17 key roles in a CRM project team – including some you may not have thought of

November 20, 2017November 20, 2017 Richard Boardman

So, your CRM project has the green light, and now it’s time to start work working out who is going to do what. The first question to answer is what project team roles are you going to need to fill?

If you’re going to be successful, there’s probably seventeen that someone needs to be allocated to, though I stress seventeen roles doesn’t necessarily mean seventeen different people. In practice, especially for smaller projects, an individual may perform multiple roles.

Or, indeed, on a larger, more complex, project, multiple people may be assigned to a specific project role.

The point is that, regardless of CRM project size, the following internal roles need to be filled:

Project sponsor

This is typically going to be a senior level executive. They will be accountable for the overall success of the project, and help drive it through the organisation. Their day to day involvement will normally be light, but they will be responsible for ensuring the project stays on track and help resolve any conflicts or obstacles that crop up.

Perhaps one of the main qualities to look for in a sponsor, beside their ability to effectively steer the project, is a willingness to get hands on with the technology. Ultimately if the sponsor isn’t willing to be a user of the system, or, at least a consumer of its outputs, then their credibility can quickly be undermined, particularly during the all-important post go-live user adoption phase.

Project manager (User side)

Will be responsible for coordinating the project on a day to day basis to ensure that the required outcomes are delivered, within the agreed budgets and timelines. This may or may not be a full-time role, depending on the scale and complexity of the project. They will be responsible for developing the project plan, allocating work, coordinating with suppliers, tracking progress, and providing status reports, along with a myriad of other activities.

In larger projects, perhaps where the CRM system is just one component of a much larger body of work, a senior programme manager may also be involved, to coordinate and manage all the related projects.

It should probably be noted that the existence of a supplier-side project manager, whose role is described in more detail below, doesn’t remove the need for what I’ve defined, for the purposes of clarity, as the ‘user side’ project manager. The user side project manager is responsible for the delivery of the project as a whole, and the supplier side for managing the supplier’s involvement in it.

While some companies elect to contract in a specialist CRM project manager for the duration of a project, the alternative is to assign someone to the role internally, or contract a generalist project manager, and potentially provide them with additional support through access to an external CRM consultant. The key attributes of a user side project manager, to my mind anyway, are organisational skills and the ability to make stuff happen, rather than specific CRM experience, which, as I mentioned, can be contracted in.

Departmental owner

We’ve identified the need for a project sponsor above, but it’s also important to have key departmental managers involved. If the system is being rolled out to the sales, marketing and service areas, it’s important that a senior manager in each area take responsibility for the deployment and adoption. I think the key word here is responsible.

What you don’t want to happen is the departmental manager announcing, six months after go-live, that the reason his or her team isn’t using the system is it doesn’t quite work the way they do – or some variation on that theme.

The departmental manager needs to own the implementation of the system in their areas including verifying it’s fit for purpose, and driving its usage. Making the functional managers accountable for the success or failure is one of the keys to implementing CRM technology successfully.

Project board members

The role of the project board is to oversee and steer the project. The board will generally include the project sponsor, the user and supplier side project managers, as well as other senior staff including departmental owners and a senior IT representative. The board will typically meet monthly, and will track progress, monitor key signoffs, and address any significant issues that crop up. Smaller, or simpler, projects may not require a project board where the involvement of the project sponsor is sufficient.

The voice of the customer

This is a role that’s often missed, but is nonetheless important. CRM projects tend to be inward-facing. They’re often about generating internal efficiencies. Having someone acting as the voice of the customer to help explore how the system can improve their experience, can be a useful way to add an outward-facing dimension to a project.

Subject matter experts

The role of the subject matter expert, as the name suggests, is to provide expert input on the business processes that need to be supported by the new system, and knowledge about existing systems and data sources that need to be considered in terms of data migration or integration. They will play a key role in the initial requirements gathering and system design process, but are also likely to be involved in areas such as user acceptance testing later in the project.

Business analyst

The role of the business analyst is to help define the requirements for a system, as well as its ultimate design. They will work closely with users and, in particular, the subject matter experts, in order to understand existing business processes, and how these could be improved in the new IT environment. Familiarity with CRM technology is clearly beneficial in this respect, but this can be accessed through an external CRM consultant if necessary.

Internal IT architect

The role of the internal IT architect is to ensure that the new system complies with any defined technical standards and is compatible with other existing systems and technologies, particularly if there will be ongoing integration with them. The internal IT architect is typically a senior IT staff member and will normally be involved in the requirements definition, procurement, and design phases.

Project team member

Project team members are generally the staff who actively work on the project. They will generally represent an area of the business and their role is to act as a liaison with their teams and to ensure the work packages assigned to them are completed. The project team will meet more frequently than the project board, typically weekly or fortnightly.

Test manager

The user acceptance testing phase is an important stage in the implementation process and this can be particularly lengthy if there is significant customisation of the system, or complex data migrations or integrations to review. It can be very helpful to have an assigned test manager to help develop and coordinate the testing programme, and log and track issues with the supplier.

Trainer

While the trainer will tend to be heavily involved around go-live, the realities of preparing for training, and creating training materials, means that in practice the trainer’s involvement may well start some while before. The system supplier will often offer training services, however, the need to train new joiners means its normally best to develop the capability in-house, perhaps using the implementer to deliver ‘train the trainer’ training to the nominated trainer(s).

Super users

One of the ways of reinforcing training and reducing the burden on the internal IT support team, is to identify and recruit super users. These are individuals that, either through additional training or their own curiosity, have a higher level of understanding of the system and how it should be used, and are prepared to share that knowledge with their colleagues as they need help and support.

System administrator

The system administrator is responsible for maintaining and running the system. With the ubiquity of cloud-based CRM applications, this doesn’t normally extend to managing physical servers, though this would be the case if an on-premise option was selected.

The system administrator is generally responsible for activities such as adding and removing users, setting security rights, creating dashboards, running reports, and making minor configuration changes. Some vendors offer administration services as part of their support contracts, so there’s the potential to outsource this function if required.

The system administrator will generally be involved in the later stages of the project helping with the final set up of the system in the run up to go-live, and its ongoing management thereafter.

Data administrator

The role of the data administrator is to help maintain and, ideally, enhance the quality of data in the system. They may well be involved in the run up to go-live helping cleanse the data that’s due to be migrated to the new system. Their main involvement though will be after go-live, where they monitor the quality of data being added to the system, identifying poor quality, incomplete, or duplicated data and taking remedial action.

Usage monitor

One of the key challenges with any CRM deployment is to ensure the system gets used as intended in order to achieve the desired outputs. To help achieve this, there is a need for someone to monitor if and how users are using the system, and their level of adherence to the prescribed usage procedures, and identifying those that need additional help and training. This is an intensive role in the initial months of go-live, but also needs to be in place thereafter in order to ensure that usage is maintained, and that new users adopt the system quickly.

Internal support

Generally, someone will need to deal with support issues as they arise. Typically, there will be an internal help desk to log issues and provide first line support, passing on those that can’t be resolved to the supplier. In smaller organisations, where this support function might not exist, someone should act as the main point of contact with the supplier to ensure issues are appropriately logged and actioned. The support desk, or the nominated individual, will ideally require a high level of system knowledge and will need to be trained accordingly.

Independent CRM consultant

While this may seem a little self-serving, with so much money and resources being invested in the average CRM project, and the propensity for them to go off track, or not achieve the desired objectives, having access to independent advice from someone who has been there multiple times before is generally a sensible insurance policy. An oversight engagement, doesn’t have to be a particularly heavy one, and one or two days per month can significantly de-risk a project.

Supplier side

Anyway, that wraps up my thoughts on the user-side roles, but before I conclude I wanted to briefly summarise the primary roles on the supplier side. As with the user-side, on smaller projects one individual may wear multiple hats, but the following are some of the main roles:

Project manager (supplier side) – Will be your primary interface with the supplier, and will be responsible for coordinating their activity and reporting progress.

Solution architect – Has primary responsibility for the design of the system.

Developer – Will be responsible for building the system. In practice there may be multiple developers. Often these will work on different areas of the system for example work may be split between the creating the core application, data migration, integration, and reporting.

Tester – In order to ensure that what you receive for user acceptance testing is of a high standard, the supplier side tester will review the output from the developers before it’s passed over.

Trainer – Will deliver ‘train the trainer’ training, or train users directly if required. They will also typically train the testing team who will need to be competent in the system well ahead of go live, as well as delivering training in specialist areas such system administration or reporting.

Help desk – Are the team that any support issues are logged with.

Senior executive – Ideally there should be a nominated senior supplier-side executive contact in case issues need to be escalated.

In practice, particularly for larger projects, there may be multiple suppliers involved, for example where the CRM system needs to be integrated with another system, and as a result there may potentially be several supplier-side project teams involved.

As I’ve touched on above, it’s important to be aware the project roles outlined above largely exist regardless of project size. It may be that for small projects the seventeen roles might be performed by one or two people, or in larger projects by several dozen. The point is that the hats are going to need to be worn by someone to ensure success.