants) inside and outside the organization to understand their roles and responsibilities and how they affect others.
The model can be used at the 'big picture' stage to provide an overview for senior management. It can also be used at the micro level to give details of what actually needs to be done day-to-day in conjunction with any standard or in-house IT project implementation methodologies such as SSADM or Prince II.
Also Read: How to Budget, CRM Project, Controlling, Risks, Right Technology In 5 Easy StepsGeneral Description
The Catalyst CRM Methodology contains 5 main phases:
Discovery – once an organization has recognized the need for CRM (or improving their existing CRM systems) the first phase covers the definition of the business environment and critical factors inside and outside the organization affecting the need for CRM. It is an audit of the internal and external environment of the organization to identify the key issues that will impact a CRM program. Its findings are the basis for determining the appropriate CRM vision and strategy for the organization. What is the business strategy for the next few years? What is happening with customer satisfaction? How well are channels being managed and used? What is the competitive situation? How efficient is the sales force? How effective are the marketing programs? What key business processes should be included? How should our organization deal with customers in the future?
Orientation – having determined the CRM vision and strategy and the essential requirements of the system, the Orientation phase provides the bridge to identify the specific technical solution needed to meet them. This is done by working out how well existing customer-facing business processes work and how they could be improved. This leads to a definition of essential system requirements and necessary organizational changes (roles and responsibilities).
Navigation – in this phase, the system requirements are defined more precisely, the system is scoped, network and vendor assessment criteria are defined, and a method is selected and contracted.
Implementation – with the vendor(s) and system requirements in place, the main elements of technical and change management projects can be implemented. It is during this phase that the system is built and put into use. Vital factors that must not be neglected here include data sourcing and management and on-going communication with the affected communities through training and other activities.
Post Implementation – in a sense, a CRM project never ends because CRM must continuously evolve to keep pace with the changing business and its environment. In trying to reconcile the short and long-term goals for CRM, we advocate implementation in bite-sized chunks in line with an overall CRM vision and strategy. This means that the system needs to be maintained and developed to keep pace with emerging technologies and changes in the organization, but the successive project(s) should incorporate the learning from previous corporate experience.
Figure 1 The Catalyst CRM Methodology
It is not always possible to take a direct path from start to finish with a CRM project. Steps are often iterative. Backtracking to address missed steps is sometimes needed to overcome project problems. Frequently senior managers decide they need to 'do CRM' and instruct project managers to install a system without sufficient thought or preparation. In these circumstances, the overall strategy and vision are lacking; senior management support is patchy, and insufficient or inappropriate resources are allocated. Often the organizational change issues are just ignored. This is why so many CRM projects fall short of expectations or fail altogether.
Although a company's CRM project history cannot be re-written, applying the methodology to an existing project helps to identify the gaps that need to be filled and maximize the chance of reaching a successful conclusion.
Organisational change and programme management
Figure 1 also shows that organizational change and program management actions are required throughout the project. This can be seen in more detail in figures 2 and 3, which break down the significant stages into sub-phases (business scope, process model, requirements, contracting, implementation, training), and steps.
Figure 2 Steps in the Methodology
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