More bang for your CRM consultancy buck…

One area where a CRM consultant can deliver a very immediate and significant bang for the client’s buck is the area of negotiation of pricing and terms. Yes, some organizations are excellent negotiators, and without outside help can probably substantially reduce costs, but a good CRM consultant with a good understanding of what’s achievable with a given vendor, can often guide the negotiations more effectively.

However there’s only so far you can take negotiations over software and day rate costs. The biggest impact a CRM consultant can have is in determining whether the number of service days proposed to implement the project is appropriate for the actual amount of work involved. Vendors typically factor in way too much fat in their estimates, and we generally find we can reduce the man day estimates substantially.

This isn’t always the case; conversely some vendors propose too few days to get the job done. This provides its own set of issues, so, wishing to avoid vendors coming back for more money half way through a project, or trying to cut corners, sometimes we find ourselves persuading a vendor that they may have undercooked things.

The other area that a consultant will pick up on is whether the software proposed is appropriate to the task at hand. Does the client need the advanced version for what they are trying to achieve or would the entry level version suffice for the time being? What are any additional modules for, and are they needed at this stage?

On this point, the timing of software purchases is something that’s worth managing carefully. I’m always mystified by companies who lavish money on software licenses that are going to sit on the shelf, attracting support and maintenance costs, while implementation is underway and no-one is actually able to use them. Recent research by Gartner shows that 37% of CRM software licenses purchased are not actually in use, which is pretty frightening.

The basis of good negotiation, as outlined in my in the first of my ‘What a CRM consultant would tell you about buying software’ articles, is have a detailed specification completed before you start the purchase process. Unless you are crystal clear about what you are trying to achieve there’s no real basis for comparison and negotiation. It’s a case of when you don’t know where you are going any road leads there.