CRM implementation. Battleground Notes

Chapter 1. Objectives:

1. Analysis of CRM systems on the market and choosing the most satisfying end-user convenience criterion (sales manager for building materials)

2. Setting up this system for the needs of the company (construction and sale of building materials)

3. Creating a Russian manual on the use of the system

4. Briefing on the use of the system.

Chapter 2. The need for CRM.

Attempts to centrally manage relations between managers and clients with traditional methods often fail — there is no system that allows you to delicately track the performance of certain tasks, keep statistics or effectively redirect the efforts of workers from active management to passive and vice versa. The blunders committed in this area lead to the rupture of business relations with customers, unforeseen losses and the damaged reputation of the company. Executive directors cling to their heads, solving petty problems, and in the meantime the snowball of anarchy is growing and, one day, falls on its head, exposing the manager’s incompetence.



In an unfavorable economic situation, the dismissal of the executive director, who in 7 cases out of ten is the “honored” manager of the company — a shock measure, and its effectiveness is close to zero — another manager will most likely take his place and everything will start anew.

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Of course, there are no ways to bring up a uniquely magnificent leader, but there are ways to reduce the possibility of minor system errors to a minimum. My grandparents (and my parents also used to do this) used a developed bureaucracy for this - office memos, statements, business journals ... and a huge pile of other papers. With large sales and production, special people were hired, whose main task was to analyze these papers, compile statistics, find weaknesses in the management system and, if possible, prevent mistakes. Everything was good, while high mobility and convertibility of mass production did not require the relevance and accuracy of the information received - and only the introduction of automated management systems, control and information gathering allowed modern companies to take into account all the desires of customers, improving the quality of service, while reducing the bureaucracy.



Now, when buying decent computing power is a modest expense item for an average firm, more and more managers come to the conclusion that the introduction of automated accounting and production systems is not enough for the firm to function successfully, because those for whom all companies are actually fighting for conditions of tough competition - customers - remain without systematization, accounting, and for the most part centralized management. No matter how good the manager is, without problems the customer relationship management system (CRM - system) problems will start sooner or later.



Of course, blindly arguing that CRM is a panacea for all troubles with customers is at least silly, but it is this system that helps to discipline managers and allows the executive director to work with his direct responsibilities, and not to correct the mistakes of managers.

Chapter 3. Analysis of CRM - systems.

Of course, the idea of ​​creating and implementing CRM systems is not new, and the main reason why these systems are not implemented everywhere is the high cost of the system itself (problem 1) and its support (problem 2). The need for staff training also scared off more than one manager (problem 3). In the process of setting up the system, problems arise because the specific requirements of the industry are not represented in the rather general architectures of these systems (problem 4).



Problems 1 and 4 are solved using OpenSource systems. As it turned out later, the myth of the high cost of supporting such systems is just a myth. The difficulties encountered in the process of personnel training are discussed in Chapter 5.



The following CRM systems were considered:

• Compiere
• Daffodil CRM
• Leopard CRM
• SugarCRM
• Mpower Open
• Adempiere
• CiviCRM
• CRM-CTT (Interleave)
• Enterprise Groupware System (EGS)
• EPESI BIM

Only two of them reached the final of our competition - these are Leopard CRM and Sugar CRM .



If Leopard is completely free and licensed under the GPL, then there is some confusion with SugarCRM. The official website presents the ability to download only the trial version with limited functionality, and on sourceforge.net you can download the entire source code of the maximum (Enterprise) configuration, which we used.



Initially, LeopardCRM was in the lead - a user-friendly interface, a pretty design, it looked like a toy. The lack of Russian localization, a set of bugs, manual installation, as well as frequent TODOs in the code did not bother us much. The lack of developer activity, as well as the lack of prevalence of this system, forced us to remove it from the competition.



The leader was SugarCRM - easy installation, 100% Russian localization, a large number of expansion modules, the ability to customize the appearance, customizability - with all its merits, it has one drawback that did not allow us to make it the leader until the end - it is a muddled architecture.

Chapter 4. Deploying the system.

After installation and localization, it was necessary to configure currency options, connect the system to the company's mail server, create user groups (general director, executive directors, lead managers, project managers, managers). All together, these actions took no more than 2 hours from us (again, a huge plus of the system).



It took us a lot of time to drive employees into the system and delineate their rights. Also, difficulties arose in finding out the list of projects and the degree of their implementation. Often, managers simply could not tell enough in full about all their projects. The greatest difficulties arose in the preparation of the contact database of clients (at this stage it was found that the diary and the card holder are unsuccessful to search for repositories of information). And, although this chapter is the shortest, it took us almost 4 days to complete all the actions described in it, provided that the managers are friendly (that in the practice of CRM implementation is the exception rather than the rule).

Chapter 5. The introduction of the system in the production process.

There are 2 main approaches in the implementation of CRM - system.

Approach 1. "Hard."

Employees are obliged to use only this system, any attempts to refuse to use it are condemned by the management, up to and including deprivation of the prize. After a mass briefing and issuing CDs with managers, managers are forced to transfer the entire workflow to the system. The main advantage of this approach - the introduction occurs instantly and in large numbers. This method is good when you have a fairly large staff and it is too expensive to train everyone individually. That is exactly the approach to the problem advised crmonline.ru and crmcom.ru/

Approach 2. "Soft."

A briefing is held, where the entire management team of the company is told about the benefits of this management system, management capabilities and statistics collection. If one of the leading managers or project managers refuses to use the system, then the reason for this behavior is found out and, if possible, corrected. Most often the reason is that the employee did not fully read the manual, and the missing knowledge is transferred to him individually. After the entire management team has switched to the system, they begin to introduce the system among ordinary managers. Again, in case of problems, individual consultations are held.



The interest in the system among managers has allowed to transfer all transactions with clients into the system already 5 working days after the start of implementation. For a staff of 30 people, this is a very good result. After we successfully implemented the system, it is time to collect statistics and analyze the beneficial effect.

Chapter 6. The effect of the introduction.

The start of using the system coincided with a period of rising demand for building materials, and absolutely all customers were served. Of course, it was almost always the case. The efficiency with which customers serviced and could get information about the process of fulfilling their order increased significantly - now instead of interrupting a pile of papers, it was enough to make 2 mouse clicks.



Clients ceased to depend on managers, in the case of a manager’s illness, his projects quickly moved to another manager with all the necessary information and documentation. The statistics system allowed us to more evenly distribute the work among managers, their quality of work and discipline began to grow. And the queue in front of the coffee machine has disappeared.



The organizer and calendar embedded in the system did not allow to forget about the call or meeting. And their integration into the system of document flow, correspondence and calls made it possible to obtain complete information on the progress of the project, as well as, importantly, update the purpose of the meeting or call in memory.



The structuring of information, as well as the reduction of costs for its search, allowed managers to take up active management, which brought the company many new customers.



The project managers gave the system access to all documents, allowing them to carry out the project, taking into account all the wishes of the client.



The executive director was given the opportunity to see the whole picture, which allowed him to optimize production and clean up the warehouses.