The CRM monster: Configuring
Highly configurable … that’s a selling point of many CRMs and indeed it is a great thing. But use your power to configure wisely. It is easy to create a monster.
Just because you can configure a system, doesn’t mean you should. Don’t go buying a CRM solution because it’s configurable and you therefore think you can make it do whatever you want.
Doing masses of configuring and customising is a clue that you may not be using the software properly, don’t understand it, or you’ve got the wrong software altogether. Every business is different, but rarely are they that different.
Even the more complex and sophisticated CRMs (the highly configurable ones), have had lots of thought put into their design and what steps should follow others. When people configure they often mess up that workflow because they don’t understand it, or don’t even realise it’s there.
These systems work best when you swim with what’s there and don’t try to go against the tide. The odd extra field here and there is fine, but if you let it go too far, the monster can create a massive training burden because the software loses any shred of intuitiveness. The monster also creates support problems because only a small group of people know what’s been done to it (or worse, just one, and they leave).
It all comes back to understanding your process and what you’re trying to do, before you start tinkering. Then you can find a tool that already, naturally, follows your process and, if you get good advice, you can just tweak and nip and tuck in key places to adapt it to your particular business requirements.
So, yes, highly configurable systems are useful but don’t get carried away. The monster will come back and bite you, in the bottom ….line.
p.s. if you want to know the difference between configuring and customising… no doubt we’ll get to that too at some point so sign up for our blog alerts (on the right)
5FV6G5KZ3GQV
