Begin with a clear set of goals and objectives against which results can be measured. CRM should be viewed as a strategic response to a set of business needs. In practical terms, the business plan should specify CRM’s contribution, defined in terms of competitive positioning, customer profitability and related business opportunities. It helps if there is already a strategic mandate encouraging a customer focused approach to business. fficeffice" />

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• What is our strategy for improving long-term profitability of customers?
• How does CRM relate to our corporate strategy?
• What are our targets and overall business plan for improved performance through CRM methodology and process?
• Is there senior executive support for investment in CRM?
• Do we understand the three-dimensions of CRM (people, processes and technology)?

Whatever its scale, every CRM project has three dimensions: people, processes and technology. A classic mistake is to view CRM simply as a technology project and to underestimate the scope of the process and cultural changes involved. There are implications for the organization, for processes, for IT infrastructure, segmentation and measurement of customer value, focused organization benefit/team building projects will maximize the chances of success.

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• Do we understand the people, process and technology implications of CRM in our organization?
• How do we propose to map the scale of CRM’s impact on our organization?
• Do we have a structured approach to project management?

A structured approach ensures that all essential steps are addressed. Every CRM program needs to be realistically scoped and planned to include milestones and goals. An essential aspect of project management is the development of teams including sales, marketing, finance, service, information technology and senior management.

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• Are we familiar with 3^rd party project management models?
• Can we develop a project management scheme internally?
• Have we identified corporate and customer needs?

Any CRM program has to be built around the needs of customers and users. Externally, this means researching customers’ requirements and expectations. The same goes for the functional and information needs of sales, marketing, finance, service and others involved in the CRM process. Create a single view of the customer inside the organization and provide the customer with a consistent view of his interactions with the business whatever the touch point.

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• How can we research customer needs and expectations?
• How should we reflect these findings in the project scope?
• Re-engineer customer-facing processes in line with customer needs

Inevitably, needs-analysis will reveal a gap between what the organization’s current capabilities and processes are and what customers expect if CRM is to work. Customer-facing processes will need to be re-organized for CRM to deliver results. Make sure any new processes work properly before they are automated.

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• What needs to be done to align customer facing processes to meet CRM objectives?
• How is the need for process change reflected in our project plan?
• What steps have we taken to manage the change implications of process redesign?
• Use a structured approach to selecting technology

Compared with the people, process and information management challenges, technology selection is relatively straight forward. However, companies should follow a structured approach, allowing the best solution to be identified on the basis of rigorous comparison. Approach the project management organizations and business application vendors with a well-defined list of your needs and functionality requirements.

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• Can we construct a detailed tender document specifying functional, capacity, scalability and other system requirements?
• Do we have a clear set of criteria or evaluating results?
• Does our short listing process require vendors to pilot the system using our data?
• Ensure that systems development is business led

To ensure that business representatives, not technologists, are in the drivers seat, appoint a senior manager to head the project team and include business representatives in development teams. Also, involve users at critical stages of systems development.

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• Is our systems development business and user led?
• Is outsourcing a practical alternative
• Do we plan to pilot and test the system before roll out?
• Establish actionable measures of customer performance

The pay-off from CRM should be measurable in terms of customer profitability and value, the key indicators of success from relationship management. Approaches to CRM that start with quantified assessment of profitability and value help to measure results in a meaningful way.

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• What are our most important measures of customer performance?
• What measures are currently used - how can they be adapted to support our CRM program?
• Can we measure these aspects?
• What steps do we need to take in order to put measures in place?
• Actively manage culture, change and win buy-in

Unless the human aspect of CRM is handled effectively, the analytical work, systems development and technology investment will prove worthless. To avoid failure, change management has to be built into the program from the start. Involving people in reworking processes and systems design, rather than imposing the new regime, is essential.

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• How can we modify corporate culture to enable effective?
• How can we develop skills and capabilities to manage change?
• Do we have sufficient budget and time to cover training?
• Develop a phased implementation strategy

Companies that have implemented CRM successfully find that their investment in training is one of their biggest expenses, but absolutely essential. A phased approach can help the organization absorb the impact of change. As well as sold being sold on the advantages of any new systems and processes, people must learn new skills and competencies.

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• Do we plan to pilot new processes and systems to troubleshoot any developments?
• Have we included a phased implementation of new processes and systems into the project plan?
• Is timing realistic and manageable?