As a CRM customer you can use the CRM package without customizing it as most of the packages come with full out of box functionality. This out of box functionality may meet most of your needs – but you can achieve much more if you go for implementation and customization services from consultants.
In this article we discuss the few reasons why you should go for implementation/customization:
- Each industry has its business lingo, terms and collects the information that is relevant to them. Out of box CRMs (unless they are industry-specific CRM) come with generic functionality that is applicable for multiple industries. It normally does not includes the business language, terms used in a specific industry. Consultants working with you customize the modules of CRM with custom fields related to your business/industry. These additional custom data points will help you get best out of your data – for example, it will help you do precise segmentation, generate detailed customer profiles, and provide more informative reports based on your industry data points.
- The sales cycle and hence the sales stages of each industry – and may be, of each company in one industry, can be very different. CRM Consultants help you customize the process of Leads and Deals to meet the requirements of your company/industry. Based on your custom Leads Pipeline there can be a better alignment of your Sales and Marketing. The appropriate Deals Pipeline matching to your business needs will help you do better forecasting and sales.
- Consultants will help you create the custom modules for the functionality that is not present in the software package. Most software’s give capability to extend the CRM beyond what they have by giving options to create custom modules. These custom modules if not created will require you to buy additional software at much higher cost.
- CRM Consultants will help you create custom business rules and workflow (like system alerts, approval process, business validations) that will help your business become more effective. The out of box CRMs do not come customized with these business rules – as each business many need different rules. However, they give capability to create the custom business rules. Consultants not only help you create the business rules you need – they also recommend the best practice business rules based on their experience with customers from your or other industries.
- CRM consultants help improve the adoption by making it easy for users to start using the system. There are several features of the CRM that can be easily configured and effectively used by your end users if some consultant (who knows it) helps them get started. For example, using Macros, Integrating Email, Working with reports and Dashboards, Customizing Email Templates, Using the Mobile app, among other features, have a learning curve – that consultants bring down. This helps bring down any system adoption challenges that your company may have.
- Consultants help train your users by conducting training sessions for administrators, supers users and general users. They also help you prepare the customized training material including training videos, training deck. Training of your end users is very important for the adoption and success of CRM.
- Consultants help you implement proper security model. Considering that data security is one of the most important aspects of any CRM implementation. Consultants help you set up a proper security model for the software – including who has access to what features and who sees what data.
- Consultants help you do the data migration – which can be simple to complex process depending on how your existing data is structured. The data can be of your customers, products, price books, historical quotes, historical orders etc. Data cleansing, Data transformation d data upload are some of the most time-consuming tasks of any CRM implementation.
- Consultants help you with the integration of CRM with any third party application by doing custom integration or by using third-party integration applications. Some of the typical integrations include integration to mass email software, integration of computer telephony, integration to accounting software etc.
If the above reasons do not still convince you to engage a CRM consultant and go for structured implementation/customization exercise; we recommend you to do a Proof of Concept (PoC) in your organization with a subset of users. The PoC will help you further decide if you really need to work with a consultant for implementation/customization.
Dhruvsoft provides customization/implementation services for CRM. Reach out to us with your CRM customization requirements – click here to contact us.
