PARTNER: Bluewolf
BUSINESS: An on-demand enterprise consulting company that specializes in the deployment of salesforce.com and has experience with over 1,000 implementations.
TECHNOLOGY: Bluewolf is a founding Appforce developer, a co-developer of the salesforce.com AJAX toolkit, and the leading provider of tools for the AppExchange — including Bluewolf ESI, the integration tool of choice for salesforce.com’s largest customers.
CUSTOMERS: With offices across North America, Bluewolf’s customers include Bank of America, ADP, General Electric, Wall Street Journal, Staples, and Ann Taylor.
CHALLENGE: Enterprise-level CRM spans organizational barriers, so the issues surrounding technology change and employee behavior, always present with CRM, become more pervasive and complicated. In addition, large CRM projects can easily fall prey to organizational conflict, unforeseen technical glitches, and significant user resistance.

THEIR ADVICE:

RULE #1: Use rapid prototyping to focus the implementation. If the reps don’t like the CRM system, they aren’t going to use it, so you need to make sure that the system has “rep appeal.” Prototyping provides a test bed where power users can get involved prior to the launch and can make certain that the CRM system (more importantly) will serve the users’ needs. If you get the application and technology in front of the users early, you won’t waste money engineering a solution that will be unusable. Time was when sales execs thought it possible to do customization on paper, in the form of a specification, and then have it implemented. That approach doesn’t work. The only way to create a CRM system that can satisfy multiple groups of people is bring the system up, have users pound on it, make changes, pound some more and so forth, until you’ve hammered out an implementation that makes sense. Fortunately, salesforce.com supports rapid prototyping – the ability to bring up a system quickly and change it on the fly. This ensures that you’ll be able to get feedback in time to make changes.

RULE #2: Articulate why CRM is important to your company. CRM projects shouldn’t begin with functionality but with goals. First, management should identify the goals for the evolution of their sales processes and workflow. What’s needed is a set of specific measurable goals, like “increase the average sales price by 10 percent within six months.” It is important that the goals serve the interests of both management and users. Once you’ve determined the goals, look at CRM functionality to see to what extent it’s possible to achieve them. Ultimately, the purpose of CRM is to improve your business, by increasing sales, customer satisfaction, and reducing costs. Functionality should be mapped to achieving each goal, and should never be over engineered to appease some farfetched desire.

By focusing on goals before functionality, you’re now in an excellent position to explain to the users why they’ve got to learn a new technology and change their day-to-day behavior. Remember, you’re asking a lot of your employees when you step up to CRM, so you’d best be able to explain clearly why the turmoil is necessary.

RULE #3. Get stakeholders involved and keep them involved. CRM must satisfy the needs of both management and the sales staff. We’ve already seen how engaging both groups in the prototyping process helps ensure a more effective CRM system. But there’s another benefit to getting stakeholders involved early – it creates a cadre of advocates and sponsors. This process of building sponsorship should continue throughout the implementation process. You should constantly communicate with future users, setting expectations about what’s coming, why it’s coming, and why it’s important. By the time the system actually goes live, with any luck they’ll be excited and interested, which is much better than being annoyed and confused, as might be the case otherwise. Also, when you roll out the training for the system, make certain the training takes place within the context of the future success of the organization. If you coordinate the training tightly and make sure that everyone understands the issues, it will be easier to drive a successful adoption.