When a Simple CRM Implementation Changed the Foundation of a Business
What began as a sales tool revealed a much larger operational opportunity.
A client was building a formal sales force for the first time in its 20-year history. I immediately identified an operational problem. People in the field had no reliable way to determine whether a business was an active customer, what it had purchased or when it had last purchased. Getting current information meant calling the company and relying on customer service to research it—interrupting one employee’s work to allow another employee to do theirs.
We began implementing a CRM to solve that problem. As we built it, we discovered that the system could create efficiencies across far more of the organization. What began as a sales tool evolved into a much broader operational system.
The Problem Technology Couldn’t Solve
Different departments needed different things from the system, and not everyone experienced its benefits at the same time. Without understanding the larger vision, a better process could simply feel like additional work.
- Bring department leaders together for a short weekly meeting.
- Share a few meaningful KPIs and a brief departmental update.
- Name one or two problems the department was trying to solve.
Something unexpected happened. Again and again, the most useful solution came from someone outside the department experiencing the problem. The meetings created greater buy-in for the new system, but they also did something more important: they helped people understand how their individual work connected to the success of the entire company.
Field employees lacked reliable customer information, and getting answers required customer service to interrupt its own work and research each account.
A shared system improved visibility across the organization, while weekly leadership meetings created greater understanding, participation and cross-department problem-solving.
Sometimes the system reveals a problem technology can’t solve.
An outside perspective can uncover the gaps between the tools you use, the people using them and the work that needs to get done.
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