The CRM Textbook: customer relationship training Terry James © 2006 Chapter 11: Management

© 2006 Terry James 2 The following contains scenes of violence, coarse language, sexuality, nudity, mature themes, …

© 2006 Terry James 3 Scope Who do you go to for requirements, and how to you control a moving target? Obvious stakeholders are executive sponsors, and the end customer But who can speak for the customer, which may be millions of people? Must find your stakeholders – a stakeholder is everyone with a vested interest. Key executives, managers, sponsors, users, etc Need a way to consolidate the requirements Surveys, focus groups, meetings, …

© 2006 Terry James 4 Challenges Be explicit about your success criteria When, where, how many, who, … Be very clear about your challenges Publish the risks, concerns, challenges, contingency plans Share your concerns, solicit solutions, get consensus, get signoffs. For moving due dates, publish what you will deliver and when so people can work to your dates.

© 2006 Terry James 5 Faster or different? You will get lots of requests to automate existing ways of doing things Don’ just automate – think hard about doing things differently instead of automating old methods

© 2006 Terry James 6 Politics Politics is not just a bad word about lying and cheating to win Politics is needed for any worthwhile project such as charity. Work hard at good communication and teamwork. Learn as much as you can about teams. It may be impossible to do CRM without some reorganizations to remove roadblocks whether those obstacles are people, technology, or process. Be clear if you have executive support for a needed reorganization before you accept a CRM project. Use a “reorg” as a last resort. Change only as much as is needed as it is easier to work within a culture than outside of it.

© 2006 Terry James 7 Balanced Scorecard A company success is not just good cash flow and profits. You need customers, you need education to stay current. Make sure every employee has in their performance objectives for salary reviews, so CRM objectives. Ensure all CRM objectives for every employee rollup to your CRM strategy Ensure all CRM employee objectives are measurable, achievable, and explicit.

© 2006 Terry James 8 Release management CRM is a big project So set many releases with incremental deliverables Stay on time and on budget even if you need to perform miracles to do so. If not, projects will start to duplicate work “just in case” you run late

© 2006 Terry James 9 Project Planning You will need a good project planning tool You need to share project plans, there will be many changes, so All deliverables, due dates, critical paths, scheduling and costs must be readily available to everyone Try to integrate plans so multiple projects can all connect and rollup so you can see changes or alters in other projects that might impact you.

© 2006 Terry James 10 Basics You want a seasoned project manager on CRM Not just a good project tool, but top people Someone who knows about budgets, Human resources, teamwork, risk management, quality management, communications, and all the other project challenges PMP is a project management professional. This is a worthwhile designation from the PMI (Project Management Institute –

© 2006 Terry James 11 Risk Management A commonly ignored area, that needs careful focus in a CRM project What can go wrong? What will we do if that goes wrong? Plan B – hire people, delay, work harder, buy insurance, etc. The value of a risk plan is one thinks about what can go wrong, which often means you can avoid that trouble. If something does go wrong, you can move to immediate action, rather than a big debate

© 2006 Terry James 12 Status reports Provide regular status reports Give serious threats a red coding Executives can assist, give attention to red items Give potential threats a yellow coding This alerts management to watch the item Don’t hide threats with the hope it will remove itself somehow Share issues to get help The sooner you share, the more options for help you can get from senior staff

© 2006 Terry James 13 Buck stops here Is the project manager always responsible? If key employee quits, if the building has a fire drill, whatever the issue,… the manager is responsible to keep the project on time, on budget, with proper scope. The manager must be creative, get help, workaround, use Plan B, but stay on track

© 2006 Terry James 14 Milestones and pilots Milestones are key delivery points that verify you are on track. Define these, monitor, plan, do. Pilots are highly recommended Expect feedback and changes Ensure you have fallback plans if something fails

© 2006 Terry James 15 Pilot is successful The pilot is successful so the business users want it rolled out everywhere next week. What do you do? Swear jar NjTO0agJ0&feature=related NjTO0agJ0&feature=related

© 2006 Terry James 16 Summary We discussed scope, and keeping requirements under control Expect politics Use a balanced scorecard for every employee to know what they must do to help CRM Develop a risk plan Provide regular status reports Use pilots The manager is responsible