CRM initiative solely driven by IT team without management buy-in.
Business users unclear or unconvinced on benefits of CRM.
Management not willing to commit to enforce CRM adoption.
Underestimating Change Management demanded by CRM.
Mitigation – Having an internal CRM champion from executive management.
Trying to accomplish all CRM objectives in the initial launch.
Adopting a 'Water-Fall' methodology instead of 'Agile' methodology for CRM project implementation.
Under estimating end-user transition by giving them full-featured, complex CRM system from get-go.
Mitigation – Adopting "Think Big, Start Small, Move Fast" strategy for CRM.
Not committing adequate time & budget to requirement discovery.
Not anticipating quantity & quality of data to be migrated to the new CRM.
Underestimating end-user resistance and training costs.
Mitigation – Detailed requirement discovery workshops & adopting Agile project methodology that allows early identification of these issues.
Active resistance due to perceived threat from CRM.
Passive resistance to adoption due to inertia of changing old habits.
CRM interface slow or un-intuitive, making it cumbersome to use.
Mitigation – Making end-users aware of what benefits they get out of CRM. Incentivizing (both positive & negative) to use CRM system. Ensuring an intuitive, easy to use, fast CRM system. Planning adequate training exercises.
Internal CRM champion(s) leaving the organization or having change of role or department.
Arrival of new IT Head or Business Head, who has a different vision for CRM.
Mitigation – Adequate documentation of CRM project objectives and intermediate progress sign-offs. Enlisting more than one internal CRM champion for redundancy.
Vendor does not have enough experience with the CRM product being implemented.
Vendor does not have technology or process maturity of delivering CRM projects of similar scale.
Vendor not fully aware of the challenges in CRM implementation and is ill-prepared to anticipate and deal with them adequately.
Mitigation – Adequate due diligence at vendor selection stage to assess vendor maturity and expertise.
Product cannot support multiple deployment options, namely – On Cloud, On-Premise, Private Cloud, etc.
Product not flexible enough to allow for deeper customizations to enable fit with organization's growing and changing needs.
Product not keeping pace with current CRM trends, such as – Global, Social, Mobile, etc.
Product not intuitive or user-friendly, thereby hindering user adoption.
Mitigation – Adequate due diligence at product selection stage to ensure fit not only for current business needs, but also for organization's growing and changing needs.
Existing legacy systems don't support modern, web-services based integration that is required with CRM.
Lack of adequate support from other vendors of existing systems that need to be integrated with CRM.
Data integrity issues and uncertainty over 'single source of truth'.
Mitigation – Adequate due diligence at requirements discovery stage, identify what data needs to be pulled from where and involve existing systems' vendors in discussions early on. Develop prototype where needed.
Inadequately sized hardware leading to poor CRM performance for end users.
Underestimating the budget for setting up a true High-Availability, secure CRM setup, leading to cost overruns.
Underestimating cost of scaling up on cloud.
Lack of complete control over your own data and accessibility at all times.
Mitigation – Plan carefully upfront. Best, choose a CRM that supports both models.
Data fragmented and silo-ed in various existing applications and difficult to integrate and consolidate in the CRM.
Data integrity issues in the migrated data.
Incorrect assumptions about the quality of the data to be migrated. Adequate time and budget not planned for the inevitable data cleaning/scrubbing exercise.
Mitigation – Know you Data! Having clarity about your data in terms of how much, how good and where is mandatory.
Considering CRM as just a technology, instead of business transformation tool.
Inflexibility to change existing way of doing things, giving up entrenched (bad) business practices and adopting best practices that CRM enables.
Implementation that is overly disruptive of existing business practices.
Complexities in re-architecting customer facing processes through CRM.
Mitigation – Recognize the transformative power of CRM, be flexible to adopt best practices. Enlist a sponsor from executive management early on.
#12 Difficulty in deploying a single CRM system spanning multiple geographic regions due to differences in business practices and the required localization.
#13 Artificial time pressures created due to end-of-contract situations with existing vendors. The urgency and impossible timelines can derail the change management efforts required for implementation & adoption of new CRM.
#14 Change in business priorities mid way through CRM implementation, e.g. reallocation of CRM budget, shifted focus on mergers & acquisitions, changes in regulatory environment, etc.
#15 Complexities in information security due to differing encryption standards, Govt access & control over data, industrial espionage in certain regions etc.
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