The Top Five Mistakes Franchisors Make in Implementing CRM Technology

Mistake #1: Not Forming A Steering Committee That Includes Representatives From All Corporate Departments That Have Responsibility For Customer Management: i.e. responding to customers' requests for knowledge, recruiting & signing new customers, processing orders, delivering the requested products & services in a timely manner, billing for products & services delivered, & following up with customers after the sale. As the front line of customer support for your company, the input of these users of the CRM process you are thinking about are critically important because they will make or break your decision one time implemented. Without their buy in & support, your project may be dead on arrival as users find that the elderly ways of servicing your customers is simpler or more comfortable for them in their individual jobs, & they ultimately find ways around keeping your solution up to date with the latest customer support details including purchase history, e-mail communication, web-site feedback, & customer satisfaction after the sale.

If you search Google or any other search engine on the world wide web for the term "CRM" you are likely to see over 100 vendors offering CRM know-how as the end-all & be-all solution to solving all of your company's aches & pains, along with plenty of paid commercials for the latest & greatest vendors to hit the market. While these vendors are readily spending millions on marketing, they have tiny to say on their company sites as to how to successfully implement CRM solutions to meet the needs of your business. Couple this with the number of companies reporting failures in their CRM initiatives of 60-70% of companies polled, they felt compelled to share our experience from the last twenty years designing & implementing numerous CRM-like solutions across a huge number of industries, & bring you the following list of the largest mistakes that they have seen:

Mistake #2: Not Clearly Identifying Who The Final Decision Maker Is For CRM Know-how For The Franchise: In addition to forming the steering committee, it is also important to identify who on the committee is the final decision maker for the business. A committee meeting without this critical officer or manager in attendance is not likely to produce actionable designs. It is important to identify which members have the right to make a choice versus those who only have the right to offer comments or suggestions on how the chosen application may be implemented. It is common for plenty of people to be entitled to delay a choice but must focus on who is allowed to make for the committee to function to meet goals and objectives of the company.



Mistake #3: Not Understanding The Details Of How The Company Operates In Serving Its Franchisees and/or Customers: In virtually all established businesses (except startups), customer support procedures and processes have evolved over time, usually with a lack of documentation of who does what, when, and how. Implementing a CRM solution without understanding the details of the current operations won't serve any purpose other than frustrating staff who feel that management doesn't understand the actual day-to-day demands of the customer support team and is likely to cause plenty of employees to feel as though new know-how puts their job or job function in jeopardy of being eliminated or thrown out with new know-how. In order to counter this effect, The safest bet is to hire or contract a qualified Business Analyst or Process Mapping specialist to observe every day operations of all customer support activities under all circumstances (nice and bad), and document what is actually happening real-time in the organization. The Business Analyst will likely use Process Mapping tools such as Microsoft Vizio, SmartDraw, or iGrafX to build visual, pictorial models of what is actually happening today in real-time. The results of the Business Analyst's work ought to be verified with each department for buy-in and acceptance that what has been observed matches the documented processes. After the process maps have been done, management can then focus on the exact improvements that CRM know-how is expected to deliver to the company in the approaching weeks and months.

Mistake #4: Relying on Out-of-the-Box Expertise to Meet the Custom Requirements of the Franchised Business: One time you have the system maps from the Business Analyst above, ask the vendors that are trying to earn your business to map out how their solution will serve to enhance or automate the most difficult customer support processes in your organization. If the seller is reluctant or unable to provide a resource to do this, eliminate them from your short list of potential partners. often, slick sales people with lots of expertise tools at their disposal will try to persuade you to trust them with the very keys to your company's livelihood (aka customers & the processes to service & retain them) with small attention to your company's long-term health, financially or otherwise. Avoid vendors who continuously use the term "Best Practices" or "Industry Solutions" in their sales pitches. Your business is matchless in the market which it serves, & your expertise solution ought to be equally matchless & custom-made for your business.

Mistake #5: Trying to Fit New Expertise In to Your Existing Organizational Structure: As you start the system to implement CRM expertise, continuous organization change is a basic requirement. Existing job descriptions will must be re-written for the new processes & expertise. Those employees who have the ability to quickly integrate new expertise willingly in their jobs to the benefit of the company will require to promoted to more leadership positions, & those that resist the change will must be reassigned to another job function or re-trained for another position. This system will be repeated lots of times in the approaching months & years as new expertise comes online in the business community.

One time you have laid out your CRM project designs for your franchise, avoiding the mistakes mentioned above, you will be better equipped than most to tackle a expertise project such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in virtually any business sector.