CRM vendors' dirty tricks: would you buy a car without wheels?
Cell phones have a very crafty statement: "Not a single telecom operator stole a penny from subscribers - everything happens out of ignorance, ignorance and oversight of the subscriber." Why they didn’t log into the personal account and disconnect services, why they clicked the pop-up button while viewing the balance and subscribed to jokes for 30 rubles. on the day, why did not check the services on the SIM-ke? And this position “fool himself” is very convenient for the seller - “we tried our best, but the client didn’t appreciate it and simply doesn’t need a beep and porn-wallpaper for the screen”. Alas, this slyness is inherent in all areas of business: from pet stores to system integrators. Yes, this does not apply to all companies, but it is not uncommon. Prevented, therefore, armed: let's consider the tricks of vendors and ways to deal with them. We hope we will not shoot around the corner ;-)
Summary of the corporate market relationship saga
RegionSoft does not give the names of specific companies, as situations and terms of use may change over time, and highlighting negative traits is unfair competition.
We will not consider the blatant cases of outright deception by vendors and their dealers, criminal plots such as blocking software for the provision of paid services, etc. - this is under the jurisdiction of law enforcement agencies and arbitration courts, and not the article of the vendor in Habré. We are about peaceful tricks.
')
We are for a total educational program in the field of automation and against vendor battles in public. Therefore, adopt and be careful, and whom to choose is up to you.
Imagine that you choose a car, having 2 months of driving experience and 3-4 million extra. You are incredibly fascinated by extreme Alpine BMW drives and you decide: yes, it is - stable, powerful, with excellent coupling on the ice (useful in winter), heavy but manoeuvrable. Go to the salon and buy. And then - something is somehow wrong, and it’s on the ice, and the dimensions are somehow not for Moscow traffic jams, and the tires are completely different ... There was a fairy tale! Hardly anyone would do that, right?
And with CRM do it, what vendors use. So the first trick: the demo version always works fine. There are several demonstration options.
Software will never work right away as it does in a demo. It will require tuning, operating experience and well-established work to become a reference.
Demo version of "Kamaz"
The most difficult and widespread trick is working with prices. Again, there are several options.
The most important misconception here is to consider the cost of licenses as the cost of implementation, that is, the entire CRM project for your company. Here we wrote how much CRM actually costs .
Understand that you are receiving information about the cost of licenses. Information on the total cost of implementation can be available only after creating and signing a technical task, which will take into account all the requirements of your business. Demand that all works be divided into tasks and have a clearly marked price. And you are well - you will know the budget, and the vendor is protected - will do the work strictly according to the TK, and not according to the HZ, as it happens.
Once it was one of the favorite tricks of CRM vendors, but today it has turned into a delivery system and is already the standard for selling corporate software. However, pay attention to some circumstances.
But this is not the main thing (although how can the money for the company be so?) The devil is in the word “rent” - unlike the acquired licenses, the rented ones do not belong to you, but belong to the vendor and he can roll out any updates, stop providing services, change lease terms, raise prices, etc. For example, one of the smaller vendors of corporate software provided by the SaaS model once sent letters to its customers demanding to “pull out” the data in 2 weeks and close the contract, because it considers this part of the business unprofitable (the letter sounded more decent in the letter) - to “non-core” »Asset hit 600 users worldwide. A drop in the ocean, yes, but this is the story of several dozen companies that have suffered losses.
Also a trick that has long ceased to be such. There are vendors on the market (large and small), which, in principle, almost never carry out the implementation themselves, and delegate the process to their dealers in your area. Everything would be fine if it were not for a small nuance: all and sundry become partners, from advertising agencies and web-studios to (suddenly!) Fitness studios and stretching. And this is the big question, whether you will get on a key partner or on such guys with Pilates. Accordingly, the quality of implementation will strongly depend on this. It's bad that you can get to a company without experience simply through advertising on a search or on social networks. As a result, you wind your nerves on a wad of money, and you get very poorly working software that is not adapted to your processes.
This group of tricks includes two more, which does not make sense to allocate a separate section.
So back to our BMW. You need a car for home-dacha-work-simple travel trips, but you are offered this configuration: differential and brake system M Sport, adaptive suspension, improved ergonomics, etc. In the appendage - + 1.2 million to the price. The manager says unique handling at 230 km / h. Wow! And then you stand in a traffic jam on a bridge and you think where to develop 230 at least once, for which you have overpaid a million?
The same story with CRM - the manager will offer you the most sophisticated version of the CRM system, with a bunch of functions, add-ons, mechanisms, etc. The most common argument: "You will soon see that you will need everything." And here there is some truth - it is better to buy a system that covers most of your requirements, and not some basic things. BUT! If you are offered a system, for example, with warehouse management, and you know for sure that in the foreseeable future you will not be sure of it, you ask - why do you need this advantage?
Write down all the requirements for the CRM-system and compare with the proposed functionality. Yes, you will never find an exact match, superfluous functions will still be there, but you will be able to cut off those rates that you don’t exactly fit (for example, for 200 employees with 15, a huge disk space with a small customer base and a moderate number of transactions and etc.). In general, an accurate understanding of what you want is a great start to a conversation with a vendor.
Often, the vendor manager wonders what other software vendors you are considering. For him, this is an excellent clue - every salesperson of a worthwhile vendor has a complete table of positioning and detuning from competitors in front of him (not only CRM vendors, providers, telecom operators, hosters, etc.). In principle, there is nothing bad about it, but if you are a large customer and we are talking about a million or more, an unproductive war for a customer may begin: they will come to you with gifts, you will be called to a restaurant, you will be paid for the way to Moscow and entertainments. as long as you choose this particular vendor. In this case, you still do not get any information about the benefits, technical parameters and prices - the emotional sale will prevail, and the process will be delayed. So what? The fact is that behind such actions there is a dangerous message: for each of your wishes you will be answered “we will do”, and then the part “we will do” will turn into “this is impossible” or in “unrealistic terms”, and this is already very bad for starting a full-fledged operation.
So, you buy a car that you bring directly to the garage or to the parking without your participation. You come so full of anticipation to flop on the seat, put your hands on the steering wheel, proudly look at the coveted nameplate and ... And there are no wheels, wipers, the car is fixed on the supports. Razuli? No, they shod: the wheels are a paid option, the keys will be given to you for an additional amount, but gasoline as a gift is a whole half of the tank. Again phantasmagoria? And in the sale of software is just that.
This is the first surprise that will be waiting for you during the implementation. You suddenly find out that the cloud is public, and in a private lease is more expensive, find out that you need to pay for MS SQL for your needs or for Oracle DB, backups on the schedule are exclusively paid, for a stable mail operation you need a paid addon, the primary will not work without a connector for $ 300, and telephony should be only from Daisy Telecom, otherwise there may be difficulties with the functionality of a virtual PBX. Simply put, you will find out that even a cloud service has its own infrastructure, not to mention on-premise. You have already paid for the licenses and most likely will pay for the rest to finally start working.
Moreover, surely all these details are set out in the user agreement, the contract or on the website under ***, and you voluntarily agreed to these expenses, unaware of them. And what is most surprising is that not all vendors put these parameters into the initial cost of software - either they forget to do it, or they expect to make a little more money if they split up and finish selling the infrastructure.
But this is already a very interesting trick: a vendor can promise you all the necessary integrations and they really will. But the understanding of integration with you and the vendor may differ. Of course, IP telephony, the site and 1C are leading here. A vendor can mean by integration simple data exchange, without complex operations and functions, without scheduled actions. And then for the implementation of the tasks that you need, you will receive an invoice for revision, and a rather big one: it’s one thing for a vendor to refine its own software, and another to mess with the API, connectors and your configurations. As a result, you do not get the work of the automation system that you need.
And why do you need integration with 1C and what does “total integration” mean?
Let's make a reservation right away: technical support is work, and you have to pay for it, like for any other. There is some basic minimum that is included in customer service, there is force majeure due to a vendor’s fault (something didn’t start, a bug was detected, etc.), but there are calls for each occasion and the requirement to "file reports" of all kinds and species - and of course, free. In this case, the vendor offers a paid package of priority technical support (in which, by the way, reports and improvements are still not included). This is the norm.
But the trick is that some vendors include paid technical support in the cost of implementation - for a period (first year) or forever (until you refuse this service). Even worse, more often than not, you can not refuse this service - it is mandatory when you buy CRM.
How to bypass the trick?
Again, the update is a cool thing, especially if it rolls in automatically and does not bring any tangible changes, except for bugfixes and software performance growth. There are no such updates and there can be no complaints. But, as you already understood, there are other options.
How to bypass the trick?
The rule is simple: updates are good and necessary, the main thing is to prevent the version with major changes from being installed without prior consent. For example, at the end of 2018, we offered our customers an important and necessary paid update, including the change in the VAT rate. This was the case when the update was vital for customers, and we were able to roll out RegionSoft CRM as quickly as possible with this and many other useful and cool updates (including currency accounting, redesigned business processes and a deeply modified unique KPI calculation system ).
We can recommend one or another service to our clients, which we use ourselves, but we don’t have any shares, referral fees or other commissions (although some providers are outraged by the fact of not cooperating with them). But vendors often insist on connecting telephony, chat, CMS, etc. from a specific partner, because they have their remuneration in different forms - from a one-time commission to revenue-sharing (constant payment for using services). In particularly difficult cases, they say that their system will only work with sites on a specific CMS, and only call through a specific IP telephony and place the service only in a certain cloud.
How to bypass the trick?
It will not always be possible to get around - if restrictions apply to a CMS, for example, then only refinement will save you, or you will have to abandon the use of functionality. With IP-telephony or a cloud provider, it's easier: ask with the vendor corrosively and boringly why there is such a restriction on provider services, tell about who you work with and why, ask about the possibility of connecting to your provider. Most likely, there will be a solution to the problem after short, but firm negotiations. If you don’t need any additional service, plug-in, add-on, connector, boldly refuse, their absence will in no way affect the functional integrity and operation of the CRM system (if, of course, this is not a crutch to any foreign system or a functionally important element such as an e-mail client, a mailing list manager, etc., you will have to “sit down” on an additional subscriber or pay a one-time payment).
The human factor in the process of purchasing and implementing corporate software plays a huge role, and it would be a sin not to take advantage of the situation, not to apply psychology and not to try to make money on this human factor.
Imagine a successful owner of the sewing business and a stylish designer of comfortable clothing, sheathing a couple of federal districts, comes to a car dealership and chooses a car. She wants a beautiful, comfortable and reliable car, she doesn’t say anything about the engine size, horsepower, drives, types of disks, tire pressure control ... This does not mean that she is stupid and she should be offered to rub the covering with Carnauba’s Aleutian bee wax for 50 000 rubles. Or yes? ;-)
Yes, the decision maker may be technically inexperienced and not understand the issues of automation. He pays the money and trusts the vendor. But some vendors decide that this is a great way to get a few extra expensive services and bells and whistles.
How to bypass the trick?
Do not work alone: ​​your employees in the working group and the system administrator will help you navigate the requirements and intricate technical characteristics.
And this is a very terrible, often fatal situation. At some point, the vendor’s client-side manager suddenly declares that the system administrator, implementation team leader, or even CIO is a deeply incompetent person and a pest who needs to be dismissed as soon as possible because it prevents the implementation of such a beautiful, literally the best on CRM market. And he does it for sure because he did not understand or wants to lobby for the interests of another developer, who, of course, paid him.
This statement should alert you: what does the vendor have to do with the assessment of your employee, why does he so directly declare the problem?
How to bypass the trick?
The likelihood that this is really a trick and an attempt to eliminate the technician in its path is at least 90%. Therefore, act correctly and firmly.
The unethical behavior of the vendor’s employees is a reason to change the manager or even the company itself. Business is not a place for manipulation.
Rollback - no less terrible situation, the opposite of the previous one. The employee actively lobbies a certain vendor, drowns for his CRM (any other software), gushes with arguments and is ready to convince everyone: from a salesperson of the sales department to the general director. It is very difficult to understand, he really liked CRM so much, or he received a rollback for its implementation (monetary or other encouragement from a vendor). This is no longer a trick - it is a trap, and if you do not have a security service, carefully read on.
Rollback is not just a traditional gain. This is the lobby, the presence of the necessary employees within your team, the breakdown of the implementation of the “wrong” software, fake internal expertise (“yes, we need to pay for the refinement, and we also need integration with the ISS modules and the NASA central console”), etc.
Haulers are waiting for a reward from the vendor
How to bypass the trap?
It is worth remembering that the rollback is possible in any case: there are large companies that are 3-4 million rubles. they will not even get dirty, because their average check is much higher and there are small ones who are willing to fork out for a reward with a check of 500-600 thousand rubles. (again, this can be an initiative at the “employee-employee” level, which is most often the case).
In software, as in any engineering system, there is no 100% guarantee of fault tolerance, stability, security. If you are guaranteed, it is worth considering whether there will be the same lie in further relations. The main rule when working with a vendor is to trust, but not to do it yourself, be involved in the process, clarify, find out the details and delve into the essence of all processes. Do not be afraid to be branded as a bore and a mozgather, to work for the benefit of your business and in its interests has never been shameful. Believe me, being a Loss is much worse. In general, wake up!
RegionSoft CRM - functional, powerful CRM for small and medium-sized businesses ( in several editions )
RegionSoft CRM Media - industry-specific CRM for TV and radio holdings and advertising agencies
Summary of the corporate market relationship saga
Small disclaimer
RegionSoft does not give the names of specific companies, as situations and terms of use may change over time, and highlighting negative traits is unfair competition.
We will not consider the blatant cases of outright deception by vendors and their dealers, criminal plots such as blocking software for the provision of paid services, etc. - this is under the jurisdiction of law enforcement agencies and arbitration courts, and not the article of the vendor in Habré. We are about peaceful tricks.
')
We are for a total educational program in the field of automation and against vendor battles in public. Therefore, adopt and be careful, and whom to choose is up to you.
CRM selection and purchase
Demo version
Imagine that you choose a car, having 2 months of driving experience and 3-4 million extra. You are incredibly fascinated by extreme Alpine BMW drives and you decide: yes, it is - stable, powerful, with excellent coupling on the ice (useful in winter), heavy but manoeuvrable. Go to the salon and buy. And then - something is somehow wrong, and it’s on the ice, and the dimensions are somehow not for Moscow traffic jams, and the tires are completely different ... There was a fairy tale! Hardly anyone would do that, right?
And with CRM do it, what vendors use. So the first trick: the demo version always works fine. There are several demonstration options.
- Demonstration in the office at the vendor or in your territory. The demo version is deployed on an optimally selected and perfectly tuned hardware and environment. A professional works with her before your eyes, who will wake you up at night - he will chase you away with all the functionality. To heighten the mood, funny pictures, jokes, complex schemes, etc. are added.
- The demo version on the developer's site is a compiled (as a rule, although it is even worse) version that you can install / register and start working. This is a story more approximate to life, but again you get software with virtually no entries in the database, that is, the maximum unloaded.
- The demo at the conference is another format to “charm” a client. The features built into the speaker’s report are perfected to automatism, the entire assembly is set up and debugged, there are a couple of assistants in the hall who will insure if viewers do not support the interactive. It looks like magic from the outside, in fact, of course, everything is somewhat different.
- PowerPoint presentation - it seems that the story is beyond good and evil, but there are presentations with screenshots of CRM-systems (and any corporate software) and embedded videos. It is clear that everything works perfectly on them.
Software will never work right away as it does in a demo. It will require tuning, operating experience and well-established work to become a reference.
Demo version of "Kamaz"
How to bypass the trick?
- First of all, check that there is a demo version - if there is no demonstration for the vendor, it is better to choose another developer.
- After carefully reading the vendor's demonstration, install the demo version and just try to work in it: start a client, make a deal, check how processes, calendars work, documents are formed, etc. This will be your combat stand and you will understand if there is everything in the system that you need. Nuance: you may not immediately like the CRM-system, so rely on a set of functions, and not on subjective sensations.
Attractive price list
The most difficult and widespread trick is working with prices. Again, there are several options.
- There are no prices on the site - the so-called “hidden price list”. The price you will be called only after collecting the primary requirements and information about your company, which will determine the final value. Accordingly, you are guaranteed to get the highest possible price from the acceptable for your segment.
- The site has prices with a designer - you collect your configuration and get an approximate cost of licenses at the output. Interactive carries and increases the time of interaction with the site, but does not change the situation, because Some questions are too general, and, alas, the cost will be approximate. The edge of what I saw is a questionnaire for 54 questions, which then requires contact information and only after that the manager contacts you. To bypass the questionnaire and just talk with the manager of the company was unreal, just refused.
- The site has a price and / or cost calculator - you can calculate the cost of the licenses you need yourself (this is how we implemented it for RegionSoft CRM ), and it will be absolutely accurate (well, if you don’t even ask for a volume discount). However, we must remember that this is only the cost of licenses, but not the implementation. Can I get a CRM system for this cost? Yes, but you will implement and train yourself. There are such clients, and they often really successfully cope with the task, since in our case, detailed documentation and training videos help them.
The most important misconception here is to consider the cost of licenses as the cost of implementation, that is, the entire CRM project for your company. Here we wrote how much CRM actually costs .
How to bypass the trick?
Understand that you are receiving information about the cost of licenses. Information on the total cost of implementation can be available only after creating and signing a technical task, which will take into account all the requirements of your business. Demand that all works be divided into tasks and have a clearly marked price. And you are well - you will know the budget, and the vendor is protected - will do the work strictly according to the TK, and not according to the HZ, as it happens.
Rent or buy
Once it was one of the favorite tricks of CRM vendors, but today it has turned into a delivery system and is already the standard for selling corporate software. However, pay attention to some circumstances.
- Rent may be beneficial to you, if you do not have the budget for the purchase of software immediately - you can fully use CRM and abandon it, if you realize that this particular development does not suit you. For example, we usually sell CRM as a project (no monthly fee), but there are rental options and installment plans for those who are not ready to buy right away.
- Rent is always more expensive. Think for yourself: from month to month you will pay a certain amount, which will exceed the cost of any on-premise by 3-4 years of owning a CRM system (when you pay once for a project). The cost of ownership is very high, which is beneficial to the vendor (constant flow of payments) and unprofitable to you. However, often the company deliberately chooses a lease (payments “smeared” fall on the budget).
But this is not the main thing (although how can the money for the company be so?) The devil is in the word “rent” - unlike the acquired licenses, the rented ones do not belong to you, but belong to the vendor and he can roll out any updates, stop providing services, change lease terms, raise prices, etc. For example, one of the smaller vendors of corporate software provided by the SaaS model once sent letters to its customers demanding to “pull out” the data in 2 weeks and close the contract, because it considers this part of the business unprofitable (the letter sounded more decent in the letter) - to “non-core” »Asset hit 600 users worldwide. A drop in the ocean, yes, but this is the story of several dozen companies that have suffered losses.
How to bypass the trick?
Buy on-premise versions and contact RegionSoft . Joke :-) In today's market, most vendors don’t get around the trick, so read the contract carefully, watch for updates and manage backups correctly (you can lose access to the database at the most inopportune moment). Well, count the money.Vendor substitution for a dealer or partner
Also a trick that has long ceased to be such. There are vendors on the market (large and small), which, in principle, almost never carry out the implementation themselves, and delegate the process to their dealers in your area. Everything would be fine if it were not for a small nuance: all and sundry become partners, from advertising agencies and web-studios to (suddenly!) Fitness studios and stretching. And this is the big question, whether you will get on a key partner or on such guys with Pilates. Accordingly, the quality of implementation will strongly depend on this. It's bad that you can get to a company without experience simply through advertising on a search or on social networks. As a result, you wind your nerves on a wad of money, and you get very poorly working software that is not adapted to your processes.
How to bypass the trick?
- If you liked a particular CRM, contact the central office or find a certified partner in your city / region. So the higher the probability of dealing with a reliable partner.
- Ask vendor certification vendor, ask questions about implemented projects, read reviews on the Internet. If in doubt, call the head office and check the status of the company with which you start working.
- Do not leave your data in questionnaires on social networks - only on the websites of companies.
- Play a bad client: ask difficult questions, be tough (but not rude!), Set out detailed requirements. The weakest companies will refuse to deal with you and "merge."
This group of tricks includes two more, which does not make sense to allocate a separate section.
- Imposing experience that is not there - the implementer will tell you that he “implemented the system for a pharmaceutical warehouse a hundred times like you do,” and in fact he’s googling what a “pharmaceutical warehouse” is. It’s easy to split - ask for typical business details, clarify how business processes typical for your industry are automated. Dudes without experience will float.
- Providing inexperienced staff. Newcomers to the company should also train on cats, and your task is not to be experimental. Ask your manager about his experience, ask questions about the specifics of implementation, discuss the action plan - an experienced manager will immediately understand who is in front of him. Demand a competent and experienced employee of the vendor, and let newbies assist, do not feel sorry and safe.
Offer a more featured version of the software
So back to our BMW. You need a car for home-dacha-work-simple travel trips, but you are offered this configuration: differential and brake system M Sport, adaptive suspension, improved ergonomics, etc. In the appendage - + 1.2 million to the price. The manager says unique handling at 230 km / h. Wow! And then you stand in a traffic jam on a bridge and you think where to develop 230 at least once, for which you have overpaid a million?
The same story with CRM - the manager will offer you the most sophisticated version of the CRM system, with a bunch of functions, add-ons, mechanisms, etc. The most common argument: "You will soon see that you will need everything." And here there is some truth - it is better to buy a system that covers most of your requirements, and not some basic things. BUT! If you are offered a system, for example, with warehouse management, and you know for sure that in the foreseeable future you will not be sure of it, you ask - why do you need this advantage?
How to bypass the trick?
Write down all the requirements for the CRM-system and compare with the proposed functionality. Yes, you will never find an exact match, superfluous functions will still be there, but you will be able to cut off those rates that you don’t exactly fit (for example, for 200 employees with 15, a huge disk space with a small customer base and a moderate number of transactions and etc.). In general, an accurate understanding of what you want is a great start to a conversation with a vendor.
The desire to kill a competitor at any cost
Often, the vendor manager wonders what other software vendors you are considering. For him, this is an excellent clue - every salesperson of a worthwhile vendor has a complete table of positioning and detuning from competitors in front of him (not only CRM vendors, providers, telecom operators, hosters, etc.). In principle, there is nothing bad about it, but if you are a large customer and we are talking about a million or more, an unproductive war for a customer may begin: they will come to you with gifts, you will be called to a restaurant, you will be paid for the way to Moscow and entertainments. as long as you choose this particular vendor. In this case, you still do not get any information about the benefits, technical parameters and prices - the emotional sale will prevail, and the process will be delayed. So what? The fact is that behind such actions there is a dangerous message: for each of your wishes you will be answered “we will do”, and then the part “we will do” will turn into “this is impossible” or in “unrealistic terms”, and this is already very bad for starting a full-fledged operation.
How to bypass the trick?
- If you are interested in comparison with a specific system, feel free to ask questions and listen carefully to the answers: they must be objective, without black PR.
- If the vendor himself took the initiative and began a direct comparison of himself and his competitors with the names, be alert and stop this direction, report that you make your own conclusions.
- Negotiate each requirement in detail and specify whether it will be recorded in the technical task, signed as an annex to the contract.
- On the answer “let's do it” at least specify the approximate dates and the degree of increase in the cost of the implementation project.
CRM implementation
So, you buy a car that you bring directly to the garage or to the parking without your participation. You come so full of anticipation to flop on the seat, put your hands on the steering wheel, proudly look at the coveted nameplate and ... And there are no wheels, wipers, the car is fixed on the supports. Razuli? No, they shod: the wheels are a paid option, the keys will be given to you for an additional amount, but gasoline as a gift is a whole half of the tank. Again phantasmagoria? And in the sale of software is just that.
Silence of infrastructure costs
This is the first surprise that will be waiting for you during the implementation. You suddenly find out that the cloud is public, and in a private lease is more expensive, find out that you need to pay for MS SQL for your needs or for Oracle DB, backups on the schedule are exclusively paid, for a stable mail operation you need a paid addon, the primary will not work without a connector for $ 300, and telephony should be only from Daisy Telecom, otherwise there may be difficulties with the functionality of a virtual PBX. Simply put, you will find out that even a cloud service has its own infrastructure, not to mention on-premise. You have already paid for the licenses and most likely will pay for the rest to finally start working.
Moreover, surely all these details are set out in the user agreement, the contract or on the website under ***, and you voluntarily agreed to these expenses, unaware of them. And what is most surprising is that not all vendors put these parameters into the initial cost of software - either they forget to do it, or they expect to make a little more money if they split up and finish selling the infrastructure.
How to bypass the trick?
- Read the agreement, even better - read with the staff, so that they appreciate the points related directly to their work. The irreplaceable assistant here is the system administrator. If you buy online, explore the entire site along and across.
- Understand the simple scheme: any corporate software = interface + DBMS + infrastructure, and each element has its own value. On the bank, specify what additional investments will be needed to complete the work.
Integration? No problem!
But this is already a very interesting trick: a vendor can promise you all the necessary integrations and they really will. But the understanding of integration with you and the vendor may differ. Of course, IP telephony, the site and 1C are leading here. A vendor can mean by integration simple data exchange, without complex operations and functions, without scheduled actions. And then for the implementation of the tasks that you need, you will receive an invoice for revision, and a rather big one: it’s one thing for a vendor to refine its own software, and another to mess with the API, connectors and your configurations. As a result, you do not get the work of the automation system that you need.
How to bypass the trick?
- First of all, understand if you really need integration. It sometimes happens that a client wants integration, because it is in others, because he has heard it somewhere, because only one of all employees needs it. Decide within the company with the profile of using a bundle of software, with the frequency of working with an integrated solution. Most likely, you will be surprised to find that you don’t really need it and save money.
- If you find out that the integration is justified and necessary for business processes, specify the boundaries and scope of integration immediately, indicate the vendor, for which you need a particular solution.
Using CRM
Technical support packages as a commitment
Let's make a reservation right away: technical support is work, and you have to pay for it, like for any other. There is some basic minimum that is included in customer service, there is force majeure due to a vendor’s fault (something didn’t start, a bug was detected, etc.), but there are calls for each occasion and the requirement to "file reports" of all kinds and species - and of course, free. In this case, the vendor offers a paid package of priority technical support (in which, by the way, reports and improvements are still not included). This is the norm.
But the trick is that some vendors include paid technical support in the cost of implementation - for a period (first year) or forever (until you refuse this service). Even worse, more often than not, you can not refuse this service - it is mandatory when you buy CRM.
How to bypass the trick?
- If you do not need advanced technical support and are ready to cope on your own, ask the vendor to exclude the support package from the payment - even those developers who have made the service strictly obligatory, are very likely to do this, because implementation is already expensive.
- If you do not mind such a package, specify what is included in it and what restrictions exist. In fact, in the first year of working with a CRM system, an extended priority TP is a useful thing, which sometimes allows you to save on one-time paid appeals.
Updates
Again, the update is a cool thing, especially if it rolls in automatically and does not bring any tangible changes, except for bugfixes and software performance growth. There are no such updates and there can be no complaints. But, as you already understood, there are other options.
- SaaS-provider rolls an update with a modified logic and functionality - for example, some module you need may disappear. Most often, the vendor notifies of such changes, but it happens that in the morning the entire company, the user is waiting for a surprise. On-premise CRM, as a rule, warns of a major update and suggests installing it yourself.
- Major updates roll in for an additional fee, and this is normal, because you get heavily updated software with the necessary and relevant features. However, you may not need the functionality, or you may not have free money to upgrade at the time you are offered it.
How to bypass the trick?
- If you are servicing a cloud vendor, look for the checkbox “Receive updates” and remove it, or contact your manager and find out how you can install updates on demand, but not forcibly. Before you roll out the update, examine the changes and think about what processes in your work they will affect.
- If the vendor offers to install a major update for an additional fee, again, review the changes and evaluate how much this update you need. However, we do not recommend that you “score” on updates once and for all: a vendor may stop supporting old versions, and this will already be a big technological problem.
The rule is simple: updates are good and necessary, the main thing is to prevent the version with major changes from being installed without prior consent. For example, at the end of 2018, we offered our customers an important and necessary paid update, including the change in the VAT rate. This was the case when the update was vital for customers, and we were able to roll out RegionSoft CRM as quickly as possible with this and many other useful and cool updates (including currency accounting, redesigned business processes and a deeply modified unique KPI calculation system ).
Sale of partner services for a percentage
We can recommend one or another service to our clients, which we use ourselves, but we don’t have any shares, referral fees or other commissions (although some providers are outraged by the fact of not cooperating with them). But vendors often insist on connecting telephony, chat, CMS, etc. from a specific partner, because they have their remuneration in different forms - from a one-time commission to revenue-sharing (constant payment for using services). In particularly difficult cases, they say that their system will only work with sites on a specific CMS, and only call through a specific IP telephony and place the service only in a certain cloud.
How to bypass the trick?
It will not always be possible to get around - if restrictions apply to a CMS, for example, then only refinement will save you, or you will have to abandon the use of functionality. With IP-telephony or a cloud provider, it's easier: ask with the vendor corrosively and boringly why there is such a restriction on provider services, tell about who you work with and why, ask about the possibility of connecting to your provider. Most likely, there will be a solution to the problem after short, but firm negotiations. If you don’t need any additional service, plug-in, add-on, connector, boldly refuse, their absence will in no way affect the functional integrity and operation of the CRM system (if, of course, this is not a crutch to any foreign system or a functionally important element such as an e-mail client, a mailing list manager, etc., you will have to “sit down” on an additional subscriber or pay a one-time payment).
People
The human factor in the process of purchasing and implementing corporate software plays a huge role, and it would be a sin not to take advantage of the situation, not to apply psychology and not to try to make money on this human factor.
Inexperienced decision maker (decision maker)
Imagine a successful owner of the sewing business and a stylish designer of comfortable clothing, sheathing a couple of federal districts, comes to a car dealership and chooses a car. She wants a beautiful, comfortable and reliable car, she doesn’t say anything about the engine size, horsepower, drives, types of disks, tire pressure control ... This does not mean that she is stupid and she should be offered to rub the covering with Carnauba’s Aleutian bee wax for 50 000 rubles. Or yes? ;-)
Yes, the decision maker may be technically inexperienced and not understand the issues of automation. He pays the money and trusts the vendor. But some vendors decide that this is a great way to get a few extra expensive services and bells and whistles.
How to bypass the trick?
Do not work alone: ​​your employees in the working group and the system administrator will help you navigate the requirements and intricate technical characteristics.
Discrimination of the employee responsible for implementation
And this is a very terrible, often fatal situation. At some point, the vendor’s client-side manager suddenly declares that the system administrator, implementation team leader, or even CIO is a deeply incompetent person and a pest who needs to be dismissed as soon as possible because it prevents the implementation of such a beautiful, literally the best on CRM market. And he does it for sure because he did not understand or wants to lobby for the interests of another developer, who, of course, paid him.
This statement should alert you: what does the vendor have to do with the assessment of your employee, why does he so directly declare the problem?
How to bypass the trick?
The likelihood that this is really a trick and an attempt to eliminate the technician in its path is at least 90%. Therefore, act correctly and firmly.
- Check with the vendor’s manager what the complaints are about, do not rest on emotions (“the company is indifferent to him”), but on the technical and managerial component.
- Discuss the situation with the employee, ask him about the reasons for countering the implementation: perhaps he will open your eyes to serious shortcomings and tell you how to deal with them and how best to proceed so that investing in corporate software is not a waste.
- Draw conclusions, meet with the working group in full and discuss all points of contention.
The unethical behavior of the vendor’s employees is a reason to change the manager or even the company itself. Business is not a place for manipulation.
Kickbacks
Rollback - no less terrible situation, the opposite of the previous one. The employee actively lobbies a certain vendor, drowns for his CRM (any other software), gushes with arguments and is ready to convince everyone: from a salesperson of the sales department to the general director. It is very difficult to understand, he really liked CRM so much, or he received a rollback for its implementation (monetary or other encouragement from a vendor). This is no longer a trick - it is a trap, and if you do not have a security service, carefully read on.
Rollback is not just a traditional gain. This is the lobby, the presence of the necessary employees within your team, the breakdown of the implementation of the “wrong” software, fake internal expertise (“yes, we need to pay for the refinement, and we also need integration with the ISS modules and the NASA central console”), etc.
Haulers are waiting for a reward from the vendor
How to bypass the trap?
- Pay attention to the relationship of the working group and vendor. Where did the decision about this CRM come to you, whether the employees were invited to conferences, expensive field seminars, the birthday of the company, etc. Sometimes it is in such steep and impressive conditions that lucrative offers are made.
- Please note whether the employee (employees) has frequent close contact on the territory of the vendor company.
- Assess whether the employee’s financial situation has changed (the last iPhone, tablet, clock, etc.) recently.
- Ask the employee about the comparison of the selected system with competitors - you will learn in a sharp and categorical manner that only 20 of the 20 popular programs are worthy of attention, the prices will be overestimated, and the advantages of the competitors will be leveled and denied.
- To eliminate kickbacks, use a complex chain of decision-making on implementation, selection of a supplier, conduct internal control and audit.
- In the extreme case, check your corporate email and corporate calls - in the case of a rollback, the logic of correspondence is often lost, because the communication goes into private communication channels.
It is worth remembering that the rollback is possible in any case: there are large companies that are 3-4 million rubles. they will not even get dirty, because their average check is much higher and there are small ones who are willing to fork out for a reward with a check of 500-600 thousand rubles. (again, this can be an initiative at the “employee-employee” level, which is most often the case).
In software, as in any engineering system, there is no 100% guarantee of fault tolerance, stability, security. If you are guaranteed, it is worth considering whether there will be the same lie in further relations. The main rule when working with a vendor is to trust, but not to do it yourself, be involved in the process, clarify, find out the details and delve into the essence of all processes. Do not be afraid to be branded as a bore and a mozgather, to work for the benefit of your business and in its interests has never been shameful. Believe me, being a Loss is much worse. In general, wake up!
RegionSoft CRM - functional, powerful CRM for small and medium-sized businesses ( in several editions )
RegionSoft CRM Media - industry-specific CRM for TV and radio holdings and advertising agencies
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/459490/
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