If you haven’t been in a situation to modernise your CRM/Website, then the last 24 months could have been very painful for you and your organisation, and you’re not alone!
We have been talking to many organisations in the last few months, now that they have a bit of ‘breathing space’, they want to fix the manual processes and sticking plasters they have been struggling with.
Member engagement, systems integration and CRM are amongst the top challenges for a membership organisation. There are some key steps you need to take before you embark on this journey, it will help you avoid the potential delays and budget creep.
Step 1. Planning – or what we call Discovery
The first and most important step in this journey is a full review of your business requirements; this will ensure that you have fully scoped and defined the outcomes you are aspiring towards. It’s vital this is done in isolation of what the latest and greatest technology out there may promise. The technology must fit the business requirements not the other way around, this trap is all too easy to fall into and is often the main contributor to an unsuccessful CRM/Website deployment.
This will help you define a realistic project budget, identify a core cross business team ensuring cross business by-in and prioritise your business requirements. Once you have a good understanding of the current state, including data silos and processes you are in the ideal place to take the next step.
Several work streams will fall out of this work and you will be able to identify owners, you will have a clearer idea of the challenges you have with your data and, as this will be done across the business, you will have a clearer idea about challenges you have with a proposed system roll out. New CRM and/or website deployments usually touch many, if not all of the business, and with that can bring challenges, mapping this out gives you an early warning of potential cultural challenges.
Steps 2. Finding the right suppliers
After assessing the current state of your systems, detailing your business requirements and identifying a budget you are in the ideal position find the right suppliers for your organisation. Creating a detailed tender, with a realistic budget based on your discovery will ensure that get thorough responses from potential suppliers. We know, from experience, that there is always a temptation to cut the supplier tender response period short but leave them at least four weeks to ensure that they have time to review and assess what you are asking for. This will ensure that you get a fully researched response, ultimately a win win for you.
Step 3. Project roll out
Allocating adequate time to rolling out a CRM/website project can get overlooked and deprioritised; when you have put substantial time into planning and tendering this is a very common and substantial mistake. This is a digital transformation after all, one that you have just committed a sizable budget too and generally has a sense of urgency, therefore it requires coordination to ensure its success.
We hope the above helps you start your digital transformation journey, if you have any questions or we can help, just give us a call. We’ve got 20+ years working with many membership organisations of all shapes and sizes and we know that sometimes it’s hard to make the first step, but once you start it all starts to fall into place.
Chrysalis Digital provides a digital transformation service designed to help build a more agile, efficient, and innovative organisation. With its broad cross-sector experience Chrysalis has helped many organisations map their digital path and through careful planning and assessment, choose the right technology partners. Chrysalis Digital is 100% agnostic when recommending CMS and CRM suppliers to its clients.
If you need any help with the next steps in your journey, please call Ben Sturt on 07469 768990 or email info@chrysalisdigital.co.uk