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Illustration

What are the stages of CRM system implementation?

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    05.01.2023
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    3 minutes
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    Author: Julia Andrusiak
Illustration

What are the stages of CRM system implementation?

    icon
    05.01.2023
    icon
    3 minutes
    icon
    Author: Julia Andrusiak

Quite often, we start doing something global without thinking about why I need it, what is important to know beforehand, and how I will achieve it. You can even compare the implementation of a CRM system to buying a car.

For example, here are some important questions to ask:

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    Why do I need a car?Do I need it for business expansion or just for family needs?
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    What budget do I have?Am I looking for something economical or will I order an exclusive? 
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    What functional characteristics should my future car have? The most basic or the highest level features of the selected model.

Do you see what we're talking about?

Therefore, this article is about the important questions and stages that you should go through before and during the implementation of a CRM system.

So, the main stages include the following:

Stage 1. Preparatory

Right at this stage, you need to discuss the main issues at your company's monthly meeting before choosing and implementing a system. It is imperative that you try to record everything and not deviate from the chosen direction in the future.

During this discussion, it is important to highlight the main goals and objectives of the implementation. They should not conflict with or contradict your tactical goals.
And a rather important point is that here you have to determine the performance indicators. Because the implementation of a CRM system, like any other project, must have completion criteria and success indicators. In other words, what needs to be achieved?

Examples:

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    Reduce the speed of order processing in social networks by 50%.
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    Speed up the transfer of orders from the sales department to the warehouse by 2 times.

Stage 2. Choosing a CRM system

Having a clear understanding of why we started all this, we proceed to one of the most important stages – choosing a system.

This is where you can spend months searching and comparing various systems or you can immediately seek help from the relevant contractors.

What we want to emphasize here is that the system must:

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    Be in line with your budget;
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    Be flexible and easy to use;
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    Have convenient data import or migration from other CRM systems.

Stage 3. Internal audit of processes or preparation of technical specifications

Sometimes it seems that once we've chosen a system and even found someone to set it up for us, sales will follow by themselves. Indeed, we have passed quite important stages, but you must admit that after buying a car, we customize the seat for us, check the tire pressure, go to the dry cleaners or buy seat covers to our liking.

The essence of the company's internal audit is that we need to digitize all the processes that we would like to transfer to our system. In other words, we try to describe all communications with customers and colleagues, as well as sales stages, on a sheet of paper (usually Google Docs). This is necessary so that the CRM system reflects the work of your departments and easily reports to you at the end of the month.
The result of this stage is clearly defined tasks with details.

Example:

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    Importing a customer base;
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    Customization of Leads, Contacts and Companies cards (list of fields and possible choices);
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    Integration with social networks (Facebook);
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    Integration with the site (creation of Agreements with a list of goods after completion on the site);
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    Integration with external services (delivery).

Stage 4. Setting up and training

Having completed all the previous stages, the CRM setup will be quick and cost-effective.
It is at this stage that 100% of the work should be outsourced to contractors who have the appropriate specialists, expertise and experience.

The main mistake of many managers is to think that after setting up a CRM system, everything ends there. But it is extremely important to teach how to use the CRM system. After all, training your team makes it possible to quickly adapt them to the new tool and prevent sabotage within departments.

As a result, you will have a customized system for your processes and step-by-step instructions (preferably video) on how to work in it.

Stage 5. Analyzing the results

So the moment has come when we can go back to stage 1 and answer our questions, and most importantly, check the success criteria and indicators that we recorded at the very beginning.
From our experience, only 30% of companies evaluate the results of CRM implementation. It is always worthwhile to conduct a retrospective and evaluate the results of the invested resources.

In general, I want to help you identify the main signs that everything has gone well:

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    The system is easy to understand and more than 90% of managers work in it and record data about customers and orders;
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    The manager is aware of what the employees are doing and their workload;
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    Every month, the manager and the owner can see the reports;
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    The speed of order processing has increased;
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    Employees spend less time on routine tasks;
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    Some of the "repetitive tasks" are automated.

Contact us, we will help you figure out how to choose a CRM, how to migrate from another CRM system, analyze your processes, set up a CRM and train your team.

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Julia Andrusiak

Account Director

+38 050 700 75 72

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