I’ve blogged a lot over the years about the challenges of buying and implementing CRM software. I was conscious that there wasn’t that much easily accessible practical advice out there, so I figured it was time to get these posts into one place, and combine them with new material in order to, hopefully provide, a practical guide to anyone looking at purchasing CRM technology.
The result is a 42 page e-book entitled ‘an industry insider’s survival guide to buying and implementing CRM software’. It can be downloaded from here. It’s free. There’s no need to sign up, but all feedback is gratefully received as I’m intending release some further iterations, based on the responses I get.
I’m also planning on adding some additional titles, so any feedback on areas that might be of interest, would also be well received.
![[Facebook]](https://www.mareeba.co.uk/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook2.png)
![[Google]](https://www.mareeba.co.uk/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/google-plus2.png)
![[LinkedIn]](https://www.mareeba.co.uk/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/linkedin2.png)
![[Twitter]](https://www.mareeba.co.uk/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/twitter2.png)
![[Pinterest]](https://www.mareeba.co.uk/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/pinterest2.png)
Great eBook! I think your guide presents the right way to go about implementing CRM. As a vendor, we would like to see customers put this much effort into their own investment in CRM. But too often, they are relying on the vendor to produce the value from the CRM tool in their organizations. More often than not businesses small and large either do not have defined processes, or they done very little examination of the processes. They are hoping in CRM technology for their future success.
That’s why I really like your emphasis on processes throughout the planning, design, testing, and training phases. In fact, you can’t emphasize that enough, so you might consider building out the content on identification of processes in the last three paragraphs on page 14. (or write another ebook!)
I can’t agree more with the documenting requirements section. I would love it if a customer documented the details of the data migrations and integrations. Somewhere between that point and what you have written in the Data chapter, I hope customers would understand that data migration is rarely easy and almost always expensive. They need to consider the value of the data they are bringing over, and is it worth the effort? Perhaps a summary of historical invoice data would be more valuable than bringing over every historical invoice, for example. Often I find customers have not done any review of their own data, and thus they feel victimized by the vendor when they see the effort/cost of data migration.
To my point above that this is the right approach, it might be worth mentioning they should not throw out the highest bidder during the RFP process, as that might actually be the vendor that knows the true cost of implementation. You mention all sorts of time consuming, but important steps such as making an accurate design, testing, and thorough training, and its guaranteed that the lowest bidder doesn’t have these in his estimate.
Gretchen Mann
Director of Solution Delivery at PowerObjects
http://www.powerobjects.com