How to overcome CRMs Achilles Heel: User Adoption

A White Paper by Soffront Software, Inc.

Executive Summary
After the tumultuous economies of the last few years, as companies struggle to retain customers and grow with shrinking budgets, CRM has become more important than ever. However, poor user adoption remains the single largest reason behind failed CRM implementations. In this white paper, we will explore and define a framework to successfully overcome the common barriers of user adoption.

CRM More Popular Than Ever

By this time, CRM has gained widespread acceptance and traction among both enterprise and small businesses. According to the 2012 Forrester Forrsights Software Survey of 556 North American and European enterprises, 50 percent have a CRM solution in place and plan to upgrade it in the future. Another 23 percent plan to deploy a CRM solution this year or beyond. Among small and midsized businesses (SMBs), 41 percent of companies reported having deployed a CRM system, and another 25 percent plan to do so in the next year or later. However, not all CRM implementations end up being fully successful. One of the key reasons of low CRM success is poor user adoption.

1. Before you get ready to rollout CRM plan, plan, and plan some more.
Define what CRM means for your company: Every organizations definition of CRM is different. Before you begin to look at technologies and CRM vendors, define your CRM goals and review your existing customer facing processes. Involve all your key departments - IT, sales, marketing, support, and finance - to standardize and streamline your processes. You should also define the success criteria and metrics in terms of user adoption, expected business results, and ROI (Return on Investment). At the end of this exercise, you should have a clear idea on how CRM will support your business strategy. Plan your rollouts in phases: Plan your CRM rollouts in phases so that your users get to experience CRM in bite-sized pieces. Start with your sales or support department. Make sure your super users and users are on board and their expectations are clearly defined and measurable. Plan to start with a pilot rollout containing a minimum feature set. Decide who will own CRM: Specify a department that will own CRM. Do this in collaboration with your key departments. In many organizations, the process of selecting a CRM is owned by IT. However, many successful CRM rollouts show us that end user groups like sales or marketing is more adept in owning this process. Elect a CRM champion: Elect a champion from the department that will own CRM. Give the champion overall accountability to drive user adoption and evangelize CRM within the organization. Identify administrators and super users: Select administrators and super users from key departments who will represent their departments during the rollout and build a consensus around CRM within the department. Make sure the super users have sufficient influence to represent their departments. Involve your executives: Get your executives to commit to CRM around a common set of goals and objectives and a mutually agreed upon timeline.

User Adoption CRMs Achilles Heel

Poor user adoption is not a new phenomenon for CRM. Though adoption rates have improved over the years with the emergence of SaaS and increasing emphasis on user experience by CRM vendors, according to a 2011 report by CSO Insights, only 38 percent of the Small and Medium Businesses have achieved 75 percent+ CRM adoption rates. Employee resistance, lack of planning and preparation, insufficient funds and time, and complicated CRM software are some of the main reasons of poor adoption.

How to improve user adoption?

In the following sections, we will define a framework to explore and improve the key factors behind user adoption. Three main steps to improve user adoption are: 1. Before you get ready to rollout CRM plan, plan, and plan some more. 2. Select a CRM that is built for adoption. 3. Measure continuously and work through adoption issues.

Copyright Soffront Software, Inc.

2. Select a CRM that is built for adoption

Choose a CRM system with a history of high adoption: if you're looking to implement CRM for the first time or replace an existing system, do not assume that all solutions are created equal. When you choose a CRM system, ask the following questions. Is it agile and flexible? CRM is a living, breathing system. It needs to evolve with your business and user needs. You would typically start with a high priority set of features and change incrementally as your users start using the system. Choose a CRM system that allows changes without costly custom programming or customizations. It works wonders for your users when they see their changes are being applied without delay. Does it make life easy for the users? Unless your CRM is easy to use, end user adoption will fail. This has been seen over and over. Select a CRM with a streamlined interface that users can adapt to reflect what's important for their role. They should be able to do this without IT intervention. Look for a system that is designed for end users. Does it adapt to your business processes? When you implement CRM you are asking users to change how they do their jobs. Do not change your day-to-day processes too much to fit the limitations of the CRM system. If your users do not see direct benefits for the time they have to invest learning and using CRM, they will stop using the system. Choose a system that can implement complex businesses processes but makes it simple to use. Does it force you to use alternate systems? Look for a CRM that contain the appropriate depth of functionality for your current and reasonably foreseeable future needs. Look for systems that include a full suite of CRM functions that are seamlessly integrated. That way, your users will not have to look at multiple alternate systems when their needs change.

Does it integrate easily with back-office systems? It is very likely that you may be using several back-office systems in your company. Look for a CRM designed to support ease of application integration to other business applications, such as accounting, order processing, inventory, and human relations. Does it work from mobile and tablets? Does the CRM system allows your employees as good an experience on mobile devices and tablets as it does on their desktop or laptop? If you are expecting your users to use CRM, they will expect it to be available on their mobile devices.

3. Measure continuously and work through adoption issues

Provide only one version of data to everyone: The quality of your CRM data is absolutely critical for user adoption. If your users lose their trust in the data from your CRM, they will reject the system. Review, scrub, and de-dupe your data before you import into CRM. Review the data weekly for correctness and relevancy. Provide all your departments with only one version of data to keep everyone on the same page. Tie adoption to compensation: Identify and reward your strongest adopters. Review how your employees have used CRM during performance reviews. Announce and acknowledge the strongest adopters within the company and promote how they follow best practices. Provide training including training the trainers: If your CRM is intuitive, you probably wont need to provide excessive training for your users. However, make sure your users are familiar with the best practices of using the system to be productive. Conduct user trainings specifically targeted for different user roles. Ensure that all the users in that role follow the same procedures. Train the administrators extensively so that they are prepared to provide the first line of support and answer user questions. Measure and fine-tune adoption continuously: Measure your KPIs (key performance indicators) constantly and realign your business goals. The KPIs for user adoption vary from CRM usage (number of log-ins, number of records entered, time spent in CRM, old and obsolete data) to department goals of sales, marketing, and customer support.

Copyright Soffront Software, Inc.

Soffront CRM: Meeting the user adoption challenges

Higher adoption: Soffront offers a very high adoption rate in the industry. Soffront customer survey shows 100% of Soffront customers have achieved 75%+ adoption rates. Soffront features one click updates to record a contact with a customer or prospect. This can boost productivity 85% over other CRM systems, which may require as many as 20 clicks for the same activity. Ease of navigation, single view screens to view customer information, and all communication viewable in a one screen are factors that drive end-user of adoption in Soffront. Soffront is easily adaptable to unique business models and changing workflows with built-in drag and drop process designers. Soffront CRM is so easy to use; you wont need extensive handholding and training for your users. Lower implementation costs with instant customizations: Soffront CRM is extremely robust and designed to be easily customizable, so Soffront implementations are typically completed in days. Your users will love Soffront when they see their changes getting implemented instantly. Implement screen changes instantly without custom programming or customizations. The ability to customize Soffront to your business extends functionality of the software for your users. Users simply drag and drop to customize screens, fields and reports. An integrated cloud CRM to increase adoption across the board: Soffront offers a totally integrated cloud CRM for B2B as well as B2C companies. Applications include sales automation, marketing automation, customer service and operations as well as customer and partner portals - an application that can be used across an organization to get departments collaborating seamlessly.

Soffront Software, Inc

45437 Warm Springs Blvd, Fremont, CA 94536 510-413-9000 marketing@soffront.com www.soffront.com