Strategic Themes for CRM Initiatives

Each CRM initiative has multiple aspects to it – people, process and technology is a good abstraction of the aspects. We do not necessarily think of these aspects always as either or; you may need to pursue many or all of them simultaneously or sequence them in quick succession for a well-rounded CRM solution.

Take the observations from your workshops and interviews analyzing current state and cross reference the observations against CRM best practices.

For our client engagements, we have prepared for each of the CRM functions – sales, service and marketing,  a list of strategic themes. Our list of strategic themes comes from organizing the best practices from our experience thematically. For instance, you may group leading practices for Opportunity Management, Pipeline & Forecasting under the strategic theme of ‘Sales Processes’. Cross-referencing the observations against such themes help in arriving at specific initiatives that may then be pursued as a portfolio.

As an illustration, our current state analysis and interactions with stakeholders at one of our Salesforce client engagements yielded the following strategic initiatives:

1. Enhancements to Salesforce CRM
   o Reports & Reporting Process
   o Sales Process
   o User Interface Changes
2. Changes to Sales Organization
3. User Training

You then take such a list of initiatives, prepare timelines and implementation plans against them and manage it as a CRM program.