At some point your company will face purchasing software to better handle customer information, inventory, customer purchases, workflow or accounting and invoicing.
A client of mine recently faced a decision on what customer information and workflow tool, a Client Relationship Management system, the company would use.
The project began with a series of discussions with individuals in the various roles within the company to compile the “why” a new system and “what” did they want to accomplish if a new system was purchased. These discussions provided an outline for goals from different perspectives to keep in mind during the research phase.
The research phase:
1- Check industry resources for what is available in the market.
2- Understand what tools are currently in use for this function at the company to determine if there is an upgrade, enhancement, or cloud version.
3- Use colleagues at other companies to see what tools they are using and if they would share “pros” and “cons”. Ask employees across the company if they know of individuals at other companies to maximize your research.
These action items were followed by demos, some live and some recorded. I asked individuals in different roles to participate [for example, sales and customer support] and provide their input or questions. Vendor due diligence ran parallel with the demos and included vendor reputation, data security, costs, upgrade process and contract terms. Sales reps were also asked to provide client references that would consider talking with us on their experience.
Armed with data from the demos and the vendor due diligence; I compiled a data package for the top systems of interest. This package included key screen shots from the tool, descriptions of workflow processes, conversion protocols, tool pros & cons and costs.
The data package provided the information to do a side-by-side comparison for the tools being considered. I also spoke with the client’s technology managed service provider to be sure the software being considered worked with the current operating system. For example, compatible with the Microsoft or Apple platform. We also covered security, licensing, and their role in ongoing support.
All this information was compiled into a decision document which was distributed to interested team members across the company for their review with a request to submit questions that came up while they reviewed the document. This provided me the ability to address questions from various perspectives and enhance the decision document.
An element of any conversion is cost to convert which not only includes the vendor costs but also the resources within the company needed for pre and post conversion activities plus time allocation for training. The decision document needs to address these points. And beyond the conversion the document should outline the return on investing the money and the time. For my client, the return was the ability to automate several manual sales and service processes plus the ability to leverage current support resources without adding to staff.
Now it was time to make the decision and in addition to the company leaders, I asked for a meeting with the front line/sales team as their buy in to implement and use a new customer management tool was critical.
The meeting focused on the “why” and the “what” that was outlined at the beginning of the research. Negotiations with the vendor on contract terms and timeline followed the decision.
The decision made was to purchase the CRM tool that was add on software to a product already in use.
You might ask were all these steps necessary and I would answer YES. The work ensured we looked around in the market, conducted the right due diligence and most importantly gathered support across the company for the conversion work and change management that comes from implementing a new system.