CRM implementation. Battlefield Notes

Chapter 1. Objectives:

1. Analysis of the CRM systems on the market and choosing the most suitable convenience for the end user (building materials sales manager)
2. Setting up this system to the needs of the company (building and selling building materials)
3. Creating a Russian manual on using the system
4. Briefing on use of the system.

Chapter 2. The need for CRM.

Attempts to centrally manage the relationship between managers and clients using traditional methods often fail - there is no system that can delicately track the performance of certain tasks, keep statistics or effectively redirect employees' efforts from active to passive management and vice versa. Gross mistakes made in this area lead to the severance of business relations with customers, unforeseen losses and the damaged reputation of the company. Executive directors clutch their heads to solve petty problems, and meanwhile the snowball of anarchy grows and, one fine day, falls on its head, exposing the incompetence of the leader.

In an unfavorable economic situation, the dismissal of the executive director, who in 7 cases out of ten is the "deserved" manager of the company - a shock measure, and its effectiveness is close to zero - another manager will most likely come in his place - and everything will start again.

Of course, there are no ways to raise an uniquely excellent leader, but there are ways to minimize the possibility of minor system errors. My grandparents (and my parents used to) used a developed bureaucratic apparatus for this - office memos, statements, case books ... and a huge pile of other papers. With large volumes of sales and production, special people were hired, whose main task was to analyze these papers, compile statistics, find weaknesses in the management system and, if possible, prevent errors. Everything was fine until the high mobility and convertibility of mass production required the relevance and accuracy of the information received - and only the introduction of automated control systems,

Now, when the purchase of decent computing power is a modest expense for an average company, more and more managers are concluding that the introduction of automated accounting and production systems is not enough for the successful operation of the company, because those for whom all companies actually fight for conditions of fierce competition - customers - are left without systematization, accounting and, for the most part, centralized management. No matter how good the leader is, problems will begin sooner or later without a customer relationship management system (CRM system).

Of course, blindly asserting that a CRM system is a panacea for all troubles with customers is at least stupid, but it is this system that helps discipline managers and allows the executive director to deal with his direct responsibilities, rather than correcting managers' mistakes.

Chapter 3. Analysis of CRM - systems.

Of course, the idea of ​​creating and implementing CRM systems is not new, and the main reason why these systems are not implemented everywhere is the high cost of the system itself (problem 1) and its support (problem 2). The need for staff training also scared off more than one manager (problem 3). In the process of setting up the system, problems arise due to the fact that the specific requirements of the industry are not represented in fairly general architectures of these systems (problem 4).

Problems 1 and 4 are solved using OpenSource systems. As it turned out later, the myth of the high cost of supporting such systems is just a myth. The difficulties encountered in the process of staff training are discussed in Chapter 5.

The following CRM systems were reviewed:

• Compiere
• Daffodil CRM
• Leopard CRM
• Sugarcrm
• Mpower open
• Adempiere
• CiviCRM
• CRM-CTT (Interleave)
• Enterprise Groupware System (EGS)
• epesi bim

Only two reached the final of our competition - this is Leopard CRM and Sugar CRM .

While Leopard is completely free and licensed under the GPL, there is some confusion with SugarCRM. The official website provides the opportunity to download only a trial version with limited functionality, and on the sourceforge.net portal you can download all the source code of the maximum (Enterprise) configuration, which we used.

Initially, LeopardCRM was a leader - user-friendly interface, nice design, it looked like a toy. The lack of Russian localization, a set of bugs, manual installation, as well as frequent TODOs in the code did not bother us much. The lack of activity of the developers, as well as the lack of prevalence of this system forced us to remove it from the competition.

SugarCRM became the leader - easy installation, 100% Russian localization, a large number of expansion modules, the ability to customize the appearance, customizability - for all its advantages, it has one drawback that did not completely allow us to make it a leader - it's chaotic architecture.

Chapter 4. System Deployment.

After installation and localization, it was necessary to configure the currency options, connect the system to the company's mail server, create user groups (general director, executive directors, leading managers, project managers, managers). Together, these actions took us no more than 2 hours (again, a huge plus of the system).

A lot of time was taken from us by driving employees into the system and delimiting their rights. Difficulties also arose in clarifying the list of projects and their degree of implementation. Often, managers simply couldn’t fully write in writing about all their projects. The biggest difficulties arose in compiling the contact base of clients (at this stage it was found out that the daily log and the card holder were unsuccessful for searching information repositories). And, although this chapter is the shortest, it took us almost 4 days to complete all the actions described in it, provided that the managers were friendly (which is the exception rather than the rule in the practice of implementing CRM).

Chapter 5. The introduction of the system in the production process.

There are 2 main approaches to implementing a CRM system.

Approach 1. "Hard."

Employees are obliged to use only this system, any attempts to refuse to use it are condemned by the management, up to deprivation of the bonus. After a mass briefing and the issuance of disks with managers' manuals, they are forced to transfer the entire document flow to the system. The main advantage of this approach is that implementation takes place instantly and in droves. This method is good when you have a fairly large staff, and individually training everyone is too expensive. That is how crmonline.ru and crmcom.ru/ advise approaching the problem .

Approach 2. "Soft."

A briefing is held, where the entire management team of the company is told about the advantages of this management system, management capabilities and statistics collection. If one of the leading managers or project managers refuses to use the system, the reason for this behavior is found out and, if possible, corrected. Most often, the reason is that the employee has not fully read the manual, and the missing knowledge is transferred to him individually. After the entire management team has switched over to the system, the system is being introduced among ordinary managers. Again, if problems arise, individual consultations are held.

The interest among the managers in the system made it possible to transfer all customer transactions to the system 5 days after the start of implementation. For a staff of 30 people - this is a very good result. After we successfully implemented the system, it was time to collect statistics and analyze the beneficial effect.

Chapter 6. The effect of implementation.

The beginning of using the system coincided with a period of rising demand for building materials, and absolutely all customers were served. Of course, that was almost always the case. The efficiency with which customers were serviced and could receive information about the process of fulfilling their order has significantly increased - now instead of breaking a pile of papers, it was enough to make 2 clicks with the mouse.

Clients ceased to depend on managers; in case of a manager’s illness, his projects quickly, with all the necessary information and documentation, transferred to another manager. The statistics system made it possible to more evenly distribute the work among managers, their quality of work and discipline began to grow. And the line in front of the coffee machine was resolved.

The organizer and calendar built into the system did not let us forget about the call or meeting. And their integration into the document management system, correspondence and calls made it possible to obtain complete information about the project progress, and also, importantly, to update the purpose of the meeting or call in memory.

Structuring the information, as well as reducing the costs of its search, allowed managers to engage in active management, which brought the company many new customers.

The system gave project managers access to all documents, allowing you to carry out the project, taking into account all the wishes of the client.

The Executive Director was given the opportunity to see the big picture, which made it possible to optimize production and clean the warehouses.