8. Which CRM?

Preparing for a CRM system - vision and strategy

Before any decisions can be made about which CRM is most suitable for your institution, you need a clear understanding of your institution’s vision and strategy.

You need to consider:

• In what way would implementing a CRM programme within the institution support the institution’s vision and strategy?

• How, specifically, would it help the institution realize both its short-term and long term goals?

Knowing the answers to these questions allows you to see clearly the direction in which the institution is heading and to identify where exactly the CRM project fits into that.

An example of how an institution’s broader strategy can drive a project forward

	The key factor was that the university wanted to create a ‘One Stop Shop’ (OSS) for students, which eventually became known as the Student Services Centre (SSC). They were planning on doing this by bringing three existing departments into one larger department. This meant revisiting current processes that were in place and was an ideal time to bring in a system that would help record all interactions with students. TheOne Stop Shop project was being pioneered by the Registrar and Secretary of the university at the time, and involved many senior staff members in the implementation. It turned into a large scale project and a project manager was recruited to make sure the project was a success.
HEI moving from tactical to strategic
	Stimulating demand for workforce development, and the commercial income this attracts, is seen as a major policy objective. Therefore, the key factors in driving CRM have been: to have a system that enables us to be more responsive to employers i.e. employer / customer focused systems as opposed to learner / finance focused; target and monitor sales and marketing activity (i.e. stimulate demand); increase non-government funding streams (e.g. increase commercial income).
FEC with a strategic approach

An example of how external policy and internal strategy can combine to produce change

	The system... was driven by both senior management and wider drivers such as ‘Action for Business Colleges’, a Learning and Skills Council Initiative which called upon colleges in the South-East to review their business engagement strategy and accreditation processes.
HEI moving from tactical to strategic

Determining the Whole Project Costs

A. The Financial Costs

The institution’s vision and strategy will include not only its aspirations in terms of future income, increased commercial investment and wider community involvement but also its targets in terms of expenditure. Part of your understanding of the institution’s vision and strategy will be to know the answers to the following questions:

• What amount of investment has the institution committed to realizing its vision?

• How is that investment to be distributed – in terms of different resources like new systems, equipment, space and staffing?

• Over what period of time will that investment occur?

• What cut-backs does the institution intend to make in terms of resources e.g. staff, training, IT support or purchase of new hardware?

• Over what period of time will those cut-backs be implemented?

• How much flexibility will there be in terms of where cut-backs can be made by individual departments?

Recognising the financial constraints imposed by the institution’s policy provides a realistic backdrop against which to plan the scope and width of the implementation. One FEC with a strategic approach to CRM explained the situation in their college.

There continues to be strong leadership from senior management (a director is the project executive). However, as commercial activity / income is relatively low as a percentage of overall College income / activity there are difficulties in keeping CRM in the spotlight. The day-to-day bread and butter business of 16-24 year olds in full-time education will always be the main focus... Obviously there was senior management resistance in terms of how the project would be financed, thankfully we were able to access European funding to pay for the CRM. It is difficult to know whether CRM would have been implemented otherwise.

FEC with strategic approach

The benefits of acquiring external funding in terms of gaining the support and commitment of senior management are re-iterated by this FEC.

	It was a fight to convince SMT to have a system – without specific funding the fight would have been much harder as the cost has been approx £25,000. It would have been difficult to persuade them.
FEC with strategic approach

	I eventually got the backing of PVC and senior management when I got the funding from HEFCE. They were enthusiastic because it raised the profile of our HEI.
National business engagement network

B. The Time Costs

Never underestimate the amount of time that staff will need to devote to a system implementation.

JISC infoNet ‘System Implementation’ suggests that when a new system is implemented many staff will need to devote 25% to 90% of their time to the project for varying periods of time.

This will include:

• time and effort to be committed by senior management

• time to recruit and train new additional staff

• time for the drawing up of a suitable contractual agreement with the supplier of the system and for ensuring agreement between all parties.

• time for staff to maintain the old system while the new system is being implemented.

• time for ongoing staff training and staff development as changes are made to the system.

• time for the following activities that will help sustain the system:

• identifying and fixing errors in the software

• managing the databases and software patches

• providing helpdesk support

• controlling change requests

• conducting system training

• reviewing business processes

• upgrading the system on a regular basis

Technical knowledge was an issue because although we wanted to ‘shadow’ the vendors when setting up the system ,this was not always possible, therefore there was a huge learning curve for the technical staff maintaining the system.

C. The cost of resources

Getting the right team together

When changing processes or systems, it is important to get the right mix of people on the team. There needs to be a combination of people who:

• know and understand why the process is being carried out – what function it serves

• have a thorough knowledge of the way things are done at the moment – the ‘As is’

• have the ability to inject new ideas

• have a full and realistic understanding of the capabilities of the system

• have sufficient power, or have the backing of someone with sufficient power, to challenge the status quo, offer solutions and resolve cross-departmental issues as they arise

Can you get such a team together and can they give their full commitment to the project or will they be drawn back to their old roles when need arises?

The scope of your CRM implementation may be determined by how much staff commitment to the project the institution can afford.

Top tip!

	There is no substitute for good old fashion project management, delivered by trained project management professionals. This is important so I would say dedicate strategic project/programme management is needed if you really believe that strategic CRM is where you are heading.
HEI with strategic approach

Selecting a CRM system

The JISC infoKit ‘System selection’ provides a useful step by step plan to the selection of any system. The model they put forward is shown below and is adapted from the commercial selection models.

				Conclude procurement
			Evaluate Suppliers	Step 5
		Initiate procurement	Step 4
	Define what you need	Step 3
Project set-up	Step 2
Step 1

In this self-analysis framework we focus on the first two steps only up to the point of initiating procurement. A more detailed look at these plus the steps that follow can be found at this link http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/InfoKits/system-selection

Step One – Project Set-Up

The deliverables from this stage of the project should be a Business Case, a Project Initiation Document and a Project Plan.

Constructing a Business Case

A useful JISC infoNet Business Case Template is available. Constructing a Business Case for the CRM implementation helps you think about the following questions:

• What are you aiming to do, why are you doing it and are there any alternatives?

•  How does the implementation fit in with the strategic direction of the institution?

• What will be the opportunities and benefits to the institution and to individual users?

• What are the implications with respect to new staff, staff training, new technology, new processes, in-house and external support?

• What are the risks involved in implementing the system and how will they be managed? A risk assessment template is available.

• What are the investment costs of the CRM system in terms of salary, training courses, hardware, software and other equipment

• What are the running costs of the CRM system?

• What  payback are you anticipating – recouping of costs and the benefits to the institution and when might  these be realistically realized?

• What are the phases of the implementation and the deadlines for their completion.

The Project Initiation Document

This outlines the project management framework and methodology. Included within it should be:

• its overall aims and the methodologies to be used to achieve these

• a clear and detailed description of the scope that it will cover so that there is minimal possibility for misinterpretation on the part of all stakeholders. 

• change control to ensure that any changes suggested once the plan has been agreed are within acceptable limits in terms of time, cost and quality

• a stakeholder analysis – identify your stakeholders together with the influence or power they might have over the project and design strategies for communication and for keeping them on board

The Project Plan

While there is no such thing as a ‘standard’ plan, there are some key pointers to success

• Regard the plan as a flexible framework. Be prepared to change and adapt it. You cannot eliminate all risks but flexibility allows you to be prepared for them.
  

• Break the plan down into a number of stages. This allows you to review regularly the Business Case and check that it is still valid. It also provides the stakeholders with a view of progress and provides a useful political and communication tool which helps to build confidence and boost morale.

• Ensure that each task in the plan has clearly defined deliverables. These should be tangible outputs that can be objectively observed.

Step Two – Define what you need

Producing a Statement of Requirements

Requirements can be described under three broad headings: general, technical and functional. Asking questions around those headings will help you construct a statement of requirements for the CRM system.

General

• Does your institution have any requirements regarding the type of company you should deal with?
  
  Top tip!
  
  Find a company that you can work well with and that always gets back to you when they say they will. If they don’t, keep looking:

• Are you looking for a CRM system that is designed specifically for the education sector or can it be a more general product?

• Are you happy to accept the company’s standard licensing agreement or do you want to negotiate a contract specific to your institution?

• How are you going to deal with data protection?
  
  Top tip!
  
  It is vital to speak to your data protection officer about your CRM proposal as there may be issues around how data is gathered and shared across the organisation

Technical

Involve those responsible for your IT infrastructure at an early stage.

Top tip!

I probably could have done with more technical support to explain exactly what I needed to the web people. So, for example, I can’t track if the universities have won a tender and although we are addressing this it would have been useful to have had this specified at the outset. So it would have been useful to have had a high-tech person on board.

They will be able to advise on questions such as:

• What is needed in terms of the robustness and scalability of the system?

• Is your institution committed to a single hardware or database platform so that any new system must be able to run on that platform
  
  Top tip!
  
  Make sure the solution being implemented is easily extendable. Due to the lack of in-house knowledge we trusted that vendors were setting up a system that we would be able to extend easily. However it has become apparent that some areas which were set up were not done in the best way and have caused some limitations:

• What are the browser and off-site requirements e.g. issues surrounding the institution’s firewall?

• What archiving capabilities are needed?
  
  Top tip!
  
  It is advisable to have number of different instances for development, user acceptance testing, training and production. Make sure that the testing and training environments are refreshed periodically. It is also important you have super users who can complete testing when changes are made to the system, test scripts help with this. We didn’t implement enough environments at the start of the project, and due to hardware limitations / costs etc it is taking a long time to get these additional environments set up (Manchester Integration Service)

A useful Statement of Requirements Checklist is available.

Functional

Constructing process maps as described in the Process Map section will help you to answer the following questions:

• What are the areas of weakness and inefficiency?

• What are the areas that are currently being done well?

• What would you like the new CRM system to provide?

Top tip!

My advice to other institutions would be to clearly identify what the CRM will be used for, and as a result, whether you need to integrate finance, student or other systems with your CRM. Identify very early on what databases or spreadsheets potential CRM users are currently using, this might help decide what will be recorded on the CRM, what can be stored elsewhere and what doesn’t even need to be recorded in the first place! My other advice is, where possible, change your college / work / business processes to match the CRM rather than trying to manipulate or change the CRM to match what you do. CRM systems are, on the whole, built to enable you to focus on customers – existing college / university processes are not always built with this in mind! Change the college / uni process, it will be less expensive, might make you more money and you should have happier customers.

From the Statement of Requirements you can produce the final document - the Invitation to Tender (ITT). An ITT template is available.

View examples of how other institutions have dealt with the tendering process

	A number of different vendors / professional service providers demonstrated their systems to us, based on a specification provided by key users of what the system needed to do, this was split up into Mandatory, Highly Desirable and Desirable areas. The group that was involved in the tendering process consisted of managerial, technical staff and key users, and a decision on who to use was agreed by evaluating the functionality they could supply, and also from a technical perspective the fit with our existing Oracle / Sun environment that was in place at the time, was an important consideration.
HEI moving from tactical to strategic
	The CRM purchase was part of a normal procurement / tender process, however, a Microsoft or an existing software supplier solution would always be favoured (lower risk). Microsoft CRM was the preferred option but Agresso CRM was chosen as it used Microsoft CRM as its platform but had developed the software to provide an education focus. Agresso also supplied our finance and student software packages, at the time. Both systems were also cost effective compared to other providers.
FEC with a strategic approach
	We performed an initial discovery phase that was led and managed by our IT division. We gathered a series of high-level business requirements and invited 4 suppliers to ‘pitch’ to us, based on these requirements. We then scored each supplier on their presentation, ability to deliver against our requirements, their technology and their system support. This seems like a useful process but was quite complicated. I would recommend that any institution that wants to undertake a CRM project should spend time learning from a business perspective what a CRM system can and cannot do before starting the selection process. Understanding the business requirements and selecting sensible measures of project success are critical. It is also important to have project managers that have experience of CRM implementations, and not simply large IT system implementation. It is also important to spend time planning the project at a high level.
HEI at the tactical stage

To read how OSS Watch (an advisory service for Higher and Further Education) selected and trialled a CRM system within its own support service click on the following link:

www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/CRM.xml

Top tips!

• use project management techniques, create a project board to oversee the project and manage budget and change requests closely

• spend time during the initiation phase understanding CRM systems

• plan the whole project (even at a high level initially) to get an overview of time and cost

• dedicate business personnel as well as IT personnel

• agree with supplier exactly what will be supplied and when

• have a clear, agreed support mechanism in place for end users

Road Map of CRM Implementation

The Productshare website provides access to 'a comprehensive and interactive CRM implementation road map and user guide which will take you through the whole process of CRM implementation from inception to benefit delivery. Each stage is broken down into very detailed sub-stages and a Gantt chart is provided as a guide to the time of completion of each stage and sub-stage.

You will need to set up an account by providing an email address and password, but the resources provided are free.

You can download the roadmap and guide here:

www.productshare.org.uk/pp/publication/detail.asp?id=20587

A summary of the stages detailed in the guide can be found on the CRM Implementation Roadmap.

This section has taken you through the early stages of a CRM implementation.

A final checklist of tasks is available to ensure that you have considered all the key issues before procurement.

Key points to remember when preparing to choose a CRM system

	Think how the implementation fits into the institution’s wider strategy and vision
	Think how the implementation fits into the institution’s wider strategy and vision
	Carefully consider the whole project costs – financial, time and resources
	Never underestimate the staff time needed to support the implementation
	Pay careful attention to the planning stage – do not cut corners!
	Conduct a risk assessment and monitor this regularly
	Consult with procurement, your IT team and all relevant stakeholders when constructing your list of requirements

Jump to another section

Introduction What is CRM Definitions of CRM The needs of HEIs and FECs Who are your customers? Where are you now? Are you ready for change? Process mapping Which CRM? References