Wondering how this project approaches, but you have no experience? Will tell you how in a safe and professional way you should prepare your business to implement CRM and Document Management System.
Project Manager
The most important decision from the point of view of the entire project is the establishment of the person who will guide the entire process from consultation to implementation. Such a person should be empowered by the Board to carry out the project and the competence to coordinate work and people in the company. It is important here though sketchy knowledge of IT, because this knowledge will be useful at a later stage of the project.
Let’s start with writing down a list of issues in your organization
No…this is not a mistake. If the implementation of this class is to bring tangible benefits to the company’s guidelines should be drawn up, in which we will later this system. Before that happens it is worth to carry out a number of internal consultations with people who have the most to say in mentioned topics. And as for the workflow of documents it will certainly person representing the Administration department, accounting department and sometimes Managers of individual units. In turn for CRM it will be mainly Sales department, its employees and representatives. Each discussed the problem should be eventually rescheduled to specific requirement for example.
issue 1: “Office department’s day-to-day activities prevent timely delivery of documents for signature and, therefore, to accounts”.
issue 2: “access to sales agreements is difficult-there is no one place where you can verify your most up-to-date records.”
on this basis, should be the following requirements in relation to the target program:
requirement 1: “the system should automate the work in Office department through the registration cost invoices and send them to describe electronically according to a specified key.
requirement 2: “the system should have a central, electronic register of sales contracts with the possibility of access for the Sales department”.
If you actually need DMS and CRM system – good to combine these two areas and reflect on the creation of the requirements for the systems that combine these two features. Currently on the market are available in modular systems such as Baseline™, that connect these areas and many others. This is a huge advantage for the maintenance of such a tool as well as the flow of electronic information in the company.
Let’s get back to the heart of the matter. Project Manager should coordinate the entire process of gathering requirements in specific areas of the functioning of the organization. This step is one of the most important stages of the project, the end result should be a consistent document describing the requirements for the tools, which is to support or take employees in daily activities. Such a document can be a simple list of segregated areas of application requirements, respectively.
Time to refine requirements
This is probably the most difficult stage of the process. At this stage, it should look at all the collected requirements and give them some priorities which ones are critical for us and that can be optional. Well, because it’s hard, after all, on an equal footing to the requirement “CRM needs to support the sales process” required “CRM system should have a built-in internal chat”. This will allow us to later assess the presented systems and their functionality.
From the point of view of electronic documents for sure, you would specify the path of the course for incoming letters such as an invoice. To properly measure the effort to implement such functionality, DMS provider will probably ask about the definition of and the persons to whom documents should occur. To do this, you can again use the ordinary list of points or the use of the free editors schemes commonly available on the network.
Please note that after you deploy the system some steps will be carried out in a completely different way – electronically, and where possible, automatically. If currently your organization uses information systems would need to rethink their current feature-you might want to move existing functionality to the new system by opting out of something that no longer meets our expectations and costs. Of course, DMS systems are usually not systems in which leads to accounting, because one of the selection criteria of such a system would be the ability to integrate with an accounting system that works with us.
Meet your system vendor
Live product presentation allows us to zoom in on what opportunities they offer today’s solutions available on the market. Perhaps our expectations with respect to future system were not so prohibitive, and on the contrary, the presentation will show us more places and areas that can be automated.
In practice, you should not follow the only requirements which reflect our current needs. You must consider what role can act as a system for two, maybe five years, when our organization will be bigger and more complicated business. We may then need further tools that will allow us to efficiently develop our business. You do not need to talk to anyone, that the sales processes directly connect to the area of document management, finances or projects, so programs that offer support in many areas will always be a better and cheaper solution from systems that work only in one area.
Meeting with the system vendor should result in a stage of analysis is carried out, to answer precisely the question of what, when and for how much you can take to deploy in your organization DMS and/or CRM system.
For whom is the cloud?
Cloud solutions have been enjoying great success, because we do not have to invest in equipment and the purchase of a single license. Instead, we get access to the version of the subscription system, which physically is installed on the servers of the provider. This model introduces the need for monthly subscription fees for each active user. It is worth to consider this option, if the final number of users of the system do not exceed the number of dozens. Otherwise, such a model may not pay off in the long run and then consider the option of purchasing a single license and install servers of their own.
In practice, there is also a model in which we acquire a perpetual license, but we would like to physically located on the servers of the provider. Then comes into play hosting service and care server. This is a good solution for companies that do not have their own facilities.
Summary
The last thing that you should consider before you deploy the system in a company is the correct attitude of the users themselves. Proper communication on different levels of the company should prepare the organization and make it easier to switch from paper to electronic.
Piotr Musiał
