Scoping a CRM project involves understanding business requirements, processes, and data needs while addressing organizational pain points. It emphasizes the importance of engaging department champions and stakeholders throughout the implementation to ensure buy-in and effective solution design. Successful CRM implementation requires thorough analysis, clear communication, and careful planning to minimize risks and meet business objectives.

2.  Scoping a CRM project is all about deciding which areas of your
business will be covered by the CRM solution:
◦ Range, Depth and Detail
 Broad or Narrow? – e.g. every department or just one team?
 All Functional Areas, or Just a Few?
 Every Business Requirement or Just The Key Ones?
◦ Now or Later?
 CRM Solutions Can be Broken into Staged Engagements to Manage Cost & Risk
 Crucial Elements for Consideration:
◦ Business Requirements - “The Wish List”
◦ Business Processes – “How we do Each Job” (and is it ideal?)
◦ DATA – “The Unsung Hero of Your Business”
◦ Risk!
 Scoping a CRM project can be daunting but has clear advantages.

3.  CRM is a cross functional solution. CRM is used
by teams across the company and each
department needs to take responsibility for their
own part of the system.
 Task
 Identify the business champions to be involved at
every step for each team.
 Ensure there is a board sponsor

4.  Your business pains are what has led you to review your CRM
system. What are these pains? What is causing the business pains
across the entire organisation?
 Task
 Engage the champions of each department
 Document the business pains, what isn’t working across the
different business functions
 Get them agreed at end user and director level
 Once the pains are agreed, don’t lose sight of them. This is the
pivotal reason why you are putting a new system in place.
 Communicate your company-wide goal for implementing CRM and
the benefits.

5.  Get your champions together. Decide what you
want a CRM system to do. You will need to
consider your current infrastructure, processes,
and company-wide key performance indicators. A
good CRM solution will fit your evolving needs.
 Task
 Ensure your champions share their processes and
KPIs
 Ensure they understand where the processes fail
and look at their visionary requirements.

6.  The Requirements and Process Review generates user-agreed, high
quality business requirements, and improved future processes.
 Understanding and clearly communicating the parameters and benefits
of your project diminishes risk.
 Failure to engage key system users and managers in proper solution
scoping results in poorly specified projects, and a lack of “buy in” from
staff. This is a common reason for the failure of CRM implementations.
 Task
 Identify and Resolve Mistaken Assumptions.
 Thrash out Differences of Opinion and Generate Consensus.
 Opportunity to Develop Improved “To Be” Processes for new CRM
Solution
 Participation of both Managers & Staff Builds a Sense of Ownership of
Solution.

7.  Assess your requirements in-depth. Detail the
scope. Pull together all your organisations
requirements from the headlines to the processes.
 Task
 Document your scope using the conversations you
have had.
 Generate a requirements and process review
report.

8.  Sales and Development
◦ How does a prospect contact you to get information about your
products and services?
◦ How do you record and track leads?
◦ Is there a sales process that everyone follows?
◦ Do you want to provide quotes/orders/invoices through CRM?
◦ What is currently causing problems in the process?
◦ What would you like that you haven’t got now to do your jobs
more effectively?
◦ How do you work out on the road?
◦ How involved do you want CRM to be with social networks?
◦ What reporting do you need?

9.  Marketing
◦ What types of campaigns do you run?
◦ What is your time spent on mostly currently?
◦ Do you have the data you need to run targeted campaigns?
◦ Can you segment data effectively?
◦ Do you track return on investment of campaigns?
◦ Do you run events?
◦ Do you need social media to be more engrained with your
CRM solution?
◦ How joined up are you with sales?
◦ Do you carry out email marketing?
◦ How do you manage your suppression list

10.  Customer Service
◦ How are cases or complaints logged?
◦ Are there SLA’s or KPI’s that must be adhered to?
◦ How do these SLA’s flag?
◦ How are the SLA’s reported on?
◦ Is there a knowledge base?
◦ Are there standard letters?
◦ How does your Customer Care team communicate –
through which methods?
◦ Is there an escalation process?
◦ Do you need scripting or have scripting in place?
◦ How do you allocate a service call?

11.  Always invite a number of CRM experts in and give
them your scope as soon as you can. Ensure you
consider how user friendly the system is and the
potential on-going costs. Consider how up to date the
product is and what will ensure it doesn’t become
obsolete quickly.
 Task
 Make sure your headlines are at the forefront of the
product
 Can you work with the system and vendor
 Understand the product fully get a trial.

12.  Will your supplier use any specific implementation
methodology?
 What stages are involved?
 What are the deliverables at each stage?
 Does each stage have a formal sign off?

13.  A diagnostic or requirements meeting is the 1st
stage of our journey which can deliver a
successful CRM solution.
 The goal of the Diagnostic phase is to gather
enough information in order to define the high
level project scope and make a confident proposal
for the remaining phases of the implementation.
 The major deliverable is the implementation
proposal and contract. There will also be high
level and possibly detailed requirements and
gap/fit analysis documents.

14.  An analysis phase is crucial to the success of your CRM
implementation. This phase officially starts the
implementation project. The analysis phase builds on the
diagnostic, and determines the functional requirements. The
analysis will cover project planning, risks and issues
management, communications management, management of
resource and quality, gathering key user training requirements, it
will review business requirements and document gaps, build
sandbox environments and gather integration and data
requirements.
 Task
 Ensure your champions are involved at every stage
 The analysis phase is ran as workshops
 Acquire your functional requirements document
 Ensure there is a clear communication route to your business

15.  Your CRM implementation is now in safe hands.
 Your headlines are at the centre of your
requirements and outcomes of the system.
 The risk of implementation is minimised.
 Planning is key to minimising the risk attached to
the investment.
 And Beware : of vendors missing out crucial
stages – it will only mean pain further down the
line or a system that just doesn’t meet your
expectations or objectives. Ultimately failing to
deliver what it set out to achieve.