CRM Budgeting & Planning
This document has been put together to support clients with their budgeting and planning for implementing CRM for a Phase 1. No matter what your budget, Cloud9 Insight have designed three different first phase approaches to support you in getting started with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. Your choice of project will depend on your budget and ambition for a Phase 1. The ‘Fast Track’ and ‘Training & Setup’ approaches have each been designed to support you in implementing CRM on a small budget, to support you with a successful first phase that delivers an immediate ROI. All approaches will focus on one functional area, such as Sales, Marketing or Service, and assume further phases will be planned within 3-9 months of an initial implementation. All projects are tailored for your exact needs and therefore the final approach, cost and duration may vary depending on your needs. We will support you in future proofing your investment and offer best practice advice throughout the engagement.
The key success factors for CRM projects are as follows:
Focus on User Adoption
Shared vision for CRM in the business and how it supports business strategy
Senior Management sponsorship
Alignment of solution to your data model for great reporting & analytics
Simplification of solution – hiding irrelevant fields and forms at a business or user level
Excellent training – tailored to roles
Seeing CRM as a business transformation project not an IT project
Identify opportunities to improve customer experience through business process improvements
Plan a second phase within 3-9 months of an initial implementation to continuously align to business needs and tweak to ensure great user adoption and inclusion of automation or additional functional areas.
Cloud9 Insight have designed 3 approaches for a phase 1, which are outlined in the following pages:
Training & Setup
Fast Track
CRM Budgeting & Planning
The following table outlines the key differences between each approach.
Standard Phase 1
Fast Track
Training & Setup
Budget
From £4550
£2000 fixed price
£280
Effort
5 days minimum
14 hours
2 hours
Elapsed time
2 weeks start to
finish
1 week
1 day
Data import
Included time &
materials
Included Contacts &
Accounts & Leads only
none
Training
1 day on-site
2 hours web-based &
recorded (optional)
2 hours web-based
& recorded
(optional)
Documentation
Detailed
documenation of
changes
none
none
Reporting
1 day time &
Materials
none
none
Support
Assume 7 hours
2 hours
none
Location
On-site & remote
All web-based &
remote
CRM Budgeting & Planning
Training & Setup
Cost £280
80% of clients who invest no time in services or training to align CRM to meet their business needs, will not be using CRM one year later. Some level of investment in training and alignment of CRM to support your business processes will be required to ensure successful use adoption. Cloud9 Insight have designed a very light CRM Project approach for clients on a small budget, to ensure you get off to a great start when using CRM. This engagement is all web-based and tailored to your needs. During the training some level of personalisation will be included to show you how to simplify CRM. Additional training or services can be purchased by the hour as required. Clients can elect to have on-site training for sessions of 4 hours or more. Training is purchased by the hour and 2 hours is assumed for this engagement.
In order to commence this engagement simply send us your list of training requirements in priorty order and suggested dates and times.
CRM Budgeting & Planning
Fast Track (Budget Project Approach)
Fixed Budget £2000
This is a fixed budget project which is all delivered remotely. It is intended as a non-throw away Pilot approach to support your business in quickly implementing CRM. It ensures it is aligned to deliver
immediate value before further investment needs to be justified. It commences with a 2 hour web-based session to identify high level changes that need to be made to ensure the solution is aligned to your core business needs. All services are undertaken remotely and using web-based sessions when required. Time will be managed to ensure a fixed budget approach. Additional levels of customisation can be planned in a Phase 2 when value is proven. Additional time can be purchased on a time and materials basis if required. This can be purchased by the hour (for example additional training). There is more information on this in the statement of work.
Requirements Gathering (2 hours)
This session commences with a 2 hour web-based session with one or two key stakeholders who have a clear vision of how CRM will support the business. We will review high level processes that will be supported by CRM, and identify changes that are required to ensure that CRM fits your core data model (field names, drop down values, form layout etc) and other critical business needs that can be delivered within the budgeted time.
Customisation First Pass (4 hours)
Following from this first session, an initial level of customisation will be undertaken for up to 4 hours.
Key stakeholder review (2 hours)
Following the initial customisation, a web-based session will be scheduled to review CRM which will now look like a solution that has been designed for your business. The focus is on making further changes that will ensure great user adoption. Typically this session is 2 hours in duration and web-based.
Final customisations (2 hours)
Final customisations will be undertaken following feedback from user stakeholders.
Training (2 hours)
Training on your solution will be web-based and tailored to your solution. We can offer to record this training for future reference which is helpful as a refresher or for new users.
Support (2 hours)
2 hours of support will be made available during the project and beyond the training to give you first-hand insight into the value of our Enhanced Support which is intended to be used for ad hoc training or consulting advise or small customisations. Can also be used for assisting with Data import. Additional time can be purchased at £140 an hour or a block of 7 hours for £910 (prices excl. VAT).
CRM Budgeting & Planning
Standard Phase 1 (Recommended Approach)
The Standard Phase 1 approach has been designed to support you in fast tracking your alignment of CRM to your immediate and most critical business needs. At the end of this project you will have the best chance of ensuring great user adoption. Further phases should be planned within 3-9 months of an initial implementation to ensure continuous alignment of CRM to meet your business needs, and potentially deploy to further user groups to improve overall customer experiences with your business.
Phase 1 Project Components
This engagement outline provides you with an indicative budget for deploying a light Phase 1 for CRM Online successfully. It has been formulated as an Accelerated Phase 1 and commences with a 1-2 day engagement to undertake detailed planning and requirements gathering. After this we are able to provide very accurate budgets for Phase 1. It is recommended to budget for additional phases within 3-9 months of an initial Phase 1 to maximise user adoption and extend use of CRM to additional users and deploy more mature capability.
Planning and Requirements Gathering and Documentation - 1-2 days
We review at a high level the processes to be supported in a Phase 1 and work through the system with you, deciding on what fields should be removed, changes to existing fields (like changing the drop-down values) and any new fields to be added. We would also identify the views or dashboards that are required. Requirements would be prioritised and written up for review before forming part of a statement of work for subsequent delivery. Typically this is 4 hours - 1 day on-site session and the remaining time is spent on writing up detailed documentation and any required calls for feedback and clarification.
Customisation - 1-3 days
CRM projects are most successful when the system is customised to the needs of each respective business. The extent of this customisation is different each time and therefore can be a little hard to estimate. However, many of our smaller clients can achieve a fair amount of customisation in 2 days. We would access your solution remotely and make these changes.
Data Migration - Half to 2 days
The exact effort required for a data migration depends on the quality and type of data being imported. Cloud9 Insight can take an advisory role or, if preferred, undertake all aspects of the data migration (which will be time and materials based, as exact duration does depend on factors beyond our control, however our estimates are usually quite accurate). Data Migration of historical or future activities or attachments from an existing CRM solution such as Sage, Salesforce or Act will require the use of a tool such as Scribe.
CRM Budgeting & Planning
Project Management & Project Support – 1 day
We will support you in planning for a successful deployment and provide expert advice on optimizing user adoption and overall success of your project. Time will be made available for on-going communications including regular status updates on project progress. Any time left over will be available to clients beyond go-live for ad hoc changes or ad hoc training or support in resolving technical issues relating to configuration work completed.
Go-Live & Post Project Enhanced Support – 1-3 days
Cloud9 Insight provide enhanced support on a time and materials basis for continued access to consultants to address any issues during user acceptance testing and go-live and to fine tune solution after go-live to ensure the highest levels of user adoption.
CRM Budgeting & Planning
Additional areas you may wish to budget for when following the Standard Phase 1
project approach include:
Training
User Training (from remote web-based sessions to on-site 1 day role based training) or train trainer
Creation of training materials
Creation of quick reference guides
Creation of training videos
Administration & Reporting Training (1 day)
Training on use of add-ons e.g. Advanced Marketing
Reporting & Dashboard set-up
Set up of personalised views for each user
Set up of Dashboards to drive user behaviour and improve business performance
Set up of reports to measure key business performance indicators
Automation
Automation of processes
Set up of ‘Dynamic’ communication and marketing Campaigns
Integration
With other solutions e.g. Sage 50, Sage 200, ERP, and other business applications
Document storage
Set up of SharePoint for collaboration & document storage & advanced search
Add-ons
Use of Add-ons including: Advanced Marketing, Social Media Integration, CTI, Post Code Checking, web-site integration
