Vids from TechDays

My new colleague Veronica Kamph and
@ tech-days

Last week I held two presentations at Techdays in Sweden, one on how to use Dr. John P. Kotter's 8
step method for Change management when implementing CRM to reduce the risk of bad user adoption and making sure that you make the organization accept the system. This presentation was a re-visit as I have held it before several times and presentations are just like training, they do get better and better the more times you do them. I have also written about it on this blog.

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechDays-Sweden/TechDays-Sweden-2015/Change-CRM

I also held a presentation on how to set up CRM 2015 from scratch and see how much could be done in an hour. However, I was very unlucky as the CRM provisioning service was unavailable during the time of the demo, after a few minutes of trying, I switched to an instance I had set up the day before. The effect of this, however, was that the full effect of the demo, to set it up from scratch, was not fully achieved, but if you have not seen Dynamics CRM in action before, do check it out as I show some of the extensibility features and how easy they are to work with. And for those of you who wonder, the CRM provisioning service is very seldom down, this was the first time I had ever experienced it.

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechDays-Sweden/TechDays-Sweden-2015/CRM-2015-0-to-200-in-an-hour

Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, Founder and CTO at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se

Making CRM stick by using Dr. John Kotter 8 Step method - part 8 - Never letting up

”The new CRM was nice but there were some bugs and  Excel is still so much easier, so I just went back to it.”

This is the 8:th part in the series on using Dr. John Kotters 8 step method for implementing new CRM systems in an organization. We have now gotten as far as the system being accepted by users and that they have started using it.

During and just after the initial implementation of the new CRM system users are often good sports and give it a shot, and there might also be strong ambassadors in the people that were driving the implementation. This can often result in the fact that users use the system to a decent level in the beginning.

Managers are also often quite diligent in the beginning of a system implementation to make sure that their employees use the system.

However, the strong driving people might change role or move to Other companies. It is not uncommon that these people are more entreprenuerial and creators than the people who are good at maintaining a system. So, they move on to other projects and tasks. Managers will also get other priorities on their tables, often making the CRM system, not as important.

Keep up the pressure

Other common things that I have seen are that the system might also have some bugs and quirks that might not have showed up in the implementation phase or might have surfaced during later upgrades and these might or might not be surfaced to the people responsible for the CRM system. If not quickly rectified, the risk is substantial that users will revert to their previous manner of working, or some other easy way of managing their own productivity. This is most commonly using Excel to, for instance, keep track of which leads have been contacted.

Dr. Kotter emphezises in this chapter that it is important to constantly reinvigorate the change, in this case the new CRM system with new updates. For instance, making sure that you listen to the suggestions and problems that users are experiencing and acting on these. The passionate ambassadors for change can also be used in this phase to energize the rest of the workforce. Also measuring the use in the system, to make sure that users actually are using it, is important, so that you do not think that they are when it fact they are finding other ways to store information. If left without action for too long, you risk large problems with trying to get user back on track. This is especially true and complicated in large and distributed organizations when you cannot physically monitor what users actually are doing by looking over their shoulders. If team managers are also part of the problems, or perhaps managers in even higher levels, the problems are naturally of even higher magnitude.

Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CTO and Founder at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se

Making CRM stick by using Dr. John Kotter 8 Step method - part 7 - Generating short term wins

In this series of posts on how to use Dr. John Kotter's 8 Step method for implementing change specifically in CRM implementations, we have now come to the part about generating short term wins.

I think many of you who have been around in some CRM implementations, especially when using more Classic Project modells, like the waterfall, when replacing older systems with large amounts of functionality and integrations with a Dynamics CRM that management start to question the Project, and maybe suggest pulling the plug, a lot of effort has to be put into convincing the Project sponsors to continue the Project.

This is also the reason why new Project models, such as the agile model has been developed, as this makes sure to deliver short term wins early on, after each sprint. Many Dynamics CRM Consultant also try to phase implementations to make sure to deliver early on.

Dr. Kotter emphises that it is important to plan for short term wins not just to hope for them. They should be quantifiable/measurable so that you can show them to the Project sponsors as clear and undisputed wins.

In the Project, it is adivsable to define the short term wins that you are planning to achieve and assigning a person as responsible for making sure that this happens.

In one of the my upgrade Projects from CRM 4 to CRM 2013 including integrations to an ERP system we initially focused all the energy on the Technical parts of the integration and just making sure that we could get the same functionality that was actually working in CRM 4 to Work in CRM 2013, using the "Information" forms, not the new forms. However, the Customer had been checking out trials on CRM Online and when we started showing them the upgraded CRM 2013 they were disappointed, despite all our really hard Work! We had tried to slim the Project budget by excluding the form upgrade stuff, moving it to a later phase, but the Customer felt that there was no win, the spent a lot of Money in the upgrade, but for no win. So we added a few hours for fixing the forms, and this made the customer a lot happier. We should have planned for short term wins from the beginning, not just the long term win of the upgraded system, and the use of new forms in later phases. Remember customers don't experience your input, they experience your output. Just like with communication.

Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CTO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se

Making CRM stick by using Dr. John Kotter 8 Step method - part 6 - Communicating the vision/Empowering Change

The previous five posts on this subject, regarding how to use John P Kotters Change management method called the 8 steps of change have discussed the first 4 steps of the process. It is important to understand that each step in the method builds on the step before. So, to go throught the previous steps to where we are;

First we need to make the decision makers in our organization really aware of the urgency, this should be by being very concrete, what is the benift of using CRM, what is the cost of lost customers, how can CRM change this etc.

When we have gotten the attention of the organizations decision makers, we need to make sure that a guiding coalition is put together that has the right mandate for the job. This typically, from a CRM perspective needs to be people from both the business end, IT and Other related areas like architecture or information management.

It is then vital to create a vision for the CRM implementation that will resonate with the people that are going to be affected by the new CRM system.

Communicating the CRM Vision
Ok, so we have a great vision, should we post it on the Company Intranet and then Everything will be fine? If you have any experience of marketing you probably know that this is not true. When trying to market your Products or services, repeated ongoing and very deliberate action is required to make sure that the vision is properly communicated to all the people that are or will be affected by the new CRM system.

I would also recommend testing to see if the message has been properly received by a couple of the the people that were meant to receive it, as Communication is not so much about what is sent, more about what is recieved.

Empowering Change
Ok, so this is done, you show the sales people the new CRM and then a couple of weeks later you happen to be standing by the coffemachine at the Customer, some salesguys are standing there but nobody knows you as your a Consultant and one of the older and most senior salesguys starts bragging to the younger:
”Well I talked to the CEO during our latest golf round and we agreed that I don’t have to waste my time on the new CRM system”

Or you might hear this from a sales guy:
”The new CRM system is great, but I get bonuses for orders, not for posts and likes, so I know where my priorities are”

With opposition like this, in one case a senior sales executive and the other a bonus system that works against the implementation of CRM, the organization is going to have a tough time getting people to Work in CRM. It is vital for CRM implementations that anything stopping people from acting on the change needs to be removed, in the case of the senior sales executive, I would say it was a very bad decision from the CEO to let him slip, but I can understand it as well based on the amount of Revenue some of the senior sales people generate. However, he cannot be allowed to brag about it.

In the case of the bonus system, perhaps implementing some gamification to make CRM more fun or revise the bonus system to build on CRM might be better.

It is also important to elevate those people who choose to embrace the new CRM. Perhaps have an early adoptor competion.

Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se

Making CRM stick by using Dr. John Kotter 8 Step method - part 5 - Creating a change Vision

Why are is the organization implementing CRM? What is the vision or message that we want to communicate to the organization? Is this a vision that will resonate with the organization?

"The reason we are changing to Dynamics CRM 2015 is that the old CRM system was based on VB6".
"We are moving to Dynamics CRM since the cost per seat is a lot better than Salesforce".

How do you Think the two visions above will resonate with salespeople that need to take time out of their busy days to put a lot of time and effort into Learning a new CRM system, often with new processes. The thing is that the reasons above are both very logical, common and true, but when creating a vision for change it is essential for the vision to resonate with the people it is to be communicated to.

For instance, a vision for the CRM system can be that by centralizing Customer information and making it easily available at all times of Customer interaction, traversing previously impassable organizational division. By sharing Customer information across Corporate divisions the all Customer interactions, it is our strong belief that the Customer experience of our Company will be greatly increased, which in the long term will increase Customer loyalty and decrease Customer churn.

Other areas that are typical for CRM is increased business productivity, more time with customers, information at your fingertips with the mobile/tablet applications. It is also important to not use too much Corporate buzzwords, especially if the recipients of your vision are less formal as these people tend to not buy in to the lingo of sales and management. Why not try it out on a few representatives from each of the roles that your are targeting, and see what they Think. Try to ask the questions in an open manner, for instance "How should we improve this to make the most conservative of your colleagues buy into this?"

The example above is a short and general the vision is a bit longer, but not too long, maybe being divided into different parts. For more detail, please see John P Kotter's Leading Change.


Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se

Making CRM stick by using Dr. John Kotter 8 Step method - part 4 - Creating a guiding coalition

”Yeah, I am your go-to guy for the CRM project. But Joe, the CSO, makes all the decisions and has the money, but is not really involved, he won’t really be using the system either, neither will Jill, our CEO.”

How do you Think this CRM Project will turn out?

The stories are many of CRM Projects run by individuals or Groups in organizations with more or less just influential power. All real decision power in these situations reside in individuals that are not directly involved in the CRM Project.

The reason for this can usually be found in the the first stage of this process, if you have been unable to create a sense of urgency in the top echelons of your organization regarding the CRM implementation, the risk is large that none of the decision makers from these echelons will be involved as sponsors to the Project.

In CRM Projects, it is important to get people from both thte IT and the business side of the Company to buy in to the Project and be an Active part of the Project. The CIO and CSO (Chief Sales Officer) or what you might call them, might be involved as sponsors and they might assign people from their organizations to be part in the actual week-to-week Project Group with more limited mandate.

But, the better you do your work with step one the more attention you will probably get from the decision makers, so in smaller organizations, some of the decision makers might even find the Project so important that they will get involved in the nitty gritty. For better or worse.

Dr. John Kotter in his book, Leading Change, in this chapter on creating a guiding coalition also outlines some of the people that you should try to avoid having in your guiding coalitions. If you are interested, do read it!

I ran this presentation, on how to user the Kotter 8 step method in CRM implementations, again this monday on the CRM User Group Global Chapter Meeting in Sweden. It was a great meeting and I really enjoy seeing users meet Other users. For more information on the User Group, check out www.crmug.com. If you are a user of Dynamics CRM, I am sure you will like it and the more people we get to the meetings the more value it will bring to all participants!

Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se

Making CRM stick by using Dr. John Kotter 8 Step method - part 3 - Creating a sense of Urgency

This is the third part of the series of posts in the series where I am discussing how to use the Kotter 8 steps of change method when implementing CRM in an organization. The previous posts can be found here:
Part 1 - Justification
Part 2 - Overview

"Yeah, we had planned to bring up the decision for budgeting the new CRM system at the board meeting, but we had so many urgent issues that we just didn't have time. Maybe next time..."

Organizations everywhere are choked, especially the successful ones, the ones that have the resources to invest in CRM systems. The effect of this is that everyone can only work with the tasks at the top of their priorities. The first step of Kotter's 8 steps of change, is to create a sense of urgency. In the case of implementing CRM, this means that we have to be very specific about the effects of what will happen if do not implement this right now.

When doing this, we have to, as always, understand the receiver, understand this party's values and goals and try to address these. For instance, if the CEO is a very numbers oriented person you might try to work out how much time each sales person might save by using the new CRM and hence be able to put into working with selling more and generating x-% more income. If the CEO is more of a strategy and visions person, you might show her all the abilities she will get with the system and describing all the strategic advantages of this.

The bottom line is, you need to get the people with the decision power and the money to understand the importance of the CRM implementation project, in order for the project to be properly prioritized. If not, you risk being prioritized as number 11 in the list of the 10 item on the board meeting. And that dial does not go to 11.

Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se

Making CRM stick by using Dr. John Kotter 8 Step method - part 2 - Method overview

This is the second part in the series on how to make CRM implementations stick in an organization by using the 8 step method described by Dr. John Kotter of Harvard.

The first posting treated the fact that many organization do not consider a CRM implementation a change to the organziation of such a magnitude that it requires a change mangement approach such as the 8 step method. I think that it gives ample evidence for the reasons for why this is not so and that as many as a quarter of all failed CRM Projects could probably have been helped with better change management.

Kotter describes the following 8 step method can in broad terms be described in the following picture:

The Kotter 8 steps of Change

The method required that you complete each step before moving to the next step. It is hence not a toolbox from which you can pick and choose the things which are easy to implement.

As the method is very general and treats many types of organizational changes I will attempt to give some examples of typical problems and suggestions from a CRM implementations perspective.

In the following parts I will discuss the steps in detail, but in short they are:

Step 1: Establishing a Sense of Urgency - many organizations have lots on their tables. If you want your CRM Project to be prioritized and have the resources required, you had better make sure people understand that they need the new CRM system RIGHT NOW. Every week without it is $$$ lost.

Step 2: Creating a Guiding Coalition - You need the backing of the right people to have a successful Project. A CRM Project without the CEO, Head of Sales, Head of Customer Service, CIO will have some issues.

Step 3: Developing a Change Vision - You need to sell the CRM implementation to the people who are going to use it. You need to create a very clear and appealing vision of where the implementation is going.

Step 4: Communicating the Vision - The vision is not going to distribute itself to the users. Create an internal marketing plan for how to get the message out to all users.

Step 5: Empowering Broad-based Action - Make sure that who want to act on the vision can and are not hindered by technology, old procedures, backward colleagues etc.

Step 6: Generating Short-term Wins - Plan for short term wins. Otherwise the risk of being stopped in your tracks Before generating anything substantial is large.

Step 7: Never letting up - Make sure to keep the pressure. There might be bugs, some people might revert to Excel or stop using the system. Monitor usage.

Step 8: Incorporating Changes into the Culture - Not until the CRM system is truly a part of the Company Culture, a part of the management meeting, board meetings, sales meetings, will you have fully succeeded.

The next part in this series will be on the first step of this, the important part of establishing a sense of urgency.

You can find Dr. John P. Kotter's website here:
http://www.kotterinternational.com/about-us/who-we-are/john-kotter/

If you would like to read his excellent book, it is quite easy to find, for instance here: http://www.amazon.com/Leading-Change-With-Preface-Author/dp/1422186431/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414356275&sr=8-1&keywords=Kotter


Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se

Making CRM stick by using Dr. John Kotter 8 Step method - part 1 - Justification

During the CRM UG Summit I held a presentation on the subject of how to use the method described by Harvard professor John P. Kotter called the 8 Steps of Change to aid in the implementation of CRM in an organization. This is the first blog entry in a series which will discuss this subject. This first post will be on the question of if using this method is even justified?

Many companies do acknowledge that major change in the organization, like a fusion, changing from line to matrix organization, and so on, however, there are many companies that do not acknowledge that the implementation of a new CRM system is a change of such a substantial degree that it does require it to be handled as a change management Project.

If you are not already aware of the failure rates of CRM Projects, do have a look at the following links:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/projectfailures/crm-failure-rates-2001-2009/4967
http://www.dmnews.com/63-of-crm-initiatives-fail/article/303470/

The numbers vary, if 70% failure or 30%, but the fact is that a substantial amount of Projects do fail and it is important to be humble to this in order to attempt to mitigate the possible risks of derailing the CRM investment.

Forrester researched 150 companies to find out which problems they were facing in their CRM initiatives as described here: http://blogs.forrester.com/william_band/12-03-01-dont_let_crm_pitfalls_trip_you_up

In short the problems can be divided into the following areas:

• Creating a CRM strategy – 18% strategy,
• inadequate deployment methodologies (40%)
• poorly defined business requirements (25%)
• lack of alignment on objectives (18%)
• Re-architecting customer-facing processes – 27%
• including technical/integration difficulties in supporting company processes (48%)
• poor business process design (31%)
• Selecting technology – 33%
• perceived shortcomings in vendor solutions (30%)
• a lack of skills needed to implement the solution (23%)
• system performance shortfalls (19%)
• Implementing customer-centric behaviors – 22%
• slow user adoption (49%)
• poor change management and training (36%)
• difficulties aligning culture with new ways of working (15%) 

Several books could be probably be written based on this. From an implementation perspective, we can note that about 25% the companies, seem to be having no issues major problems with getting their CRM Strategy correct, they have managed to re-architect their processes and the have overcome all Technical issues, but still their issues lie with the implementation of CRM within the organization. If this is not justification enough that CRM is and requires dedicated and very deliberate change management within the organization.

As I Work as a Consultant, often contracted to implement CRM for a Customer, I would also like to note that Managing change within the organization is not something a temporary external party can do, why it is important to assign internal Resources at the implementing organization to drive the change management Project.

A final note, these numbers might be demoralizing if you are looking at starting you CRM Project or have started it, but I would suggest you look at it in another light. By seeing the problems and errors that others have faced and being open and transparent about your own issues you have a better chance of avoiding these pitfalls. I talked to one of the project leaders for one of the biggest infrastructure Projects in Stockholm which will be completed Before time and within budget. I asked her if she could give me one or two reasons why they were doing so well and she answered:

• We have very senior and technically experienced people in the Project leadership committee
• We have been very risk aware from the start, and have had weekly risk meetings

Gustaf Westerlund
MVP, CEO and owner at CRM-konsulterna AB
www.crmkonsulterna.se