Kirstin Johnson was up against more than the average IT director. Johnson, less than a year out of college, had accepted a job in 2004 from Wallace Welch and Willingham (WWW), a Florida insurance company. That summer Johnson’s boss asked her to purchase a CRM system that the company’s two sales teams could work with together on leads and opportunities. Her response? "What’s CRM?"

Aside from her lack of CRM knowledge, Johnson also faced one of the oldest barriers to CRM success: no user buy-in. She needed to convince a team of more than 20 salespeople–a team accustomed to using spreadsheets, card files, and financial/accounting systems–to switch to a shared data repository. To make matters worse, the company’s power user and person responsible for training new salespeople asked, "Why are we changing from something that is working for me?"

This is a perfect scenario of the some of the trouble organizations can face when implementing a CRM system. Of course, the CRM tech-buying decision is an important one, but it’s critical for companies to see past the technology and look at the employees who will be affected the most. "All too often companies get caught up with the vendor and the solution," says Jonathan Copulsky, a principal at Deloitte Consulting’s strategy and operations practice. "Things like executive buy-in, end-user feedback, a thorough and continuous training program, and communication–they aren’t just good pieces of advice. Not following them leads to a much bigger barrier other than technology, and that’s unhappy employees."

Educate Yourself First
The first barrier Johnson had to overcome was her own ignorance about CRM. She began to learn the merits of CRM systems by attending an industry conference in the summer of 2004. There, the limitations of WWW’s existing data-gathering methods became clearer to her: The 70-employee insurance company offers property, personal, and marine insurance for businesses in and residents of Florida. The sales team is divided into two groups, one for business insurance, and the other for residential insurance. The existing customer-data system of paper, spreadsheets, and accounting applications was limited in CRM functionality and lacked the ability to share customer information. Also, when employees left the company their customer contact information left with them. When WWW had to replace a salesperson, the new employee was advised to rummage through the predecessor’s desk to find any "workable leads," Johnson says. "The goal with purchasing a CRM system was to enable salespeople to sort through leads. Also, there were many cases that involved a member from each sales team. The lack of a unified customer system inhibited this."

Safety in Numbers
Johnson also quickly identified at the conference another barrier to CRM success: a financially insecure vendor. With all the merger-and-acquisition activity in the CRM industry, one of her biggest concerns was that "while this would work now, the vendor would eventually fizzle out and there would be no support, no new updates, nothing. We would be up the river without a paddle."

What she learned at the conference helped Johnson to overcome two more common barriers to CRM success. One was limiting information resources to only CRM vendors. She needed unbiased opinions on each vendor’s products and the vendor’s staying power: "I went by [other customers'] comparison list on which vendor was going to be around for a long time and which was well respected." The next barrier was cost–the manageable monthly payments of the on-demand delivery model appealed to her. However, because she was not sure if WWW would eventually bring the CRM system in house, Johnson wanted a product that would give her the option to do either. She selected Sage Software’s Sage CRM SalesLogix.

The implementation began in November of 2004 and the system was up and running within two months. To begin converting the sales force, she blocked salespeople from using the old financial/accounting system and forced them to run and file activity reports through SalesLogix. If the reports weren’t filed through SalesLogix, they were considered not filed. "That pushed everybody to use it," Johnson says. "If there’s no driving force behind it, people can ignore the new system for as long as they can."

Johnson then encountered staff resistance to the project. "We had at least eight or 10 guys [telling] me the sky is falling," she says. "They had complete doubt about whether the software would handle all the information, if information would be lost, or if the whole thing was just going to blow up.
Everybody wanted to do things their way. They were looking for SalesLogix to fail." To make matters worse, the company’s biggest power user wasn’t adapting the new system. He’s one of the company’s most successful salespeople, and was also responsible for training new recruits. He continued to use the legacy financial/accounting system, content on placing customer notes into the old system, printing out summary reports, and then having another employee shuffle through the reports so that each set of notes was in the proper sales zone for the corresponding customer. "He told me, ‘You can have all the new guys change, but I’m not [going to],’" Johnson says. "That only added fuel to the fire. Other salespeople in the office started asking, ‘Why do I have to use SalesLogix?’"

Johnson realized she might have a mutiny on her hands. Most sales, marketing, and customer service departments don’t appreciate receiving instructions from the IT department. Johnson sidestepped this barrier by letting the sales manager address the matter. "He went into [the power user's] office and laid down the law," she says. "The power user had to buy into SalesLogix or face some potentially serious consequences." The power user began using SalesLogix, and finally saw its benefits. "It had a wonderful effect on the entire implementation," Johnson says. "He has become a champion of change. It was really important as both a power user and as a motivator/mentor to the rest of the sales team."

WWW has seen dramatic improvements thanks to Johnson’s persistence. Besides streamlining its sales department, the company has created a new marketing department. "SalesLogix has consolidated business operations across the board. The staff has come around. They accept that this is an improvement over the way things were previously done."

A Final Hurdle
Johnson overcame one last barrier by realizing early on that CRM training is a continuing process. She continues to educate the sales force by distributing daily emails to the staff with updates about additional functionality. "We keep an eye on the staff to see how advanced they are on the system and send corresponding updates each week to show them how to accomplish something new. It keeps them happy," Johnson says. "In hindsight, this initiative came down to communication–communicating and working with people."

Contact Editorial Assistant Colin Beasty at cbeasty@destinationCRM.com

Common CRM Success Barriers

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