The CIO's Role in Fixing a Broken CRM

For example, I recently helped an organization re-format their users’ screens to better align to the way they capture data, while removing unused fields. This short-term focused win meant that the CRM users saw immediate progress, enabling a momentum gain and higher user adoption.

The second important factor is for the business leader to understand where the IT team adds value. Most business leaders don’t realize they need capabilities that IT team excels in, like data management, integration expertise, platform experience, agile development, and project control. Highlighting the value the IT team brings to the table will help you and your business counterparts determine areas where the IT team’s competencies align to the gaps in the business team’s CRM, and help you fix the problems.

Think About the Users

While it is the business leaders who need to champion the project to the users, you as the IT leader, have a lot of influence over CRM user adoption. You have the ability to build the solution and its processes from the users’ perspective. Understand the situation that users are in and deliver to their specific use case. For example, do sales or service reps need forms adapted for faster and easier mobile entry while in the field? People embrace tools that make their day-to-day life easier. If you can facilitate making that happen, your project will have a significantly better chance at success.

Provide Meaningful Metrics

CRM users are typically visual in nature—and a great way to engage users early is to provide visually appealing graphic metrics that measure personal progress. Dashboard graphics will get users and managers comfortable early in understanding data, and by focusing on personal metrics and goals, they will revisit the CRM system often. Our consulting team has a utilization dashboard that is visited more often than any other page in our CRM system—and it drives our KPI—consultant utilization.

In the early stages of a CRM launch, it iss important to measure adoption, use of new functions and user engagement. A CRM adoption dashboard will help monitor against expectations and provide early indicators of potential issues like lack of training or poorly designed aspects of the CRM solution.

Finally, it is important to realize the difference between leading and lagging metrics in business. Most operational areas of the business focus on lagging metrics, like sales, costs, shipments and backlog. These metrics are fine to manage costs of a business, but CRM leaders need to focus on forward-looking metrics like new prospects and number of website hits. Working with your sales and marketing leaders will help develop mutual goals for CRM metrics that include customer satisfaction, percentage to sales goals, website statistics, and social engagement. And the business leaders will have a vested interest in ensuring that they and their teams are not only delivering on their goals, but using the CRM system to track and measure success.

Celebrate and Look Forward

Each milestone is a cause for celebration and you need to take advantage of every win. But, don’t just celebrate the typical IT project wins, like a go-live event. Rather celebrate the wins of the business, like achieving adoption goals or closing deals in the CRM system.

As you experience these “wins,” engage with your new friends on the marketing team and get them to share the success in a company newsletter or Yammer post. This will strengthen the alignment between IT and the CRM teams, and the rest of the organization will be excited about their success.

Finally, CRM initiatives are never really “finished.” You and the business leader should always align to “what’s next.” Keeping a log of future projects, mapping it out for release, and sharing it publicly will keep everyone engaged in delivering more and more success. These few key areas will help you get on the right path to CRM success and enable you to deliver the right data, at the right time, through easy-to-use devices, and ensure on-going CRM success.