How zadolbat all colleagues: collect requirements for CRM

Have you noticed how different people buy, for example, smartphones? One approaches, confidently takes the desired model and can advise everyone around, the second timidly hangs along the window, touches the screens and assesses the weight and brightness, the third opens the camera and takes a selfie, the fourth dials “Hello! How are you doing ", testing the keyboard with one hand. Nothing unusual - everyone is watching what is more important to him. Worse, when they also buy CRM or ERP - literally with their eyes closed, gliding at a bright presentation or reading tips on the forum. Then the negative reviews pour in, and automation causes persistent hostility. It would seem that it is easier - to collect the requirements and proceed to the sober choice of the vendor. But no, we will read the instructions later, when it breaks ... But, in fact, detailed instructions.


If you are a vendor of CRM-systems or any other software / service / service for business, then you probably know that a user with well-assembled requirements is a rarity. We in RegionSoft have compiled a list of the most common cases:

• the client comes with nothing and he has to literally knock out information about business processes, needs and tasks facing automation;
  
• the client brings a technical task that was developed several years ago during the first attempt to introduce CRM;
  
• the client talks about himself, about his business, about problems, about the economy, about politics, and the vendor understands what this will form the basis of TK and implementation;
  
• the client silently asks for an invoice, silently receives licenses and silently starts using the system;
  
• the client has collected and structured the requirements, is ready to pass them on to the vendor, so that he can begin to implement and / or develop the TOR (a minute of science fiction in our blog).
  

We have developed a detailed checklist to collect requirements for the last item in fiction to be somewhat closer to reality. Go.
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Working group

If a company has more than one division, then one person will not cope with the implementation of CRM, even if a bunch of business consultants come to it (actually, they will not help anyone, only money will eat away, but today we are not talking about that). Therefore, the first step to be taken for the qualitative collection of requirements is to create a working group. Heads of divisions can enter into it (this is the simplest and most obvious option), or the strongest and most involved employees who possess all the information and delve into all the processes. You will not say that the heads of departments are always the most competent and experienced? So we will not. Members of the working group should:

• know the work of your unit as well as possible
  
• be in contact and ready to discuss issues and negotiate (believe, you have to)
  
• see interconnections between departments and be able to take them into account
  
• understand the company's global business goals
  
• know the situation in the company as a whole (market position, competitors, customers, etc.).
  

This is an amazing thing, but it is worth forming a group and starting to make the first pattern of gathering requirements, so immediately the good ones, in general, colleagues turn into aggressive sharks. There is nothing reprehensible in this: everyone wants to ensure that automation covers as many tasks as possible of its division. This state of affairs is smoothed out either during the work or after the first meeting (call) with the vendor, who explains that he does not sell software, does not search for clients, does not write code, does not fix bugs, and does not earn money. That is, you still have to work.

A few points:

• The working group must include CTO, CIO or CEO. Well, or their corresponding people with less pretentious names.
  
• It is not necessary to entrust the implementation of only one director of sales or marketing - they will certainly pull the blanket over himself, and you will have not just a patchwork, but also a leaky automation (if at all). The fact is that the CRM system is not just a set of functionality, it is a software package that several departments (or the entire company) work with at once, and it is important that the implementation goes smoothly and from the practical (user) and from the technical side , without bias in the direction of a department.
  
• All actions, discussions and conclusions of the working group should be recorded in order not to miss important information and exclude further proceedings.
  

Sample work plan of the project team for the implementation of CRM

• Discussion and formation of a single form of gathering requirements. This may be a table of the following form:
  

• Collecting requirements and discussing them within the unit.
  
• Discussion of requirements within the working group.
  
• The consolidation of requirements in a single document, the exclusion of overlapping points.
  
• Division of requirements into functional and non-functional.
  
• The establishment of specific requirements due to the peculiarities of the company's business.
  
• Coordination of the final document by all parties, discussion with the management.
  
• Work with the vendor can be conducted in parallel (so much easier), and can be initiated after collecting requirements and selecting several CRM systems for further communication with developers.
  

At this stage it is especially important that the CRM system does not become an instrument of pressure, blackmail or superiority. For example, marketing can declare itself the holder of all processes and push sales aside, ignore their interests. Or, for example, the leader of the working group can “forget” to invite technical support representatives to the discussion, thinking that they will take the system as a given. This alignment has long been described in the famous Krylov fable:

When there is no agreement in comrades,
Well, their business will not work,
And it will not work out of him, only flour.

This is generally a very modern fable, ideal for working with an implementation project, within the customer’s team, between the customer and the vendor. So the main thing is to properly harness yourself and start working.

Basic self-examination of the company

Before going directly to the requirements, you should collect a small history of the company - first, it will still be needed when talking with the vendor, and, second, it can open something new for you or, at least, calculate the number of licenses (if the system, for example, as RegionSoft CRM, offers competitive licenses) or the number of users (if we are talking about SaaS - that is, about renting software).

So, that you certainly need to select a CRM-system and further implementation.

1. Company size: the number of employees, remote / combining / field employees, managers.
   
2. Divisions, their functions and interrelations. It is best to draw these relationships on paper, and then convert them to electronic form using any / favorite tool. Organizational structure and functionality vary widely from company to company, but here is a fragment of how it might look. Yes, even in a small company, the scheme can depress its primary size and connections, but from here it also starts the analysis of business processes and an understanding of whether everything is in place, whether there is duplication of functions, etc.
   

1. Size and approximate structure of the client base. The first thing you need to know is what type of customer card you need: for legal entities or individuals (well, or both, and something else modified for B2G - what if?). The second is alas, but some vendors still manage to sell the DBMS to customers separately, and with 100,000 records you can, for example, fly into the need to purchase MS SQL. Well, again, this is an important element of business process analysis. At the same time, you will appreciate where and how your client base is stored, what part of it is lost, useless or “rat” by salespeople.
   
2. The list of potential users of the CRM-system , you can directly by name. First, you estimate the future costs of training, second, you can schedule early followers, future process holders and internal experts.
   
3. The software pool that already exists in the company is needed in order to understand that you can replace the CRM system from the existing zoo (and what you stop paying for), with which you have to integrate, where to migrate from, and what will remain to work, how it worked . For example, RegionSoft CRM in the most sophisticated Enterprise configuration can replace all planners, a client file with an exhaustive dossier, an email client, a project management system, a warehouse program, a ticket system and a bugtracker (for a non-technical company, although we ourselves use it for these purposes quite successfully ), knowledge base and so on.
   
4. The budget for CRM (purchase + implementation). We have already written how much CRM costs - read the detailed text on this topic. We will repeat only that often the price list and calculator on the developer’s website and the price of the implementation project are completely different things, everything depends on your needs (in development, training, installation, support, etc.).
   

After this information is collected and structured, you can run two parallel processes: the selection of vendors and the collection of requirements of all types. The more you communicate with suppliers of CRM-system, the better - you fully immerse yourself in terminology, and in particular the choice of corporate software.

Look for a vendor

Search vendor - a separate big story, in which there are no trifles. Consider, in the near future, this company will become your partner, assistant and consultant. Not only should everything converge: from relationships to needs, it is also important that you are not left halfway through. And this can easily happen if you, for example, trust a young development company that suddenly decides in a year that selling painted snowboards is more profitable than cutting and maintaining CRM (it is). But this is such a minimal “visual” selection, in fact, there are more important markers of a good vendor.

• Type of delivery CRM-system. Literally three years ago, at the peak of the rampant fashion on the clouds, we could write aggressively, “don't take the bandmates, they have an exorbitant cost of ownership”. However, the developers quickly looked around, saw that a decent business is not everything and is not always ready to trust cloud storage (customer base and data on suppliers in the first place) and almost all serious vendors released and cloud SaaS versions (pay every month, store in the cloud) , and server SaaS (pay every month, keep at home) and full on-premise (pay once + for updates, keep at home). We will not torment you with calculations, everything has already been written to us and by us . Well, yes, the rental price is always higher, but sometimes the rent is justified.
  
• Upgradeability of the system - ask the vendor how often minor updates occur, how often - major updates, what is included in those and others, which of them are paid, which are not, how they roll.
  
• The experience of the vendor company (or its individual employees) in an area similar to yours. In principle, in the overwhelming number of cases, this clause is optional - implementation in most areas is fairly uniform. But if you have a specific industry (medical center) or you are a large plant, then it’s worth to ask the vendor if he has experience of similar implementations. Experience and functionality of CRM for startups may simply not be enough for implementation in a production and trading holding.
  
• The ability of the vendor to finalize the system - in principle, the point seems obvious, and the developer is always ready to finalize his system. But still specify - it happens that the business model of the system does not imply deep customization.
  
• Resource vendor with respect to technical support - specify what is included in the paid technical support, what is free, what categories of incidents and how long they are serviced. Paid TP - this is absolutely normal, the main thing is to understand what you are paying for: for priority, for the experience of employees, for complexity, or for everything taken together.
  
• The possibility of learning is also seemingly an obvious thing, on which, however, vendors can save money and refuse to learn at all or under the guise of learning to present a product. Some popular vendors on the Russian market represent the lack of the need to train personnel in both a marketing advantage and stating that “training is not required” and it’s easy to fall in love with the “interface”. Well, firstly, you need to work with the interface, and not go on dates, and secondly, it sounds like “you need to learn mechanics, and there are two pedals with an automatic gearbox, one handle - I sat down and went”. It is clear that training is needed in more than half of the companies (and to be honest, in all) - at least so that employees can ask questions and quickly start the main work in the system.
  

However, we got carried away with the conversation about vendors - let's look at what is included in the requirements, and whether your company should have them all.

Functional requirements

Functional requirements are laconic descriptions of the behavior required from the system in those areas that relate to the main work activities of an employee, department, or company. In general, just what it should be and how it should work.

Here is a list of what is most often needed from a CRM system of any company:

• contact management
  
• task management, task setting, delegation
  
• personal and collective planning
  
• integration with the mail client or the presence of a built-in
  
• telephony integration
  
• integration with accounting system
  
• employee account management
  
• separation of employee access rights
  
• reporting (including sales funnel)
  
• knowledge base
  
• custom templates (contracts, commercial offers, primary)
  
• minimum analytics.
  

This is a necessary and mandatory minimum, which is necessary for any business in Russia. Here, the functional requirements include specific requirements specific to a particular business: production management, warehouse management, cash registers, barcode scanners, integration with the site, etc. All the listed features should ideally be implemented within the system interface and satellite products that are complementary to it ( for example, we have a base product - RegionSoft CRM , and the expansion of its capabilities is due to our own development - the VoIP Connector and Application Server, but not at all) third-party applications ). However, it may be that some of the functionality is implemented by third-party plug-ins. If your choice fell on such a system - get ready to pay for them too.

You may ask why collect these requirements here, because they are absolutely in all systems - it’s hard to imagine CRM without a contact manager or any calendar, for example. We answer.

1. No, not at all. Even among the CRM “on the ear” you can find systems, for example, without collective or long-term planning of work tasks, without adequate integration with telephony, etc.
   
2. You may have something especially important - for example, checkboxes of the client status in the card, pop-up of the card when you call, the ability to delegate tasks, private clients, or viewing the sales funnel in the context of managers, periods, etc. Trifle, but someone may not have it, and this is already a paid improvement, while another vendor has it all in the basic delivery.
   
3. Again, you need to check the entire list of the functionality you need and to clarify whether it is supported by the vendor or if it needs to be improved.
   

Once we had a spontaneous dialogue on one of the business sites - see how the question is posed and how the vendor’s representative answers (I mean). Something like this should look like a professional dialogue during the selection of a CRM system. Speech, by the way, goes just about the functional requirements.


What else is important to know by collecting the functional requirements for CRM.

• When the requirements are collected, be sure to put priorities and rank the list: by urgency (what should be right away and what later) and importance (which can be implemented last).
  
• You do not need to create TK - it is developed by your vendor. Why - we have already explained one and the second time.
  
• There is no need to resort to formalization (a qualified lead must be transferred to the appropriate manager according to the internal procedure K-8785ap "On the formation of a pool of stakeholders and the delegation of the sales process" ) or write frivolously ( when sold solder this loha cap, mark it red and throw a rope for submission ). Write in simple human language, preferably Russian - you have no task to show yourself, you have a task to convey to the engineers and analysts of the vendor your wishes.
  
• Do not strive to inscribe in the requirements everything that is necessary and not necessary - there is no concept “just in case”. If there is any doubt about the need for functionality, send such items to a separate unit. It may happen that after starting the use of a CRM system you will review the processes and you will not need something anymore.
  

Non-functional requirements

This is a block of requirements related to the technical aspects of operating a CRM system. Some customers are afraid to show their technological incompetence and feel free to ask such questions. Do not hesitate - this is your right, and it is important for you to know about the parameters that determine the quality of your future work.

• If CRM is cloudy, be sure to ask for information on how often backups are created, where they are stored, on what conditions are provided to the data owner (I mean, you). Find out the availability indicator - ideally, you should be guaranteed 99.9% of uptime under the contract. Find out how much disaster recovery takes. Ask, on the servers of which country the data will be stored (most likely, this is for all Russia, but still specify, because you have to store the client base - that is, personal data).
  
• Write down the requirements for integration: with telephony, 1C, virtual PBX and so on.
  
• Determine the requirements for migration and data import. Make a list of sources from where you have to migrate existing data (records in Excel, DBMS of old CRM or other software, etc.). Some of the accumulated information you have to transfer manually, most of the electronic data will help you transfer the vendor.
  
• Any vendor ask about scaling - what will happen if you triple the number of users, and if 1 million (well, or another number on your scale) will increase the number of records? Specify in the requirements of the possible load on the CRM-system (we have 7,000 customers, up to 600,000 purchases per month, for each transaction you need to store at least 7 documents, etc.).
  
• Determine the cost requirements - how much are you willing to spend on CRM. Understand the nuances of pricing project implementation CRM will help you this article .
  
• Write down the requirements for remote / mobile work, if your company needs it. It is advisable to explain by whom and how remote and mobile capabilities will be used.
  

Each company may have its own additional set of non-functional requirements associated with technical staff, equipment, etc. Ask your IT department or system administrator to set basic business software requirements for your company.

Business requirements

In principle, business requirements can be attributed to functional, but we will separate them into a separate group. The fact is that now one of the most necessary and successful chips in CRM-systems is business processes. But due to a number of current misconceptions, only large companies that have complex chains of routine and repetitive tasks turn to business processes. Meanwhile, the automation of any cyclic process in the company is great free up the hands of the staff and allow them to work with the head, and not on the machine. In addition, the coordination time will be reduced, and no task will be forgotten - a copy of the process will remind all those responsible that it is time to do its part.

Therefore, you need to work with business requirements.

To get started, define the goals and objectives of your business. The main difference is that the goals are large and global ( growth of sales by 140% per year ), tasks are small and achievable ( to train the staff of sales technology, implement automation, attract customers of the high-income segment, etc. ). Most likely, this information will not be useful to the vendor, but you yourself will be able to understand and set up business processes. Attention! Do not require these tasks from the vendor, he gives you a tool, your task is to master him as a samurai sword.

But after that you need to proceed to the most important point - the revision of business processes in the company.

1. Write down the existing processes (if any), describe the stages, terms, responsible, resources, control points.
   
2. Describe all the routine and repetitive tasks that can be entered into the framework of the automatic business process (this can be the fulfillment of the order, including production, and customer consultation, and work with the VIP, and even the design of the holiday). List the stages, deadlines, resources, checkpoints.
   
3. Identify the supporting processes - not routine, but extremely important recurring events in the company. For example, annual budgeting is a huge, colossal process with complex approvals. You need to implement it in CRM as a business process - then at the right time you will receive a notification about the start of preparation of the budget for 2019 and you will not do everything abruptly, but smoothly (not always the first time).
   

These points sound simple enough, but they are perhaps the most difficult part of the implementation, because in some companies you have to not design and prescribe processes, but to rake a mess and build management flows anew. By the way, CRM implementation is an excellent reason to reconsider chaos and turn it into space.

Business processes can be created and revised after the start of implementation, so as not to lose time: the sooner you automate, the more chances you will outpace competitors due to speed, accuracy, urgency and analytics. In simple terms, your customers will feel, in their own skin, that you have implemented CRM and it has become more pleasant to deal with you.

Important notes on the claim collection process

Requirements very closely intersect with the technical task, but they are not. Nevertheless, despite the fact that the requirements are not signed by the parties, as you could already understand from the article, they are important - both for the company and for the vendor. The presence of requirements for CRM - a pledge that you are ready for dialogue, and not to passively waiting for a miracle, which the developer must create.

• All the requirements are essentially a checklist of what you should have and with which you will compare the functionality of the selected CRM systems. Therefore, register even the smallest details in order to select the “your” software as accurately as possible.
  
• Remember to assign importance categories to each requirement. Create a standard scale for yourself and focus on it ( for example, high importance, medium importance, low importance, optional ).
  
• While working on the requirements, mentally drive in your head a model of using what you are writing about. CRM should become not an ideal and not expensive vase of the Qing Empire on the shelf, but a tool that solves specific business problems, your assistant. Therefore, it is not necessary to write in the requirements of unfulfilled desires, Wishlist and other fantasies. Only workflow, only business approach.
  

Do I need this all?

• Design the requirements so that they are pleasant to read and easy to understand. Let them become the starting point of the specification.
  
• Do not link in the functional requirements, it should be a quality, detailed, but still a list, and not a complete description of all business needs with details, details and examples.
  

Most often, companies ignore requirements. There are many reasons for this: starting with the fact that CRM was imposed from above and ending with the fact that no one wants to understand the tricky relationship within the company. I can draw an analogy with the car: if you yourself go through an electrician and hang a bunch of wires on the snot, it is likely that it will go and even get lucky, but at some point the signal will fail or the turn signal will not work. And this is a direct path to the accident. So it is here - in the “mess” company you can work, earn money, get bonuses, etc. But one day, due to the disordered processes, major failures will occur, which will lead to the loss of employees, departed customers and sagging profits.

CRM requirements are a guarantee of risk reduction during implementation, faster project implementation, a more accurate estimated cost of implementing a CRM system. When you have collected the requirements and looked at your business from the side, you communicate with knowledge of the matter and easily avoid the possible manipulations of the vendor (alas, there are such guys in the market). In general, collect the requirements, transfer them to the vendor, work on the project of your long-term tool - the CRM-system, and then the project time and return on investment in automation will not disappoint.