CPQ

Are you ready for CRM/CPQ Implementation?

CRMCPQ 1

Do you think demos and POCs are all you need to finalize your product implementation decisions?

But, you still have a high risk of failure. And, there are many reasons behind it.

Let me tell you a story…

Once there was a certain Mr. X with a lot of experience who joined a company as its VP, Sales, and Marketing. Within a few days, he found that the sales processes were far from optimal.

As someone with experience using CPQ, he was convinced that there was no better product than the “Ready CRM — The best cloud CRM” to implement their complex CRM and CPQ processes.

Ready CRM presented a thorough demo based on their experience from numerous past implementations and the demo was successful. The Ready CRM team also presented use cases and the decision was made.The project kicked off after agreement on both sides.

And now, the most interesting things began to happen.

The Ready CRM team needed customer and products master, principally on the bundle structure and the pricing. But, the business team was unable to deliver this on time as their existing processes weren’t optimal up to begin with. The very reason for desiring automation in the first place. So, that was Delay Number 1.

The business’ ERP team who needed to get the API’s ready are preoccupied with a scheduled release. They are down on their knees and don’t have any more bandwidth . And, that was Delay Number 2.

On the other hand, Ready CRM’s team was trying to get the proposal document from the legal team who had no clue what to do as they had no background on this project. And, that was Delay Number 3.

After a number of delays, Ready CRM’s team was ready with the project in 7 Months as opposed to 3 months

Now, something more interesting happened. The sales team responsible for UAT was busy as it was their financial year closing. So, a further delay of a month later, they finally started testing the tool. And, lo and behold! What do they find? They find the tool very difficult to use (Interestingly that year, Ready CRM was named the “Easy to use CRM “. But that is a story for another day.)

Now, both Ready CRM and Company M are at a loss as to what to do. What then, caused the implementation to fail?

The different players in this implementation story were not aligned and the actors did not know their cues.

And sadly enough, this is neither an exaggeration nor a rarity. This is a script that is played out time and again. The reason why projects fail despite teams with stellar credentials — -Wanting and needing automation is not the same as being ready for it.

Moral of the story being, Get ready and get implementing!!

Article by Nishanth Ramesh — Director, Clouds Solutions — Forsys Inc

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *