Starting Your Path to Success: 10 Reasons to Document Your CRM Strategy

Redpath believes every business should have a road map for their CRM. That’s why we developed the Path to Success, a free guide for building a road map that identifies your CRM needs. Still need convincing? Keep reading to hear the top 10 reasons why documenting your CRM strategy will help your organization grow and thrive.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) enables organizations to deepen relationships. By collecting and curating interaction data, firmographic data, persona data and desired next steps in a single system, companies get a more complete view of their customers, prospects, donors, stakeholders, partners and suppliers. According to Gartner, CRM technology will be the single largest revenue area of spending in enterprise software by 2021.

Not sure if your organization is advanced enough for a CRM? Chances are, you already have one (it just might not be documented). Whether it’s an integrated platform like Salesforce, or a simple spreadsheet and stacks of business cards, organizations of all sizes and maturity have CRM processes. Regardless of your technology stack, the trick is making that process work for you, rather than forcing you and your team to work for that process.

If you’re looking to implement a brand new CRM system or just want to better manage your existing one, we understand the process of building out your strategy can seem daunting and time-consuming. That’s why we’ve developed “Path to Success.” It will be your guide for building a road map that identifies your CRM needs, and walks you through the process of developing and documenting a formal plan to fit your unique organization.

10 ways building your Path to Success will help your organization

1. It’s just good planning. The Path to Success road mapping process enables cross-functional planning teams to fully examine their organization vision & strategy. Enterprise decisions are then made as an integral part of the plan.
2. Stay focused with time-specific deadlines. Road Mapping helps you and your team ensure you’ll have the technologies and capabilities at the time they are needed for a specific strategy.
3. Link organizational vision and strategy with technology decisions. Road Mapping prompts a team to be specific with respect to planned features or capabilities in terms of value.
4. Reveal gaps in technology. Areas where plans are needed to achieve objectives become immediately apparent, and can be filled before they become problems.
5. Prioritize investments based on value-drivers. At every stage of the Road Map, the focus is on the few most important things: key result areas, value drivers and technology investments.
6. Set SMART goals (specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound). This will keep you and your team accountable and create ownership.
7. Provide a clear guide for your team, allowing them to recognize and act on events that require a change in direction.
8. Strategically use technology across departmental lines. Cross-reviews look across plans of several departments to find common needs & capabilities that can be leveraged.
9. Clearly Communicate organization and technology plans to end users and management. With a Road Map, a team can clearly explain to end users where they are going and what to expect. A Road Map gives end users information they can use in their own planning, and can be used to solicit their reaction and guidance.
10. Build out your leadership and project team. The Road Mapping process builds a common understanding and shared ownership of the plan, incorporating ideas and insights from team members that represent the many departments involved in a successful solution development.

Start Your Path to Success

Download your Path to Success Guide to get access to our step-by-step process and hands-on workbook for building out your very own CRM road map.

Need help creating your Path to Success? Contact us today to learn how Redpath can help you identify your CRM goals and strategy.