Introduction to the Concept of Board of Directors
Any public limited or private company needs to have a board of directors constituted for the purpose of oversight and accountability to the company. The concept of the board of directors is that it provides an umbrella for the company to operate in and ensures that the decisions and actions taken by its management are […]
Customer Relationship Management – Meaning, Need and Steps in CRM
In an organization, sales representatives have the responsibility of creating brand awareness and making products popular among the end users. They are the ones who interact with the customers, understand their requirements and fulfill their needs and expectations. What is Customer Relationship Management ? The art of managing the organization’s relationship with the customers and […]
Key Metrics for Evaluating Social Media Performance
Measuring the success of social media efforts goes beyond counting likes or shares. To truly understand the impact of your strategies, it’s essential to track meaningful metrics that align with your business goals. These metrics provide valuable insights into what’s working, what’s not, and how you can adjust your approach for better results. Why Metrics […]
Understanding Social Web from Marketing Viewpoint
If you sit back and look at the kind of traffic that is going through the Internet, you might be surprised. At any given point of time millions of people are exchanging messages, chatting and conversing with one another. We might very well assume that the percentage of people using the various social network channels […]
Knowledge Creation and Management
Introduction The concept of knowledge as the founding block for attaining competitive advantage has become quite prevalent in Management studies. All knowledge should begin form a piece of information. For the conversion of information into knowledge there is a critical aspect to be noted. This is related to the timing of the retrieval of information. […]
Irrespective of whether you are in the commercial sector or the not-for-profit sector you need to effectively manage your customers or constituents. In the matter of automation of this function there is hardly anything to match the dominance of Salesforce. The company, operating online through its website salesforce.com is pretty much the industry leader due to its simplicity of use and the configuration tools that are really simple.
Realizing the huge potential savings in time and effort of CRM implementation, more and more organizations are opting to implement Salesforce at the earliest. However, in the rush to save time through quick implementation there is a tendency to commit strategic mistakes that can hinder the successful implementation of the CRM package.
Since Salesforce has acquired close to legendary status for its simplicity of use, there are many organizations that try to just log into the website and try implementing it without paying attention to the need of planning the many elements that are required for successful implementation. Any business intending to implement a CRM package should first decide what information should reside in the system and how should it be structured besides addressing the question of who should have permission to access the information. Unless these basic issues are thought about intensively and decided it is likely that the CRM implementation may go haywire.
It is important for businesses intending to implement Salesforce to compile a document that basically describes what is needed and how the entire information fits the business requirement. The mapping process of Salesforce continuous integration should be done so that the business is able to chalk out its future growth path.
A mistake that businesses often make is to sweep all the data they encounter into the Salesforce package even if they cannot quite figure out whether they have any requirement for it. Unplanned data acquisition only bloats the package making it difficult for managers to make it more consistent and reliable. The reporting requirement should in fact be the building block for all data input. What it really means that if a report is to be generated then the package should contain all the data that is pertinent.
A good way for planning is to figure out what sort of reports the management would want and then work backwards to make sure that these reports can be generated with the data provided. Keeping this in mind is a good way of streamlining the CRM architecture and also to train end-users. Businesses also need to keep in mind the nature of the data required to ensure that they are in a position to nurture and grow relationships with customers.
Many organizations make the mistake of designing the package architecture with only the inputs of the top management and then instructing the end-users on how to use it. Many glitches are revealed at this juncture that could entail an expensive and time-consuming system redesign. To prevent this from happening businesses should take them into confidence at an early stage and ask them for the inputs on making an effective organization. Not only will businesses be able to operate more effectively but will also have inculcated a spirit of cooperation and teamwork into its employees.
Make sure that the message goes out that the CRM package is being implemented to make the lives of the end-users easier and more productive and not to feed the unseen top-management fancy reports and numbers nobody really cares about. The creation of a win-win situation for all participants will also ensure that the CRM package has the necessary support of all.
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