According to Google, 70% of CRM projects go wrong, and everyone has heard a story of a Fundraising CRM project failing. But why do so many projects fail? Depending on who you talk to, you will hear slightly different things, but we believe there are three main ways CRM projects fail:
Over Budget/Over Time: The project delivers significantly late and or needs significant additional funding.
Lack of adoption: The system is not used, so benefits are never realised.
Perception: The project was oversold and doesn’t live up to unrealistic expectations.
Let’s have a look at these in a bit more detail…
Over Budget/Over Time People often put a lot of effort and structures in place to stop these familiar project issues from occurring. And if you're using a project management methodology, with check points or gates, you should be able to either avoid these or see them coming with early warning. Where projects often go wrong is seeing the chosen project methodology as a tick-box exercise rather than a tool to avoid pitfalls. Project processes work best when used to support transparent and constant communication and decision making about risks and issues. And of course, your project may agree that spending some more time or resource on a given area would be worth the benefits - it just helps to see these issues coming to you in advance so that decisions can be agreed.
Lack of adoption This is probably the most common failure we see with CRM systems and the most impactful. Picture it - the project went perfectly; everyone's requirements were captured, the system was delivered, everyone was trained, but now half the staff don't use the system! This problem occurs when CRM projects forget that they are change projects. A new CRM system is often a massive disrupter where staff happy who may be happy with their existing ways of working are forced to adopt a new system and processes. You may be asking them to capture much more data than they are used to, the process may be different, the system might look very different, and inputting data may initially take more time. All of this may be without apparent benefit to staff, their team or the organisation. If you don't focus on change management aspect, bringing the staff along on the journey of change and being clear to embed the benefits of new systems in the team, don't be surprised if they don't use the system the way you would like them to.
Perception Modern CRM can be fantastic; this, coupled with a slick sales team who can at times oversell the features and benefits of a system, can lead organisation’s to think the new system will solve all their problems. Building up expectations can mean that when the actual (perfectly capable) CRM is goes live, it can lead to staff to see the project as a failure. This can then result in demands to replace the system - yet again! To stop this pitfall, ensure the project's scope and deliverables are clear, realistic and communicated to the team. And remember, sometimes an organisation doesn’t need a new system at all - just a tweak to the existing one can bring a world of benefit!
What next? Modern CRM is transformational. Ultimately, making sure your users are happy is central to long term success let alone a successful project. Stay tuned for more blog posts exploring these themes further.
