CRM Roll-out Nationally and Internationally

Top Tips from our Webinar: National and International Salesforce CRM Roll-out

By guest bloggers, Sarah Ludbrook and Martin Brockwell – Project Managers at our Company CIC

“Our team has successfully helped both local and national charities roll out CRM across their offices. This is quite often a complex and time-consuming process, so we wanted to share a few tips with you from our recent Salesforce Champions Webinar.”

Applying Business Analysis and Change Management Practices

1. [highlight dark=”no”]Meet people[/highlight] – establish personal relationships, understand environment and their ‘day-jobs’.
2. [highlight dark=”no”]Undertake business analysis techniques[/highlight] and understand user issues, challenges and identify potential benefits. Understand the national and ‘localised’ benefits to engage stakeholders.
3. [highlight dark=”no”]In verbal and written communications, re-emphasise and stress the real and practical benefits[/highlight] for staff and other stakeholders: e.g. easier data entry, data recall and data storage or better communication and co-ordination.

A working example:

Aim: To replace paper based assessment exercise with engaging interactive electronic tool.

SMART objective: To reduce data analysis time by 50%.

Firstly, establish a Project Management Team

• Executive Sponsor – Provides resources in financial and in-kind and communicates the vision to stakeholders.
• Project Champion: A Senior Position who line manages the users of the system. They should be fully and enthusiastically behind the project to motivate and explain the benefits and rational for the project.
• Project Manager: Holds sufficient time, authority and influence to co-ordinate all stakeholders and holds accountability for detailed project planning to ensure deliverables are actioned and met by internal and external stakeholders.
• Project Administrator: A FT/PR post dedicated to Roll out and administration of CRM. Project. Participates in all meetings and ensures the history and understanding of the system processes are retained internally post implementation.

2. Ensure System Adaptability

• Ensure the WiFi / Internet and Computer facilities are good enough in field offices.

• Check whether accessing data overseas affects your data protection policies.
• Look into Apps that overseas staff can use to access data offline.
• Set up Trusted IP Addresses.

3. Create Suitable Learning Resources

• Develop Process Maps per user/team/department so people understand how the system fits into their everyday jobs.
• Develop Central Training Library that everyone has access to and where the ‘latest’ version is stored of any training material.
• Develop Training “Modules” using short videos for people to access as required.
• Provide classroom training to support people through their first practice run with the system.
• Provide Online Training using tools such as Go to Meeting, WebEx.
• Give users the chance to feedback or ask for further support to continue evolution of the system or identify further training needs.

Thinking of rolling out CRM for your organisation? The following workshops will be useful:

CRM Planning Workshop: London, 28th March

Change Management Workshop: London, 6th March

Our contributors:

Sarah Ludbrook, Project Manager and Senior Consultant

Sarah Ludbrook is an experienced and qualified Agile project manager, qualified business analyst and certified Salesforce professional. She joined our Company and is managing CRM implementation projects with the International Youth Foundation, Trailblazers, Shaw Trust and Visionary, amongst others.

She joined us following 5 years in-house experience developing and managing the administration of Salesforce CRM at International Services UK, VSO, Restless Development and Teach First.

She has specific expertise in using Salesforce to project manage governments funded contracts, volunteers, education programmes, deliver of front-line services, recruitment and HR on a UK and international scale. At VSO she was the sole Salesforce administrator for £60 million government contract (ICS) to recruit 14,0000 volunteers, with 245 users and 100 Chatter users across 12 charities and 27 countries.

Martin Brockwell, Project Manager and Senior Consultant

Martin specialises in large-scale Salesforce CRM implementation and roll-out with national & regional third sector organisations who support vulnerable groups, as well as grant-making and membership bodies. He previously worked on CRM implementations at NSPCC, De Paul Trust and Family Action supporting the team to measure their social impact and utilise Salesforce CRM at the latter two organisations before joining our Company.

At our Company he has supported teams from multiple office sites, with clients including Grace Eyre Foundation, Ashley Community Housing, The Refugee Council, The Bulldog Trust, Locality and Social Enterprise UK, amongst others.

As the project manager and experienced Business Analyst & Salesforce Consultant, he works alongside the client’s management team and co-ordinates efforts of the client & delivery team throughout the implementation period. Martin is qualified IT project manager with Prince 2 and has a substantial track record of successfully introducing IT systems to colleagues and clients.