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Learn To Define a CRM Strategy That Delivers ROI

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Before you spend a single $ on software, you need to have a plan

A solid CRM strategy should accomplish a number of things before being integrated with CRM Software. Since it requires you to truly understand your business and your customers (after all it's Customer Relationship Management), it should clearly demonstrate why your CRM initiative will succeed from a strategic point of view. It must also quantify the benefits and how they will be achieved at a detailed level.

Developing a complete CRM plan can be, and should be, the justification for obtaining the proper level of funding, and resources, required for the entire project. This might include consulting services, but will certainly include CRM software later in the game.

Your CRM strategy will serve to guide you through your development stages, implementation stage and also the change management necessary to lead your human resources on to a new and better way of doing business. In order for the latter to be successful, participants in the initiative need to know how they will benefit, where they are accountable and how their accountabilities will be measured. This plan will provide a set of standards to which all business units must adhere. In essence, it becomes a document defining a shared vision placing the focus clearly on the customer!

As you develop this plan, try to focus on the following areas:

Identify the financial goals of your business
Identify the risks of this initiative, both short and long term
Identify what you will measure, how you will measure it and how you will evaluate the results
Identify how you will use your results to make the appropriate changes to your initiative over time

Building Your CRM Strategy

CRM Strategy That sounds pretty simple doesn't it? Maybe not for the people accumulating this information but you are in charge and these are the simple headlines you should focus your team on as you get regular updates during your project (the strategy part, not the software part!).

Unfortunately, it's not that simple for your team, so here is some more detail on how you should approach your strategy building project...

Perform a CRM Analysis - You need to start by understanding where your company is today. To do this you need to throw out the baggage and be realistic or you won't be doing your company and favors.

Identify CRM Benefits - Clearly identify the knowledge you will gain and how you will apply this knowledge (about your customers) through its collection in your CRM software and customer database.

Quantify CRM Benefits - Once the benefits have been defined, you must determine what the economic impact will be to your bottom line. Without this, you will not know the appropriate level of investment to make.

Quantify CRM Costs - Your CFO will be far more likely to write a check if you can detail the financial benefits as well as the financial costs. The return on investment is critical in making a major go/no go decision.

Manage CRM Risk - Any investment done right is underwritten. This is the process of assessing and mitigating risk. If a plan to manage risk is not detailed, your ROI justification will lack substance...and most likely be wrong.

CRM Implementation - The last thing you must address is how you plan to implement your CRM strategy. I'm not just talking about implementing the software! Their is a human process that factors into a successful CRM initiative as well. Actually, it's bigger than the software in my opinion.

CRM Metrics - A high level view of CRM metrics that will help you better understand success or failure and also areas for opportunity going forward