2. 2 Business Case
Gaurav Dadhich – Roll No. 12810027
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: ...................................................................................................................................3
1.1. Project Name: ..........................................................................................................................3
1.2. Project Team:...........................................................................................................................3
1.3. Project Description:..................................................................................................................3
2. Background and Problem Definition:................................................................................................4
2.1. Why CRM for Placements Team for DoMS, IIT Roorkee ............................................................4
2.2. Market Study across placement teams of other colleges: .........................................................5
3. Measurable Organizational Value (MOV) .........................................................................................6
3.1. Financial Benefits:....................................................................................................................6
3.2. Strategic Benefits:....................................................................................................................6
3.3. Operational Benefits: ...............................................................................................................6
3.4. Customer Benefits:...................................................................................................................7
3.5. Quantifying MOVs:...................................................................................................................7
3.6. Framework for evaluating implementation: .............................................................................7
4. Analysis of Alternatives:...................................................................................................................9
4.1. Total Cost of Ownership:..........................................................................................................9
4.2. Total Benefits of Ownership: ..................................................................................................10
4.3. Financial Analysis Used:..........................................................................................................11
4.4. Chosen Alternative : SugarCRM..............................................................................................11
4.4.a.1. Economic Analysis: .....................................................................................................11
4.4.a.2. Total Cost of Ownership: ............................................................................................12
4.4.a.3. Total Benefits of Ownership........................................................................................12
5. Recommendations:........................................................................................................................14
3. 3 Business Case
Gaurav Dadhich – Roll No. 12810027
1. Introduction:
1.1. Project Name:
CRM implementation for the Placements Team, IIT Roorkee using Open-source CRM Package.
1.2. Project Team:
The team shall primarily consist of:
a) Steering committee: The members of this particular committee include project
sponsor, and the project manager. Project Sponsor would be 2nd
Year Placements Team
along with the HOD whereas the Project Manager would be a single technology oriented
guy from the 2nd
Year Placements team itself.
b) Technical/Implementation members – A group of 3 people from the 1st
Year batch, 3
people from the 2nd
Year batch, each having >2<5 years of IT development and
Implementation experience.
c) Consultants – Members of both the 1st
and 2nd
Year batch having more than 5 years of IT
Experience across multiple IT development and implementation projects and 1 member
each from the 1st
and 2nd
Year Media Cell Teams, IT faculty
d) 3rd
Party shared web hosting and domain name provider
e) CRM package provider and their support team
f) Financial Consultants: Fund Managers of 1st
and 2nd
year batch
1.3. Project Description:
The project is all about implementing CRM package for the placements team of DoMS IIT
Roorkee to manage the large number of industry contacts that have been forged and
maintained over years in traditional spreadsheet software. The project covers various aspects
like evaluating the best open-source and free CRM package for the purpose and choosing the
correct one, implementing it on commodity shared hosting services with minimum
customization, redesigning the placements team processes to be able to use the CRM and draw
value out of it, etc.
4. 4 Business Case
Gaurav Dadhich – Roll No. 12810027
2. Background and Problem Definition:
Placements team of DoMS IIT Roorkee handles a large volume of contact data from various industries
across the country. Often, there are multiple contact people in the same organization. Each of these
contact persons has a different set of personal attributes like Name, Contact Details, Designation, last
conversation, etc. Currently all such data is stored in the form of MS Excel spreadsheets. It is
cumbersome to store all this data in one place. More so because each member of the placements
team is handling a pre-defined set of companies and hence the status of discussions with various
companies are stored locally at different local machines of the different team members. If they were
to upload all their files to a single online directory, they will still have to manually manage file versions,
etc. Also, there is no backup mechanism.
Moreover, there is no easy way of monitoring that a new company with whom contact is being
established, is not already being contacted by another team member, with either the same contact
person or another contact person.
Also, when preparing the schedule for guest lectures, Pre-placement talks, Placements, etc; there is no
or poor visibility in terms of talks and commitments from the companies handled by other team
members and there is no unified way of handling the same.
2.1. Why CRM for Placements Team for DoMS, IIT Roorkee
A CRM provides with the fundamental benefit of having a single database system to store the
entire customer (prospective companies) and thus helps in providing a single view of the data.
a) CRM uses a single data storage for storing the entire data, providing a single unified view
of the data
b) Easy to maintain data backup
c) Easy access to data from anywhere at any time
d) Authorization and access control to the data
e) Easy storage of multiple contact persons per company/customer
f) Easy maintenance of log of each conversation with the customer
g) No hassle of uploading excel sheets and syncing
h) Easy switch-over of customer/ company from one team member to another
5. 5 Business Case
Gaurav Dadhich – Roll No. 12810027
2.2. Market Study across placement teams of other colleges:
The placement teams at some of the top B-Schools use a CRM implementation to manage all
their contacts and company databases. This is what helps these B-Schools manage their
corporate relations effectively and efficiently. It helps them approach companies with up-to-
date data and shows a time-saving and professional approach of the B-Schools towards
companies. Effective and efficient communications with the companies help B-Schools establish
a strong relationship of trust and respect with each other. Hence, it is extremely essential that
DoMS IIT Roorkee also implements the same.
6. 6 Business Case
Gaurav Dadhich – Roll No. 12810027
3. Measurable Organizational Value (MOV)
By implementing a CRM application, the placements team wants to integrate all their operations in a
manner that will help them have better control over all their outgoing and incoming company
communications.
3.1. Financial Benefits:
Implementation of the CRM will streamline the process of maintaining communications with
the prospective employers and will show the following financial benefits:
- Elimination of losses due to poor planning of Corporate Interaction visits to various cities
- Elimination of losses due to inability to follow up with an employer at a pre-scheduled time,
due to lack of reminders and/or poor visibility.
- Elimination of losses due to buying contacts from data vendors that we already possess
3.2. Strategic Benefits:
- Removing the one-to-one mapping between company and team member by allowing for a
smooth handover at any point of time. Such handovers are often required due to conflict of
interest, schedule issues, unavailability issues, etc
- Snapshot view all the companies possible for better decision making
- Data available in single database and hence easy to perform analytics to make key strategic
decisions
- Better control and monitoring over all the activities for the HOD and the Officer-in-charge
Placements by means of their individual dashboard views
- Ability to easily categorize organizations of various types on various criteria like package slots,
day slots, industry domain, location, profiles offered, etc
3.3. Operational Benefits:
- Easy to enter and maintain data in a CRM than in a spread sheet
- No fear of entering duplicate data because of in-built redundancy checks
- Ability to maintain complete log of all the conversations that has happened with multiple
people in a company. This helps in better context and enables better handling every company
uniquely.
- Since the entire data is always online, it can be accessed from anywhere at anytime
- No missing of scheduled calls, follow-up calls, follow-up mails, etc thanks to the ability to
apply alerts based on various rules. Also, custom alerts can be applied.
7. 7 Business Case
Gaurav Dadhich – Roll No. 12810027
3.4. Customer Benefits:
- Companies do not maintain all the conversations that they have had with a certain
college(since they have a lot of colleges to handle), but if the college is able to provide the
same, on demand, company’s job of understanding the context becomes easy.
- Companies get better services from the placements team in terms of on-time delivery of data
requests, on-time follow ups, etc.
3.5. Quantifying MOVs:
In order to calculate whether the project is successful or not it was very essential to find out a
quantified targets which will be achieved with the help of this project .So in this case we have
calculated the measurable organizational value for a period of 5 years and have formulated
certain targets which the project is supposed to meet at the end of 1yearto become a
successful project. They are:
- The implementation of the CRM package should give a rapid pay back, in 12 months
- The implementation should also provide a very good return on investment based on
substantial cost savings and business value creation as compared to continuing with the legacy
systems
- In addition to the compelling economic benefits, the implementation is viewed as strategic,
helping companies increase competitiveness, improve business agility and predict IT costs
more accurately
Tabulating the MOVs:
Objective Change Factor Time
Rapid Payback Time 12 months
Higher Productivity Increase by 20% 2 months
Reduced default rate Decrease by 15% 2 months
Reduced turnaround time Decrease by 10% 2 months
Increase customer satisfaction Increase by 20% 2 months
Reduced data redundancy Decrease by 15% 2 months
3.6. Framework for evaluating implementation:
An intuitive framework for evaluating the cost savings, business value and strategic benefits for
8. 8 Business Case
Gaurav Dadhich – Roll No. 12810027
implementation was developed for this case. This framework includes four key elements:
- Implementation cost analysis
- Post-implementation cost savings analysis
- Post-implementation business value improvement analysis
- Post-implementation strategic benefit analysis
9. 9 Business Case
Gaurav Dadhich – Roll No. 12810027
4. Analysis of Alternatives:
Now, since this CRM implementation is to be done for a very specific purpose and the project is low
on funds but high on in-house resources that can carry out a successful implementation themselves
along with some industry help and professional support, we have chosen to go ahead with an Open-
Source CRM Package. Such packages have free/community editions that can be installed by
institutions like ours for non-commercial usage.
However, we need to choose the correct Open-Source CRM package that provides all the features
required by us and is easy to implement and maintain and has low operational costs. Hence, we
have to evaluate and choose from among the following:
Name Technology
Ease of
Installation
Support
Free
Tutorials
SugarCRM LAMP Easiest Community & Professional Available
Splendid CRM Microsoft Stack Complex Professional Only Available
Centric CRM Java and MySql Easy Community & Professional Available
Hipergate CRM J2EE Fairly Complex Community & Professional Available
Compiere CRM Java and Oracle Db Easy Community & Professional Available
4.1. Total Cost of Ownership:
- Planning Costs : Planning costs can be calculated in the terms of all the person-hours required
to initially plan the implementation, model the data, scope the project, etc
- Implementation Costs (Internal) : Implementation costs can be calculated in the terms of
person-hours that will be required to actually install the software on the hardware, configure,
customize, install associated plug-ins, testing the system, etc.
- Implementation Costs (3rd
Party) : These costs include the costs of implementation support
from professional installers that might be required in the case a certain technological issue is
encountered that cannot be solved by the community edition.
- Hardware Costs: The shared hosting server is to be purchased from a reliable and reputed
web hosting provider who has guaranteed uptime of at least 99.9%. It should be a Linux or
Windows web hosting server, depending upon the CRM package we choose. The shared
10. 10 Business Case
Gaurav Dadhich – Roll No. 12810027
hosting server incurs a recurring cost every year.
- Training Costs: Training costs includes all the person-hours required for the core team to learn
the usage of the CRM and also additional costs if training is required from a 3rd
party trainer.
- Database Licensing Cost: Cost of licensing the database if we go for a proprietary database
system. However, most alternatives of CRM run on any database and hence the open-source
MySql database that is by default installed on a Shared Hosting server will be easily available.
- Facilitation Costs: Costs like coordination costs between team members, food/tea/coffee
during the extra work hours, flat stipend for all participants at the end of the project (as a token
of appreciation from the class), associated travel costs, etc
4.2. Total Benefits of Ownership:
The savings or the benefits which the placements team and the class will receive because of the
CRM implementation can be classified as:
Cost Savings line items Business Value line items Strategic Benefits line items
Operating time costs Better chances of conversion
of prospective employers in
to employers
Ability to see the relationship
with a prospect over the
years
Synchronization time costs Improved coordination with
prospective employers
Ability to maintain effectively
all the corporate relations
data for the future batches
Reduced turn-around time Ability to deal each
prospective employer with
greater attention and
detailing
Can have a single unified view
of all the prospects
Reduced time to ensure data
consistency
Ability to perform analytics
on the data to draw insights
and plan better relations
Easier reporting to stake
holders
Easy to handover
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Gaurav Dadhich – Roll No. 12810027
responsibilities
4.3. Financial Analysis Used:
Here we are using the Return on Investment Method to calculate the ROI and from this we
calculate the payback period also:
Project ROI = (total expected benefits – total expected costs)
Total expected costs
Payback Period = Initial Investment
Net Cash Flow
4.4. Chosen Alternative : SugarCRM
SugarCRM has been chosen for the following reasons:
- Most popular and reliable open source CRM in the market. Implemented by companies like
Starbucks, etc
- Easy to implement since installation, configuration and other documents readily available on
wiki. Additionally there is a one-click installation available with the Simple Scripts plugin on any
Linux web hosting provider that has cPanel as its control panel.
- Easy to configure and customize.
- Implementation team has people with exposure to SugarCRM at both design and
implementation level
- Easy to maintain
- Based on easy to use LAMP architecture and hence can be easily customized
4.4.a.1. Economic Analysis:
The following analysis provides a summary of the return on investment and expected
breakeven based on implementation cost/benefit analysis over five years. The results are based
on the net present value (NPV) of the cost and benefit cash flows over the five year period.
Based on an average five-year implementation cost of $1K, with an average implementation
length of 5 weeks from initial planning to production deployment, the team cited substantial
cost savings and business value drivers, yielding a total five-year benefit of $0.375M. This
12. 12 Business Case
Gaurav Dadhich – Roll No. 12810027
results in a five-year Return on Investment (ROI) of 375% and a payback of less than 6 months
from the completion of the migration.
4.4.a.2. Total Cost of Ownership:
Particulars Amount One time / Recurring
Planning Costs 28 person-hours One time
Implementation Costs
(Internal)
80 hours One-time
Implementation Costs (3rd
Party)
10 hours (max) One-time
Hardware Costs (Shared web
hosting + domain name)
Rs. 10K/ annum Recurring (per annum)
Software Costs Rs. 5K/ annum Recurring (per annum)
Training Costs 40 hours One-time
Database Costs Rs. 5K/ annum Recurring (per annum)
Facilitation Costs Rs. 5K One-time (Cumulative)
Maintenance Costs 30 hours (since the hardware
is outsourced)
Recurring (per annum)
4.4.a.3. Total Benefits of Ownership:
Particulars Measures Benefits
Elimination of loss due
to inadequate follow-up
with prospects
- 1 company/ month –> 12 companies/ year
- Assuming half of these companies would
have offered atleast 1 profile at the average
package amount
- Rs. 45 lakh / year
(in terms of
packages)
- 6 students (in
terms of careers)
13. 13 Business Case
Gaurav Dadhich – Roll No. 12810027
Savings from not buying
duplicate contacts from
data vendor
Assuming 5% of all the new data purchased is
already available with us.
Rs. 2250 / year
Savings on productivity 12 team members of both year placement
teams lose on an average 4 hours/month on
productivity without the benefits of the CRM
48 person-
hours/month
Improved brand value of
the MBA Program in
industry
A student driven initiative when employs sophisticated technology
to streamline their internal processes, it sends strong message to
prospective employers about the quality of the students studying
there, improving brand value.
14. 14 Business Case
Gaurav Dadhich – Roll No. 12810027
5. Recommendations:
Since Placements Team at DoMS, IIT Roorkee needs to implement a CRM to manage their corporate
connections and prospective employers better, an open source CRM package viz. SugarCRM will be
the most appropriate. Apart from the use of implementation, configuration, customization and
support, the Project Team also comprises of members who have prior exposure to SugarCRM and
hence will be able to control the implementation better.
The analysis in this document clearly points out the benefits that can be drawn out by
implementation of such a system at a relatively marginal cost. The ROI will be achieved within 3
months and the long-term benefits of this project are numerous. The successful implementation of
this project will put DoMS, IIT Roorkee among the elite set of B-School around India that employ a
CRM for their connections handling and will enable better placements. Taking all these points into
consideration, we strongly recommend that this project be implemented starting immediately.
