Chris Harmen

Three Strategies For Successful CRM Adoption

Some companies find it difficult to adopt a customer relationship management (CRM) program into their company, but these three strategies will help answer the question, "how will this make my job easier?"

Easing a company into a CRM project can be a challenge, especially in corporate climates where change can be challenging. The best offense is to offer employees an obvious, definitive answer to the burning question they all have about implementing CRM: "How will this make my job easier?" The best way to proceed is to provide the answer, and adequately demonstrate it to the users. Here are three strategies to ensure solid CRM adoption by even the most resistant users in your company.

1. Design the System for the Users

The best way to achieve enthusiastic CRM adoption is to make sure the new program is a truly attractive and useful tool for the users. One way to achieve this is to gather and consider the feedback of the users before launching the system. Listen to their concerns, and if at all possible, modify the CRM integration to satisfactorily address their issues. Build a "carrot" into the system, or in other words, something blatantly desirable for the users. For example, a special on-demand reporting capability, key sales field information, or a specifically requested function they have needed in the past may endear them to the program. Products such as Goldmine offer advanced features like web tracking and Goldmine contact management. A good CRM consultant will be able to incorporate the right products and customize the program to satisfy the needs of the company.

2. Train Painlessly.

Use "scenario" training around the user's workday, using realistic examples from your company's system. Doing so will demonstrate the CRM integration firsthand and help users understand its relevance to their everyday business. It's also a good check to make sure all business needs are being met. Make sure to record the training sessions so that users can review them at a later date. These recordings can be great resources for incoming employees as well.

3. Support Them.

After training is complete, encourage CRM adoption by making live help available. Identify a key internal business resource that employees can turn to with questions. This individual will be your internal support to help users meet their ongoing needs. Hopefully, your company has partnered with a trusted CRM consultant that can work closely with your in-house liaison to make sure the company's on-going business, training and support needs are met. Some companies, like GoldMine, offer customers ongoing, followup training opportunities to get the most out of their new program.

Hopefully the new CRM integration will be solid enough to instantly answer the question "how will this make my job easier?", and CRM adoption will be immediate. In other cases, designing a system for their needs, training them well and supporting their learning curve will bring them to the answer as quickly as possible.

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