CRMCS

CRM Project Rescue

CRM is a tricky solution to put in place, as it needs to combine a business strategy, a technical system and user adoption in one package, and often this can go less than planned.

Here as CRMCS, we have a track record and expertise of picking up existing failing Dynamics CRM Projects and turning them round - with excellent support structure and experience dealing with bespoke configuration, customisation and development.

How do we do this? First we identify why the project is stumbling, usually as a result of one of the following factors:

Lack of Engagement
If the Users and Stakeholders are not engaged by the Project Team, this can lead to a disconnect between the system requirements and the wider business - this acts as a blocker to user adoption and so can lead to the 'slow death' of even a good technical project.
Lack of Technical Knowhow
If the Project Team do not fully understand the Technology behind the solution, or fail to use the right tools available to them, this can build a system that hits one of the technical limiting factors: Too slow, too inaccurate, too buggy or too overly complex. This breaks confidence in the system and makes any successful delivery a tough march through the various technical challenges.
Lack of Direction
Even when the project is both adopted and technically well built, CRM is nothing without direction on the business's wider CRM Strategy and good Account Management to ensure the solution remains on-track to delivery on that strategy. If a system simply replaces the one before it, there is a good chance of replicating previous process failings or system failings. These systems can come unstuck for a change in management or a change in the customer's market environment when the system becomes a blocker to a new direction instead of supporting it. This can often lead to an expensive replacement project or limiting the business in a time of disruptive technology.

Identifying The Problem

Once we have identified the problem, we then look at putting the process below in place as a Business Support/Recovery Project:

Initial Fix

Next we engage to understand the Key Performance Goals for the Solution and ruthlessly focus our Support, Consultancy and Development efforts to gain these initial wins - this then allows us to focus on the single biggest denominator of a successful CRM Project: User Adoption.

Business Support to win User Adoption

This is typically a 'war of attrition' to build confidence and stability into the system over time, and that is where our Business Support Team come in. Engaging with Team Leaders and Users to ensure that the system is holding up for the Users and gaining buy-in.

How we do it?

Build Better

Whilst doing this, we engage our development team to look at how the solution can be improved and brought back into line with stakeholder expectations. This Extension of the system alongside our Consultancy and Support allows the functionality and performance to be improved alongside user adoption so we system improves as the users engage.

How we do it?

Plan for the Future

This then gives us a strong base to build upon and look at future goals that can be achieved by CRM in the business - aimed at taking us to a 'can-do' culture of business that has the technical skills in the bank to allow the business to confidently plan for the future.

This can allow us to review how best to leverage the opportunity that the Cloud provides, and how our business can benefit from the myriad of cloud services that are helping to define our future - taking advantage of disruptive technology, instead of being threatened by it.

Governance

Once the basics, functionality and planning have been built into a strong rolling project for CRM in the business, this allows good governance to be put in place for strong Change Management, Security and Compliance.

If these points describe your Dynamics CRM Solution, or you feel you have a project that could better function for your business then please get in contact with us to discuss how we could help.

Discuss how we could help

CRMCS CRM Project Rescue of the Office Team's CRM

CRMCS CRM Project Rescue of the Office Team's CRM

Project Rescue for The Office Team

We were approached by a new client in 2015 that had deployed Dynamics CRM 2011 through another Partner and had encountered various challenges that had led to a failing project.

Our first port of call was a series of KPI Dashboards that had been built, but were inaccurate and very slow to run, so we used our experience with SQL Reporting Services to correct these Dashboards in blocks of development.

This demonstrated our experience in taking existing development, resolving the issues and extending the reporting.

Our next challenge was that their Security Model and Sharing had become broken over time, leading to different Salespeople having different and inaccurate views of their Accounts. Our development was then deployed to build a new Sharing Model that would be transparent and allow their business to function correctly. This was successfully deployed and allowed the business to get moving in CRM again.

Following this, we initiated a regular Business Support Contract to provide regular Account Management and Agile Change - allowing the system to be improved iteratively over time.

This brought the system into a stable state and promoted User Adoption - which then allowed the business to review their use of CRM and plot the next steps in their strategy, building to integration of other systems with CRM and a better cleansed Database of information within CRM.

Today - the CRM Solution in place is better able to move with business, and so supports future enhancement and planning within the business in a way that was difficult to imagine back after the initial problematic rollout.

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