by Gustaf Westerlund | Nov 29, 2014
”Yeah, I am your go-to guy for the CRM project. But Joe, the CSO, makes all the decisions and has the money, but is not really involved, he won’t really be using the system either, neither will Jill, our CEO.”
How do you Think this CRM Project will turn out?
The stories are many of CRM Projects run by individuals or Groups in organizations with more or less just influential power. All real decision power in these situations reside in individuals that are not directly involved in the CRM Project.
The reason for this can usually be found in the the first stage of this process, if you have been unable to create a sense of urgency in the top echelons of your organization regarding the CRM implementation, the risk is large that none of the decision makers from these echelons will be involved as sponsors to the Project.
In CRM Projects, it is important to get people from both thte IT and the business side of the Company to buy in to the Project and be an Active part of the Project. The CIO and CSO (Chief Sales Officer) or what you might call them, might be involved as sponsors and they might assign people from their organizations to be part in the actual week-to-week Project Group with more limited mandate.
But, the better you do your work with step one the more attention you will probably get from the decision makers, so in smaller organizations, some of the decision makers might even find the Project so important that they will get involved in the nitty gritty. For better or worse.
Dr. John Kotter in his book, Leading Change, in this chapter on creating a guiding coalition also outlines some of the people that you should try to avoid having in your guiding coalitions. If you are interested, do read it!
I ran this presentation, on how to user the Kotter 8 step method in CRM implementations, again this monday on the CRM User Group Global Chapter Meeting in Sweden. It was a great meeting and I really enjoy seeing users meet Other users. For more information on the User Group, check out www.crmug.com. If you are a user of Dynamics CRM, I am sure you will like it and the more people we get to the meetings the more value it will bring to all participants!
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
by Gustaf Westerlund | Nov 6, 2014
This is the third part of the series of posts in the series where I am discussing how to use the Kotter 8 steps of change method when implementing CRM in an organization. The previous posts can be found here:
Part 1 – Justification
Part 2 – Overview
“Yeah, we had planned to bring up the decision for budgeting the new CRM system at the board meeting, but we had so many urgent issues that we just didn’t have time. Maybe next time…”
Organizations everywhere are choked, especially the successful ones, the ones that have the resources to invest in CRM systems. The effect of this is that everyone can only work with the tasks at the top of their priorities. The first step of Kotter’s 8 steps of change, is to create a sense of urgency. In the case of implementing CRM, this means that we have to be very specific about the effects of what will happen if do not implement this right now.
When doing this, we have to, as always, understand the receiver, understand this party’s values and goals and try to address these. For instance, if the CEO is a very numbers oriented person you might try to work out how much time each sales person might save by using the new CRM and hence be able to put into working with selling more and generating x-% more income. If the CEO is more of a strategy and visions person, you might show her all the abilities she will get with the system and describing all the strategic advantages of this.
The bottom line is, you need to get the people with the decision power and the money to understand the importance of the CRM implementation project, in order for the project to be properly prioritized. If not, you risk being prioritized as number 11 in the list of the 10 item on the board meeting. And that dial does not go to 11.
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
by Gustaf Westerlund | Oct 26, 2014
This is the second part in the series on how to make CRM implementations stick in an organization by using the 8 step method described by Dr. John Kotter of Harvard.
The first posting treated the fact that many organization do not consider a CRM implementation a change to the organziation of such a magnitude that it requires a change mangement approach such as the 8 step method. I think that it gives ample evidence for the reasons for why this is not so and that as many as a quarter of all failed CRM Projects could probably have been helped with better change management.
Kotter describes the following 8 step method can in broad terms be described in the following picture:
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| The Kotter 8 steps of Change |
The method required that you complete each step before moving to the next step. It is hence not a toolbox from which you can pick and choose the things which are easy to implement.
As the method is very general and treats many types of organizational changes I will attempt to give some examples of typical problems and suggestions from a CRM implementations perspective.
In the following parts I will discuss the steps in detail, but in short they are:
Step 1: Establishing a Sense of Urgency – many organizations have lots on their tables. If you want your CRM Project to be prioritized and have the resources required, you had better make sure people understand that they need the new CRM system RIGHT NOW. Every week without it is $$$ lost.
Step 2: Creating a Guiding Coalition – You need the backing of the right people to have a successful Project. A CRM Project without the CEO, Head of Sales, Head of Customer Service, CIO will have some issues.
Step 3: Developing a Change Vision – You need to sell the CRM implementation to the people who are going to use it. You need to create a very clear and appealing vision of where the implementation is going.
Step 4: Communicating the Vision – The vision is not going to distribute itself to the users. Create an internal marketing plan for how to get the message out to all users.
Step 5: Empowering Broad-based Action – Make sure that who want to act on the vision can and are not hindered by technology, old procedures, backward colleagues etc.
Step 6: Generating Short-term Wins – Plan for short term wins. Otherwise the risk of being stopped in your tracks Before generating anything substantial is large.
Step 7: Never letting up – Make sure to keep the pressure. There might be bugs, some people might revert to Excel or stop using the system. Monitor usage.
Step 8: Incorporating Changes into the Culture – Not until the CRM system is truly a part of the Company Culture, a part of the management meeting, board meetings, sales meetings, will you have fully succeeded.
The next part in this series will be on the first step of this, the important part of establishing a sense of urgency.
You can find Dr. John P. Kotter’s website here:
http://www.kotterinternational.com/about-us/who-we-are/john-kotter/
If you would like to read his excellent book, it is quite easy to find, for instance here: http://www.amazon.com/Leading-Change-With-Preface-Author/dp/1422186431/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414356275&sr=8-1&keywords=Kotter
Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se
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