Strategies for User Adoption Assure a Better Return on Your CRM Investment

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If your company has deployed a CRM application, but user adoption levels have turned out to be lower than expected, it’s not too late to achieve all of the benefits that were originally projected. While users typically receive adequate training on system navigation, some issues and attitudes about user adoption may still need to change. Only by addressing the needs of the business units responsible for using the CRM application can companies realize their ROI targets.

Companies that have achieved high levels of user adoption clearly communicate the business reasons behind their decision to purchase a CRM system and the specific system tasks that users are expected to perform on a day-to-day basis. These CRM management teams have developed strategies to deal with stakeholders that feel ignored or threatened and may therefore become bent on ensuring the system will fail. The management team must also have disciplines in place to consistently reinforce new behaviors at all appropriate levels of the organization. Here are some successful methods that have worked well to increase user adoption at several organizations. Each of these best practices is designed to establish demand from the users so that they pull the system into their daily business processes for their own benefits — rather than the more typical situation where managers push the system out to the users, and where users often end up pushing back!

Best Practice No.1
Perform an in-depth review of the existing system deployment. Since the CRM system has already been deployed, the first step is to perform an in-depth analysis of the ways that users and managers currently work with the information in the application. This analysis forms the foundation for each of the best practices that follow and serves as a benchmark to measure future progress. It’s important to conduct interviews with both users and managers from each of the primary business units in order to build an understanding of how these individuals currently view the system, how they feel the application is currently aligned with their business processes, what queries and reports they are generating, how often they may be synchronizing with the central server, how frequently they are inputting new information on customers and prospects, and whether or not they are reviewing client and prospect information prior to making a sales call. Discussion should also include whether a more streamlined business process may be better suited to leverage the features and functions that are already available in the CRM application.

Best Practice No. 2
Identify the primary user adoption tasks. The next step is to define the primary tasks that need to be completed for the user adoption project. This is best done through a half-day workshop with members of the project team and select members of the primary business units. Once the primary tasks are defined, responsibilities and completion dates need to be assigned. In some cases, the user adoption project may require relaunching the application, while in others it may simply be a matter of adding new features and functionality to the existing application. In all cases, it’s important to think through the primary components of the project and incorporate these into a detailed project plan. But keep in mind that this plan will most likely go through a series of updates as the project evolves, and new information on user needs is uncovered.

Best Practice No.3 Carefully define the performance objectives for each business unit.
Once the high-level requirements are defined for each business unit, conduct workshops to define the detailed performance objectives and the expected behavior for each major job type within every business unit that is using the CRM application. These workshops are designed to allow members of the business units to brainstorm and define user requirements in an interactive setting, and also provide a good way for users to begin assuming greater ownership of the application.

The first half-day workshop should includemembers of the senior management team and focus on developing a clear understanding of their primary business objectives and original expectations for the CRM application ­essentially, why they made an investment in the CRM application and the changes in user behavior they were expecting.

The participants for the second full-day workshop include midlevel managers responsible for the business units or sales regions. Their mission is to translate the high-level objectives of the senior management team into actionable performance objectives for each of the affected business units by creating a detailed definition of how specific job types should be interacting with the application, including:

What new information users should be able toaccess from other applications.

What new information they are expected to add for clients and prospects.

How data quality should be maintained.

Who is responsible for developing and distributing reports.

How the performance objectives will be managed and monitored on an ongoing basis.

Another objective of the midlevel manager workshops is to identify the features and functions of the application that can make each user’s day-to-day tasks faster, easier, and more powerful, and then determine whether or not these features and functions are currently being used.

Best Practice No.4
Define a comprehensive user adoption retraining and support strategy. While the CRM application may have already been deployed for some time, it makes sense to analyze each user’s competency with the application and then decide what additional user training and support may be necessary to increase user adoption. The detailed retraining and support strategy needs of each business unit should cover:

Who will need additional training.

On what specific subjects they will need further training.

Whether eLearning and/or instructor-led training is most appropriate.

When and where the training will occur.

What additional technical support is needed by each business unit.

How users will be supported.

How users will access technical assistance.

Computer simulations of the CRM application can include short on-line tests that objectively evaluate each user’s skills. Users can then receive tailored training that focuses specifically on the areas where they may be weak.

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