I'll soon be wrapping up my fifth CRM implementation in the past three years. Over the course of this time, I've collected my thoughts on the process and am sharing them with you in hopes your experience with your new technology begins on a very positive note.
So sit back, grab a bag of popcorn and ready yourself for a lot of information and advice.
Terminology.
1. Implementation, Integration and Training. If you're new to the process, let's jump into the these terms. I will use them throughout this post, and want to be sure we are on the same page.
Implementation is the longer process through which a small group of "power users" will undergo to learn the new CRM, and will be ultimately responsible for customizing the tool for your particular program, department or institution.
Integration is the process of connecting your CRM with your Student Information System (or any other needed technology) to ensure that the data on your new prospect and applicants that is stored in your CRM is safely and accurately passed on between the systems.
Training is the short process (usually 1-2 days) of training the end users of the new CRM such as your admissions counselors or enrollment rep's, operations staff, student workers or any users from other departments that may access the CRM for specific functions. If you are a member of the implementation team you may have a role in preparing for, or delivering some of the training.
2. You will find that some of the terminology you use for your current processes will be different than the terminology used within your new CRM. Inquiries may become prospects or leads. Majors may be concentrations, etc. In time, you will come to learn and use those new terms. BUT, your admissions and recruitment team members not directly involved in the implementation will not have the same opportunity to adjust and adapt to the terminology. You will have months to work in the tool before it goes live, where your counselors and enrollment rep's typically have days.
Have your terminology straight. You must become the expert and know that when the admissions counselor is asking about "inquiries", and the CRM implementation manager is explaining how to email "prospects", they each are talking about the same group of people. You have to keep everyone on the same page. Creating a sheet of definitions may be a useful tool for your team.
3. For your reference, another term I use consistently throughout this post is, implementation manager. This is not a universal title. Some companies may use the title implementation consultant, account manager, account executive or project manager. For the purposes of this post, it is the person with whom you will work most closely throughout the duration of your implementation.
Expectations.
1. If you've not experienced an implementation before, then understand this process doesn't happen over a period of weeks. While I know at least one CRM provider that has moved to an intensive four-day implementation and CRM training workshop, the process will still take longer than you've planned. You should expect 4-12 months - and while that range is wide, you and your team will primarily, and unintentionally, control the length of time it takes. (FYI - I recommend 5-10 months for the best results)
2. If you are implementing your CRM for traditional undergraduate, online, graduate and/or hybrid programs in one fell swoop, it will almost certainly slow the process down - even if you try to break them up.
3. Integrating between your SIS and your CRM is not fun and if you are directly involved in the process and you are not a technical expert, my heart goes out to you.
4. Your best bet for success is to ensure you are prepared, have an implementation plan/map built out, and stick to it, regardless of what else is occurring in the office. I've seen Director's walk away from a position in the middle of an implementation; IT departments refusing to assist; and Operations staff refuse to modify current business practices to maximize a CRM. (NOTE: Your CRM provider will provide the plan to you.)
Preparation.
1. Your overall implementation should be broken into several stages. While your CRM implementation manager may not see it as such, you should consider each stage as its own academic course.
Stage one is CRM101. It is imperative that you master this course before moving on to CRM201. Otherwise it would be like walking in to Calculus II without ever taking (or worse, taking and failing) Calculus I. The likelihood of success is not incredibly high.
Most implementations require one or more weekly calls with your implementation manager to tackle new tasks and functions within your CRM. You should ensure you understand the functions demonstrated to you. To do so, prepare for the call ahead of time by watching any videos and reading any documentation the CRM provider has online about those particular functions.
Each week, consider how your current business processes function and determine how they differ with the design and functionality within the CRM. Are there processes to modify and/or decisions you need to make for the CRM to function properly for your admission team and prospective students?
You should be expecting and planning for homework between each call. Do not consider these calls as weekly training sessions; these are teaching sessions for you (the student) to go back, practice and demonstrate what you have learned.
Once you've done that, then it is time to prepare for the next call - by watching videos and reading documentation.
When you call in for your session, have your questions ready. Get clarification on any difficulties you had using the functionality covered in the previous week. Afterward, expect your manager to move on and demonstrate the next functionality.
At the end of the call, you may discover there are some decisions to make in your business processes. When you come across them, write them down and present them to your internal team to decide how your process can evolve to support the CRM.
If you go into one of your weekly calls without being prepared, consider it the same as walking into class for a test without studying. The difference here is that you aren't graded on your performance, but you will be holding back your progress.
If you attend two consecutive implementation calls without being prepared, without asking your questions and taking back your decisions/options for your business processes, you may find yourself a month or more behind - and that is just missing two weeks.
Also, if you fall more than a week behind, you should ask your implementation manager to pause for a week, and re-review what you've missed. Just note that if you do this more than twice, you aren't giving the project what is needed to stay on pace. (I'm not suggesting you are a bad person, or that you should avoid other important tasks and responsibilities of your specific job or your department's needs; but you just need to understand there are consequences). I've not seen any scenario where a staff member was dismissed for falling behind on an implementation, but other people at your institution have some expectations as to how much use your team will get out of your new CRM the same year they purchased it.
2. If you find early on that you routinely don't understand what the implications for your business processes are, then you need to have someone that will understand them attend your implementation calls - and permanently join your implementation team. Depending on the situation, that person may be the dean or director of admissions or possibly the vice president for enrollment. In those scenarios, rarely will your senior leader want to be as deeply involved.
You should just remind her/him that not being involved will occasionally require the team to slow down and potentially delay being ready to go live (you could also gently send your leader a link to this post...).
3. Your weekly calls with your implementation manager will almost certainly be held over an online conference service like Join.me or GoToMeeting. If that's the case, ask your manager to record each of your calls and email them to you afterward. That way when you are working on your CRM between calls, you have an easy reference point.
Work-Arounds.
You will eventually (or routinely) find a particular function that you want or need your CRM to do that will not work the way you envisioned. How do you overcome this? Most commonly, that's done through a work-around.
You use a field in a manner in which it was originally intended to do. You re-engineer a process within the CRM to match your process.
Everyone will make work-arounds in their CRM. The hardest decision is to AVOID them as much as humanly possible. For every work-around you create, you are deviating further and further from the way the CRM was designed to function, and while that may not cause significant problems now, know it will inevitably become a problem. CRM's are updated very regularly. Certain functionalities will be modified or even discontinued. This may cause some institutions headaches, but if a functionality that is discontinued involves one or more of your work-arounds, you will develop a migraine, not a headache.
If you are having difficulty finding a way to make a process function in your new CRM, then you need to pause, check with other clients of your CRM provider, ask in forums and LinkedIn groups until you find how others are tackling the issue. Avoid the work-around.
Comfort Zones.
It may be you; it may be your vice president; it may be your registrar. Someone will have difficulty (probably significant difficulty) adapting to the changes. Inevitably it will be someone that has influence over your processes. If you are well underway with implementation, are running into many hurdles and yet haven't found the person that is fighting the change, I'm afraid I have to ask you to look in the mirror. Need more help getting buy-in for change?
The key to successfully using a CRM is an openness to new avenues and approaches to engage and convert students. That may mean asking different questions on your application, changing the way you process your applications, converting some of your physical mail to email, modifying how a prospect confirms her or his enrollment. In fact, it may be all of that and many many more changes. Remember, your new CRM will only function as well as you build it.
If you don't have the buy-in from all of your decision makers, then you won't make the changes needed for your new technology to function the way it should. In those scenarios, you can expect to get the same results you have now with current technology; only the budget has a big increase in expense to get them.
I know of an institution that dumped their CRM because it never functioned the way it was promised to them. A year completing the implementation of their new CRM, I sat for an hour to listen to the same problems - and it wasn't because of the technology.
Reporting.
Reporting is one of those wonderful bells and whistles senior leaders love about CRM's. Getting a dashboard looking as sharp and colorful as they were during your sales demo, though, may not be as easy as you expected.
That doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't be done; just that you need to plan for it.
What are the data metrics your leaders want to have visually displayed? How does it differ from the metrics an admission rep wants to see? You will need to know what they want measured before you move into building it.
A couple of cautionary points before you dive in.
1. As for admissions counselors and enrollment rep's, some have no interest in the metrics at all, while others want to go wild. Try to find a blend, and at least in the first few months after being live, limit the amount of data you visually display on the dashboard.
You want to ensure the recruitment staff has enough data to understand what's happening within their pipeline, you don't to give them so much they get stuck in data and don't use the tools that actually engage their prospects. Some personality types will want to dive in to the data, but as a former director, I've seen these staff members forget all about their individual prospects.
Also, the more data you put into charts, the further down you have to scroll on your dashboard. Dashboards aren't meant to be long (or scrolled). It's only the top-level data you need to see. Shorter is better in most cases for recruitment teams.
2. Reporting is generally the last major component of implementation before you begin testing or go live. By the time you get there, you will be exhausted, and if you are like me, you will be ready to take shortcuts. Don't.
The reporting feature is one of the reasons your senior leaders agreed to this new technology. Understand what they want to see, and work closely with your implementation manager to ensure it gets built in a way that they understand what they see, and can use the information to assess what is happening with your prospect and applicant pool.
It may be helpful to have a senior leader like your dean or vice president jump on one of your implementation calls, review the demo you saw many months back and then have her/him explain what she/he is expecting.
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Whew. This is an overwhelming amount of information in a single post. To be honest, this post is almost three years in the making. I began writing it several years ago, after my second implementation. Since that time, I've gone in occasionally to update it - and have finally wrapped it up.
If you are getting ready to start an implementation, and liked this post, share it with your implementation team - even your implementation manager and discuss it on your first call. Let it be your guide to kick-start your implementation and come back to it in a few weeks. Some things in this piece may make more sense to you after you've begun the work.
Best of luck!