It’s so exciting to finish a big installation and know that your customer loves what you’ve done, but I have to say, sometimes even we are surprised by the things we learn and the way that people react to changes.
Yes, change management is part of what we do, and we work hard with every customer to ensure that the changes being made by new technology are socialized and adopted properly – particularly where business processes are involved. Based on our experience, we always expect some level of resistance – somewhere in the organization – even though, in the immortal words of one Locutus (raise your hand if you know this one), “Resistance is futile.”
Change management is what helps an organization socialize changes, overcoming resistance with education, communication, and more education. But… this isn’t a post about change management.
With this one recently completed implementation, we didn’t really have to do any change management any after the first discussions of the new capabilities coming down the pike. Once the user community knew what was coming, they were, as one, asking how fast it could be done. “How soon can we have this?” is something we heard fairly often. And, even though we were prepared to gently communicate change in careful measured steps, the team members at this particular client were virtually hurling themselves into this new technology with excitement and anticipation.
You see, they were switching from one of the top CRM platforms out there (I don’t want to name names, so I’ll just call it “Pails Source”), and it seems that that Pails Source had started its relationship with this particular client by telling them that they would have to conform their processes to the way in which their platform would support them. Needless to say, that caused some aggravation right out of the gate, way back when, and, to the users, Pails Source never really felt like a good fit.
We found out why. As we got further into things, we learned that this client had been struggling with reports – basically no sales call reports until three to five days after a sales call had been completed. Yikes! Pricing approvals were on emailed spreadsheets, and critical client information was consistently getting locked in inboxes, unavailable to other team members.
Now, maybe, with enough time and money, Pails Source could have overcome these issues, but the client wanted to look seriously at alternatives. After all, any time you customize something to suit your needs, there’s a risk of being out of compliance for the next update or update, right?
To make a long story short, we looked at costs, processes, technology uses, and the client’s objectives (through our CRM Switcher Assessment, in fact), and shared a possible solution via a roadmap and a total cost of ownership model – and the client was thrilled with what they saw.
Yeah, but that’s not the point of this story either.
The real point – once we shared with the sales team members, sales leaders, and finance folks what they’d be able to do with the technology we were proposing (Microsoft Dynamics CRM, in fact), they were so anxious to get it implemented that we experienced ZERO change management roadblocks, tons of user support, and a group of people who were EAGER to get going.
That’s the point of the story – what a sheer joy it was to do this project, how easy it was, and how happy our client is. They now have real-time sales call reporting. Users can add notes while sitting in their cars or waiting at airports. The pricing approval process is based on a CRM workflow (so much better than emailing spreadsheets, don’t you think?), and the new integration with Outlook means that real-time collaboration between business units is a reality – a true cross-functional team, all focused around the needs of every individual customer. Minor customizations were done and fully tested to ensure compatibility with future platform upgrades, too.
And they love it. This project was pure joy, and we’re so glad to have been a part of it.
That’s the point of this post. Sometimes it’s just pure joy, and pure joy is worth sharing. We love what we do.
Covenant Insights 