Database Reference
In-Depth Information
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Improve quality sales.
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Improve sales effectiveness.
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Improve sales management.
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Support team selling.
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Improve margins and reduce buying and using costs.
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Reduce sales costs.
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Improve forecasts.
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Increase revenues.
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Effective Channel Management.
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Reduce product development time.
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Reduce manpower for routine operations.
CRM implementations in SMEs also need a completely different type of skills set as compared to
the implementation of the same system in a Fortune 500 company. We will touch upon this aspect
again in Appendix A.
4.2 CRM Selection Process
The objective of a systematic selection of CRM is to optimize the benefits for the organization.
Careful selection to acquire the most acceptable enterprise-wide system is important, as it has
a salutary effect on the overall acceptability, usefulness, cross functionality, and collaboration
within the customer-centric enterprise.
An enterprise must select the most suitable CRM system based on the predefined, predeter-
mined, and preagreed criteria of evaluation. The process should follow the organizational policies
and procedures in reaching the final decision.
The use of checklists for such purposes has proved especially valuable. We discussed a hand-
ful of checklists in Chapter 3, to evaluate the different characteristics of the CRM systems. These
checklists should be supplemented or altered depending on the requirements of the organizations.
It is important, however, to use such checklists because it helps in focusing discussions on issues
that matter objectively. Later in this chapter, we discuss using metrics to compare CRMs.
The process of selecting a CRM system for a customer-centric enterprise involves the following
steps:
1. Establish the CRM selection team (discussed in Section 4.3 “Selection Team”).
2. Establish the functional requirements of the envisaged customer-centric enterprise-wide sys-
tem (discussed in detail in Section 4.4 “CRM Core Selection Methodology”).
3. Search and screen for prospective CRM systems.
4. Prepare detailed checklists of different class characteristics in order of priority, such as nec-
essary, desirable, good to have, and great to have. This can be cued from the list of features
available from the CRM vendors (see Table 4.1).
5. Screen the available CRM products that most nearly meet the agreed criteria against the
necessary requirements that have been established. The company can also partner with the
vendor companies in this stage by issuing an RFP based on the finalized checklists.
6. Evaluate the resulting shortlist of CRM products against the detailed desirable requirements
like those presented in Chapter 3.
