5 Common Barriers To CRM Success
There are many potential barriers to CRM success. Here we discuss the top five that you should have on your radar if you are considering adding or switching CRM software providers. Choosing the right CRM software provider is an important decision that will positively or negatively impact your business for years.
Little Or No CRM Experience
Oftentimes, the person in charge of purchasing the new CRM software system has never used a CRM system before. This can lead to looking for the wrong things in a CRM vendor, ultimately leading to failure. The first thing a CRM software shopper needs to do is get educated. Read up on What Is CRM? Next you should find out the difference between the various types of CRM software solutions. It is always good to also figure out what your company’s goals are for using CRM. Finally you will want to Avoid CRM Buying Mistakes.
CRM Implementation/Integration Issues
In a perfect world the CRM integration process would happen instantaneously! However, this world is nowhere near perfect and neither are CRM implementation processes. Thus, going into it, you need to know that it can take some time and communicate with your CRM software provider about what realistic expectations should be. Another common CRM issue is data integration. You need to be sure that there is a process in place to easily transfer your existing data into the CRM system. If not, find another CRM solution.
Employee CRM Adoption Issues
Executive and employee buy-in issues are huge obstacles for CRM success. If nobody uses the CRM software, you are just wasting your money. Not only do they need to be using it, but using it consistently. Change is hard for people, but taking good measure to train your teams and incentivize them to switch to the new CRM system will prove to provide limitless ROI. If the marketing or sales manager isn’t using the CRM software the other team members will feel they don’t need to either. Get your leadership on board and you solve part of the problem.
CRM Scalability Issues
If you have a healthy business, it is likely growing. Thus you need a CRM software solution that can grow with you. How will you know if they can? Find out what other clients they work with. Do they work with businesses larger than you? Do they work with international businesses? You may also want to go from online CRM to hosted in-house CRM some day or vice versa. Does your CRM software provider offer both options? As a rule of thumb, go where you can grow!
CRM Software Costs
In order to consider your CRM software a success you need to be able to justify the cost. For in-house hosted CRM you need to be able to justify the cost of buying the software and implementation and training. The cost of implementing and maintaining the CRM system can be two to three times as much as the software itself. For online CRM software you need to be able to justify the cost implementation and the monthly software fees. It’s always wise to ask for that all the existing and future costs be detailed upfront before you sign up!
Really nice article, thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I would add expectation to the list. Senior Management often think a CRM system will transform a selfish organization into a customer centric one without any cultural change in tandem. ‘ Foot soldiers’ tend to view CRM systems as an incremental administrative burden and little else ( ” my job is to sell, not to play with computers”) and Middle and Sales Managers forget that Customer Relationship Management is a state of mind and a philosophical position, not a software suite, even one that is in the cloud.
Thanks for sharing.
Do you recommend a threshold for using CRM software vs doing customer service and selling “by hand?” If excessive time is spent on customer relations, then software makes sense… but how does one define excessive?
Thanks Fred! Expectations vs. reality is always an issue